Why Is My Website Down? 7 Things to Check First (in Plain English)

Your website is down. Customers are noticing. You're panicking.

First: take a breath. Most outages have one of about seven causes, and you can check most of them yourself in under 10 minutes. You don't need to know what a TCP handshake is. You just need to know what to look for.

This is a plain-English checklist in order from most-likely-to-fix-it-fast to least. Work through them in order. By number 4 or 5, you've probably found the problem.

The 30-second TL;DR

The most common causes of small business website outages are:

1. The site isn't actually down (just your computer can't reach it)
2. Domain registration expired
3. SSL certificate expired
4. Hosting company is having an outage

If none of those are it, the rest of this post walks through the less common (but real) causes.

1. Is your website actually down, or is it just you?

This sounds silly. It happens constantly. Before you call anyone, confirm the site is actually down for everyone, not just for you.

How to check:

• Pull up the site on your phone using mobile data (not your office wifi)
• Ask a friend or family member who isn't on your network to load the site
• Use isitdownrightnow.com or downforeveryoneorjustme.com (free public tools)

If the site loads for them and not you, the problem is local. Restart your wifi router, switch to mobile data, or try a different browser. Site's fine. Crisis averted.

If the site is down for everyone, keep going.

2. Did your domain registration expire?

Your domain (like yourbusiness.com) is rented from a registrar, usually one year at a time. When it expires, your whole website disappears.

How to check:

• Go to whois.com and type your domain into the search
• Look for "Expiration Date" or "Registry Expiry Date"
• If the date has passed, your domain has expired

If yes: log into your registrar (whoever you bought the domain from) and renew it. There's usually a grace period of a few days to a few weeks where you can renew without losing the domain permanently. After that, anyone can buy it.

3. Is your SSL certificate expired?

SSL is what makes the little lock icon appear next to your website address. When it expires, browsers slap a giant red warning on your site telling visitors to leave.

How to check:

• Open your website in Chrome
• If you see a "Not Secure" warning or a full-screen "Your connection is not private" error, SSL is the problem
• Click the lock icon (or warning) for details on when it expired

If yes: most modern hosts can renew SSL with one click in their control panel. If you're with Cloudflare, SSL renewals are automatic. If you're with a host that doesn't auto-renew, you'll need to manually trigger a renewal or contact their support.

4. Is your hosting provider having problems?

Your hosting company stores your website on their servers. When they have an outage, your site goes dark even though you didn't do anything wrong.

How to check:

• Google "[your host name] status" (e.g., "bluehost status" or "siteground status")
• Most hosts publish a real-time status page showing whether they're having issues
• Also check downdetector.com to see if other users are reporting outages

If yes: there's not much you can do except wait. Hosting outages are usually fixed within a few hours. You can post a temporary update on your social media so customers know.

5. Was anything changed on your site in the last 48 hours?

Most website outages happen because something was just changed. Common culprits:

• A new theme or plugin was installed
• DNS settings were updated
• The site was moved to a new server or host
• A developer pushed new code
• WordPress (or your CMS) auto-updated

If yes: the fix is usually to roll back whatever change broke it. If you have a backup from before the change, restore it. If not, try undoing the most recent change (deactivate the new plugin, switch back to the old theme).

If you're not the person who made the change, find that person and ask what they changed.

6. Has Google flagged your site as unsafe?

If visitors see a red full-screen "Deceptive site ahead" warning, Google has flagged your site, usually because they detected malware, phishing, or other unsafe content.

How to check:

• Visit Google's Safe Browsing site status tool (transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search) and enter your URL
• Or look for a "Deceptive site ahead" red screen when you load your own site

If yes: your site has likely been hacked. This is a job for a security professional. Steps to take:

1. Take the site offline if you can
2. Contact your hosting company's security team
3. Scan for malware (most hosts have tools for this)
4. Once clean, request a review from Google through Search Console

7. Is your site showing a server error (500, 502, 503, 504)?

These are numeric error codes that mean the server is alive but something is broken on the server side. The site loads, but instead of your homepage, visitors see a white page with one of these numbers on it.

How to check:

• Visit your site in a browser
• If you see a four-digit error code starting with 5 (500, 502, 503, 504), it's a server error

If yes: the cause varies. Could be a traffic spike overwhelming the server. Could be a code or plugin error. Could be a hosting problem. Contact your hosting support and share the error code. They'll know what to look for.

When to call someone

If you've worked through all seven and you still don't know what's wrong, or if the site has been down more than 30 minutes during business hours, it's time to ask for help. Your options:

• Your hosting company's support (start here, usually free)
• Whoever built your website originally
• A local IT person or freelance web developer

Don't wait days hoping it'll fix itself. Every hour of downtime is potentially lost customers.

How to avoid most of this in the future

Most of these outages are catchable before they hurt you. Domain expiry, SSL expiry, hosting issues, Google flagging. All of these announce themselves in advance or get reported within seconds of happening.

The trick is knowing where to look. Or having someone watch for you.

KeepPaw is a website watchdog built for small business owners. We check your site every minute. When something needs your attention, we email you in plain English, with what's wrong and what to do.

Run a free check on your site at keeppaw.com/check. You'll get a graded report card in 60 seconds, no signup required. If something on this list is already happening to your site, the free check will catch it. 🐾