How long does it take to get a website back up?

It depends entirely on the cause. An expired domain renewed promptly can come back within hours, though DNS changes sometimes take longer to settle. A plugin conflict can be fixed in minutes once found. A server failure depends on the host. A hack can take a day or more. A tested backup is what keeps the worst cases short.

Does downtime hurt my Google rankings?

A short outage usually has no lasting effect. Google expects occasional downtime and retries. Extended or repeated outages are different: pages can be crawled less often and, if errors persist for days, may drop out of results until the site is reliably back. For planned maintenance, a 503 status tells Google to come back later.

Should I contact my hosting company or my web developer?

Look at the error first. Server errors, timeouts, suspension notices and database connection errors usually start with the host. Errors that appeared right after an update or change usually start with whoever made it. If you are unsure, contact the host — they can see server logs and tell you quickly whether the server is the problem.

Maintenance & Security 5 min read Sajid Aslam5 October 2026

What to Do When Your Website Goes Down

The error message usually tells you where to look. A step-by-step plan for the first hour of an outage.

Step-by-step response plan for a website outage

Short answer

When your website goes down, first confirm it is down for everyone, not just you. Then read the error: it usually points to the domain, the hosting, the SSL certificate or the site itself. Check for expired renewals and recent changes, contact your host with the exact error and time, restore from backup if a change caused it, and tell customers where to reach you meanwhile.

When your website goes down, the first hour matters more than anything you do afterwards. Confirm it is actually down, read what the error says, check the three things that cause most outages — renewals, hosting and recent changes — and get the right person working on it with the right information. Meanwhile, make sure customers can still reach you another way.

This is a step-by-step plan you can follow under pressure. It works best if you read it before you need it.

Step 1: Is your website actually down?

Before anything else, rule out a problem at your end.

Try another device on a different network — your phone on mobile data, with wifi turned off.
Try a private or incognito window, which bypasses most of your browser's cached copy.
Use an online "is it down" checker, which tests from servers elsewhere.
Check your uptime monitor, if you have one. It will show when the problem started, which is extremely useful later.

If the site loads everywhere except your office, the problem is likely your network, DNS cache or a firewall — not the website.

Step 2: Read the error message

The error is the most useful clue you have. Note the exact wording and take a screenshot.

What you see	Likely cause	First move
"This site can't be reached" / DNS error	Domain expired, or DNS records changed or broken	Check domain renewal and DNS at your registrar
Registrar parking page or "this domain has expired"	Domain renewal lapsed	Renew immediately — there is usually a grace period
"Your connection is not private"	SSL certificate expired or misconfigured	Check the certificate in hosting; reissue or renew
500 Internal Server Error	Site code or server configuration fault	Check recent changes; ask the host for the error log
502 / 504 gateway errors	Server overloaded or a service behind it not responding	Contact the host; check whether traffic spiked
503 Service Unavailable	Server overloaded, or maintenance mode left on	Check for a leftover maintenance file; contact the host
"Error establishing a database connection"	Database server down, or credentials changed	Contact the host; check wp-config.php was not changed
"There has been a critical error on this website"	A PHP fatal error, usually a plugin or theme	Use the recovery mode email WordPress sends to the admin address
Account suspended page	Unpaid invoice, resource abuse or malware	Contact the host — they will say which
Site loads but redirects to spam	Hacked	Go to how to fix a hacked WordPress site

For the WordPress-specific errors — the white screen, the critical error, the stuck maintenance message — common WordPress problems and fixes walks through each one.

Step 3: Check the three usual suspects

Renewals

An expired domain or SSL certificate takes a site offline instantly and is surprisingly common, usually because a renewal card expired or reminders went to an old email address. Log in to your domain registrar and hosting account and check both.

The host

Check your host's status page and their social accounts for an announced incident. If the whole server or data centre is having a problem, there is little you can do except wait and keep customers informed.

Recent changes

What changed in the last 24 hours? A plugin update, a new plugin, a theme edit, a DNS change, a hosting plan change, a PHP version upgrade. Outages that start right after a change are almost always caused by it. Undoing that change — or restoring the backup taken just before it — is usually the fastest fix.

Step 4: Contact the right person, with the right information

Whoever you contact, give them:

the exact error message and a screenshot
the time it started (your uptime monitor will have this)
anything that changed recently
the URL, and whether every page is affected or only some

"The website is down" gets a slow, generic reply. "Since 14:05, every page returns a 500 error; we updated two plugins at 14:00" gets a fix.

Step 5: Restore service

The fastest route back depends on the cause:

Renewal problem: renew, then wait for DNS or the certificate to update.
Bad update or change: deactivate the plugin (renaming its folder over SFTP works if the dashboard is unreachable) or restore the pre-change backup.
Host problem: wait for the host, and push them for an estimated time.
Hack: take the site offline, then follow a proper clean-up — not a quick delete.
Unknown: restore the most recent known-good backup to get the site up, then investigate on a staging copy.

This is the moment a tested backup pays for itself. Website backups: what a proper strategy looks like covers how to make sure you have one.

Step 6: Keep customers informed

While the site is down, customers still need to reach you.

Update your Google Business Profile hours or post a short update, if it applies to your business
Pin a short note on your main social accounts with a phone number or email
Make sure the phone is answered and the inbox watched
If you run paid ads, pause them — paying for clicks to a broken site wastes money

Step 7: After it is fixed

Once the site is back, spend fifteen minutes on why it happened:

What was the cause, and how long was the site down?
How did you find out — a monitor, or a customer?
What would have prevented it, or made it shorter?

Then fix that: turn on domain auto-renewal, update the card on file, set up uptime monitoring if you found out from a customer, or move updates to a staging-first routine.

Prevention in one paragraph

Most outages trace back to an expired renewal, an untested update, an overloaded or unreliable host, or a security problem. All four are covered by ordinary website maintenance. If you would rather alerts went to someone whose job is to respond, monitoring and emergency response are part of the website maintenance service.

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