June 11, 2026Blog

Website down or slow? How to find the fault

Is the website down, or just slow? The two look the same to a stressed owner but have completely different causes. This guide takes the symptoms one by one: what usually sits behind them, what you can check yourself in ten minutes, and when handing it over is the smarter move.

First: down, slow or partly broken?

Completely down means nobody gets the page — an error message, a white screen or a timeout. Slow means the page loads but takes many seconds. Partly broken means the site looks normal but something specific fails: the checkout, a form, the login. Diagnosis starts with knowing which of the three you have.

Completely down with an errorServer, hosting or expired domain

White screen after a changePlugin or theme conflict after an update

Slow on every pageHosting, heavy plugins or missing cache

Checkout fails in the shopPayment plugin or conflict after an update

Forms never arriveEmail setup (SMTP) or the form plugin

Common symptoms and where the fault most often sits. Not a verdict for your case — a starting point.

What you can check yourself in ten minutes

You do not need a technical background for the first steps. They rule out the most common causes and give you concrete information to pass on.

Try the site on your phone with wifi offDown for everyone, or only on your network?
Check that the domain is paidAn expired domain is the classic "everything is gone" cause
Look for emails from your hosting providerWarnings about full disks or expired plans
Recall the most recent changeAn update, a new plugin, new content?
Test the checkout or form yourselfDo the failing action, note the exact error
Screenshot the errorSaves whoever fixes it a lot of searching

The ten-minute self-check before you contact anyone.

Slow site: the usual causes

Slow sites rarely turn slow overnight. They get there gradually: a plugin here, an unprocessed image there, a theme doing too much. The most common causes are budget hosting that no longer matches the traffic, many active plugins, large images and missing caching.

A slow site is measurable. Run a free website check — it measures the speed with Google tooling and shows what is slow, in under a minute.

When to hand it over

Hand it over when the site is completely down and the hosting provider does not respond, when the checkout or forms fail and ten minutes did not find the cause, or when the same fault returns after you "fixed" it. Trial-and-error debugging on a live site can make things worse.

Describe what your self-check found and submit a problem — we review it for free and reply with the next step and a price. Outages are read first. If the fault is WordPress-specific, the usual patterns are in The 7 most common WordPress problems.

Something failing right now?

Describe it in your own words — screenshots help. We review it for free and reply with the fastest route to a fix, price included.

Submit the problem