Website Down During Peak Hours: A Quick Recovery Plan

Peak hours are when your website does the most work and delivers the most revenue. If the site goes down during a traffic spike, every minute matters. This plan helps you stabilize the situation quickly, communicate clearly, and reduce losses.

Use this checklist as your go-to recovery playbook when peak traffic hits an outage.

1. Confirm the outage fast

Check the site on a second device or network. If your monitoring tool shows the status code and response time, use that data to confirm it is a real outage, not a local issue.

2. Pause ad spend

If you are running ads, pause the campaigns tied to the down pages. This stops wasted spend and protects your conversion rates.

3. Activate a backup page

Use a simple backup page that includes your offer, phone number, or a basic form. Even a temporary landing page can save leads during a short outage.

4. Notify your team

Let sales, support, and marketing know right away. Short updates keep everyone aligned and prevent duplicated work.

5. Identify the root cause

Check hosting status, recent deployments, DNS changes, and third-party scripts. Peak-hour outages are often related to a sudden traffic spike or a failed integration.

6. Restore and verify

Once the fix is applied, verify the entire user flow: landing page, checkout or form, and confirmation page. Do not assume the first page loading means the issue is resolved.

7. Review after the incident

Document what happened, how long it lasted, and how it was fixed. Use that data to improve monitoring alerts and strengthen your infrastructure.