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Three settings, and they mean quite different things.

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Invite only really does mean only

Someone who isn’t a member gets a locked page that tells them nothing — not even what your shop is called. No name, no products, no way in. If you want a shop that’s simply unlisted rather than closed, that’s open invite — anyone with the link can still get in, it just won’t be indexed. The default stays open invite, so switching to invite only is something you choose, not something that happens to you.

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What a private shop turns on for you

Two things switch on automatically and can’t be turned off while you’re private:
  • Cloaking. Your shop doesn’t reveal itself to anyone who isn’t allowed in.
  • Staying out of directories. You’re kept out of your own sitemap and robots file, so search engines aren’t handed a map to a shop you’ve closed.

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The assurances panel isn’t marketing copy

The privacy panel your shoppers see is generated from your actual settings. If it says something is protected, it’s protected — nobody typed that sentence in by hand, so it can’t drift out of step with what’s really switched on.

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Discreet billing

For shops where a customer would rather their purchase wasn’t obvious.
It changes the receipt, not the bank statement.Your email and confirmation carry the discreet name. But your Stripe account is the merchant of record, and Stripe only lets us set part of the statement text — the bank’s own prefix still shows.
Set a descriptor when you turn it on. Without a valid one the setting resolves to off, instead of half-applying and falling back to your shop name — which is the outcome you were trying to avoid.

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A gotcha with robots rules

A Disallow line matches the start of the URL, not a whole path segment. So Disallow: /sale also blocks /sales and /sale-items. Be more specific than feels necessary.

SEO & social

For the pages you do want found.

Domains

Running a private shop on your own address.