First: is it actually down?
Before anything else, rule out your own connection — it wastes more emergency calls than any real fault. Open the site on your phone with Wi-Fi switched off (mobile data only). If it loads there, the problem is your office network, browser cache or firewall, not the website. If it still fails, check a service like downforeveryoneorjustme.com to confirm whether it's down for everyone. Two minutes here tells you whether you're dealing with a local glitch or a real outage.
Match what you see to who can fix it
What the failure looks like tells you who to call, and calling the right people first is the biggest time-saver there is. Nothing answers at all (browser says the server can't be found, or times out): usually a domain or DNS problem — check the domain hasn't expired with a WHOIS lookup and contact your domain registrar. A platform-branded page answers (Wix, Squarespace or Shopify saying the site can't be found): usually an account or billing issue — log into your platform account and check the subscription. An error message answers (500 Internal Server Error, 503, or a white error screen): the server or the site's code is failing — your hosting provider can see the error logs, so start there. A blank page loads: the connection is fine but the content isn't rendering — that's a design or development problem, so contact whoever built the site, or a repair service like ours.
Want a professional pair of eyes on your own site? Request a free website review — plain-English findings, no obligation.
What to gather before you call anyone
Support goes dramatically faster when you arrive with the right details. Have ready: the full website address; the exact error message or a screenshot; when it started; anything that changed shortly before (an update, a new plugin, a DNS change, a renewal); whether your email is also affected; and your hosting and admin logins if you have them. With those six things, a competent developer can usually start diagnosing immediately instead of spending the first hour asking for them.
What not to do while it's broken
A few well-meant reactions reliably make things worse. Don't click 'update everything' hoping it fixes itself — updates on an already-broken site can compound the damage. Don't restore an old backup before anyone has identified the cause; if the site was hacked, you may restore the vulnerability straight back. Don't change DNS records on guesswork. And don't pay anyone who hasn't first told you what they believe is wrong and given you a clear written price for fixing it.
If it's costing you business right now
A down website is lost enquiries by the hour, so urgency is legitimate — but urgency is exactly when vague hourly billing and panic decisions hurt most. Tell us what's happened in plain English and we'll reply personally with an honest timescale; genuinely urgent problems are prioritised. Call us on 07552 867307 or use the enquiry form, and include the details from the checklist above. Our approach is restore-first: get you trading again, then properly diagnose and close the cause.
How to stop it happening again
Almost every emergency we see traces back to the same short list: software that hadn't been updated (or updates applied blind, with no testing), backups that existed in theory but had never been tested, and nobody watching for problems until a customer reported them. Kept-updated software, tested backups and basic monitoring remove most of this risk entirely — whether you handle that yourself or through a maintenance plan. Our guide on what happens if you never update your website covers the slow-motion version of the same story.
How we can help right now
If the site loads but something's wrong — errors, broken pages, forms not sending — our free website check runs safe, passive checks on your public pages in a couple of minutes and labels every finding honestly. For anything bigger, our website repair service works the same way everything here does: we confirm the real cause, you approve a clear written quote, and no payment is taken until you've seen and agreed it. Wondering what a fair price looks like? Our guide to UK website repair costs lays out honest market ranges. And if the honest answer is that your site isn't worth repairing, we'll tell you that too.
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