My App Was Working Yesterday and Now It's Completely Down
Your app was running perfectly fine — maybe for days, weeks, or even months. Then suddenly, without you changing anything, it stopped working. Users are seeing errors, the page won't load, or features that worked yesterday are now broken.
This is terrifying, especially if you have paying customers or an important demo coming up. You didn't touch anything, so why did it break? The answer is usually that something in the background changed — a subscription expired, a service went down, or an automatic update broke something.
The key is to figure out what changed and fix it as quickly as possible. Most sudden outages have simple causes once you know where to look.
Error Messages You Might See
Common Causes
- Hosting subscription expired — Your free trial or paid plan ended and the hosting provider took your app offline
- Database hit its limit — Your database ran out of free storage or connections and stopped accepting requests
- API key expired or was revoked — A third-party service you depend on (payments, email, maps) changed or expired your access key
- SSL certificate expired — Your site's security certificate ran out and browsers now block the page entirely
- Automatic updates broke something — A library or dependency auto-updated to a version that's not compatible with your code
- The service your app depends on went down — If Supabase, Firebase, Vercel, or another service has an outage, your app goes down too
How to Fix It
- Check your hosting platform first — Log in and see if there are any warnings, billing issues, or outage notices
- Check third-party service status — Visit the status pages of services you use (Supabase status, Vercel status, Stripe status, etc.)
- Look at billing and subscriptions — Check if any free trials expired or credit cards were declined
- Check your domain and SSL — Make sure your domain is still connected and the SSL certificate hasn't expired
- Look at error messages — Open the app and note any error codes (500, 503, etc.) to help identify the problem
- Redeploy the app — Sometimes simply redeploying from your hosting dashboard fixes temporary issues
Real developers can help you.
Dor Yaloz
SW engineer with 6+ years of experience,
I worked with React/Node/Python
did projects with React+Capacitor.js for ios
Supabase expert
Krishna Sai Kuncha
Experienced Professional Full stack Developer with 8+ years of experience across react, python, js, ts, golang and react-native. Developed inhouse websearch tooling for AI before websearch was solved : )
Matthew Butler
Systems Development Engineer @ Amazon Web Services
Matthew Jordan
I've been working at a large software company named Kainos for 2 years, and mainly specialise in Platform Engineering. I regularly enjoy working on software products outside of work, and I'm a huge fan of game development using Unity. I personally enjoy Python & C# in my spare time, but I also specialise in multiple different platform-related technologies from my day job.
Bastien Labelle
Full stack dev w/ 20+ years of experience
Omar Faruk
As a Product Engineer at Klasio, I contributed to end-to-end product development, focusing on scalability, performance, and user experience.
My work spanned building and refining core features, developing dynamic website templates, integrating secure and reliable payment gateways, and optimizing the overall system architecture.
I played a key role in creating a scalable and maintainable platform to support educators and learners globally.
I'm enthusiastic about embracing new challenges and making meaningful contributions.
AUXLE
I am a Full Stack Developer experienced in building Websites, Web apps and Cross Platform Mobile Apps for Startups and Companies.
Richard McSorley
Full-Stack Software Engineer with 8+ years building high-performance applications for enterprise clients. Shipped production systems at Walmart (4,000+ stores), Cigna (20M+ users), and Arkansas Blue Cross. 5 patents in retail/supply chain tech. Currently focused on AI integrations, automation tools, and TypeScript-first architectures.
Rudra Bhikadiya
I build and fix web apps across Next.js, Node.js, and DBs.
Comfortable jumping into messy code, broken APIs, and mysterious bugs.
If your project works in theory but not in reality, I help close that gap.
Anthony Akpan
Developer with 8 years of experience building softwares fro startups
Describe what's wrong in plain English. No technical knowledge needed.
Get HelpFrequently Asked Questions
I didn't change anything, so why did it break?
Many things can change without you doing anything: hosting subscriptions expire, database storage fills up, SSL certificates expire, or services you depend on have their own outages. Regular maintenance prevents most of these surprises.
How can I prevent this from happening again?
Set up uptime monitoring (free tools like UptimeRobot will alert you immediately), keep track of when subscriptions renew, and make sure payment methods on all services are up to date.