Common Issues
general
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
503 Service Unavailable
500 Internal Server Error
This site's security certificate has expired
ERR_CERT_DATE_INVALID
Database connection limit reached
Account suspended
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- API key expired or was revoked — A third-party service you depend on (payments, email, maps) changed or expired your access key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.
Meïr Ankri
Full-stack developer specializing in React / Next.js / Node.js with 6+ years of experience. I've worked across various sectors including automotive (Reezocar/Société Générale), healthcare (Medical Link SaaS), and e-commerce (Glasman). I build web apps end-to-end, from architecture to production, with a focus on scalability, performance, and code quality. I also mentor junior developers and contribute to technical decisions and code reviews.
Jared Hasson
Full time lead founding dev at a cyber security saas startup, with 10 yoe and a bachelor's in CS. Building & debugging software products is what I've spent my time on for forever
Jacek Rozanski
Senior PHP/Symfony developer and DevOps engineer with 20+ years of professional experience, running opcode.pl (web development agency, est. 2004).
Day job: I'm the sole backend developer at merketing company where I own and maintain 11 PHP/Symfony microservices on AWS (ECS Fargate, RDS, S3, CloudFront), handle the full CI/CD pipeline (Bitbucket Pipelines, Docker), and manage monitoring with Sentry and CloudWatch. These services handle high request volumes in production every month.
What I bring to AI-built apps:
- I audit and fix security issues (OWASP methodology), performance bottlenecks, and architectural problems in codebases generated by Cursor, Claude Code, Lovable, Bolt, and v0
- I refactor AI-generated prototypes into production-grade applications with proper error handling, testing, and clean architecture (SOLID, DDD, hexagonal architecture)
- I set up the infrastructure AI tools don't touch: AWS hosting, CI/CD pipelines, automated deployments, database optimization, monitoring, and alerting
- I integrate external services: payment providers, email systems, partner APIs, SSO/auth
Tech stack: PHP 8.x, Symfony, React, Next.js, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Docker, AWS (ECS, RDS, S3, SQS/SNS, CloudFront), Terraform, Supabase. I also use AI tools daily (Claude Code, Cursor) in my own workflow, so I understand both the strengths and the gaps in AI-generated code.
Based in Poland (CET timezone). Available for async work and calls during EU/US business hours.
ISHANTDEEP SINGH
Senior Software Engineer with 7+ years of experience in React, JavaScript, TypeScript, Next.js, and Node.js. I’ve also worked as a tech lead for startups, owning end-to-end technical execution including architecture, development, scaling, and delivery. I bring a strong mix of hands-on coding, product thinking, and technical leadership, and I’m comfortable building products from scratch as well as improving and scaling existing systems.
Pratik
SWE with 15+ years of experience building and maintaining web apps and extensive BE infrastructure
Matthew Butler
Systems Development Engineer @ Amazon Web Services
Daniel Vázquez
Software Engineer with over 10 years of experience on Startups, Government, big tech industry & consulting.
Prakash Prajapati
I’m a Senior Python Developer specializing in building secure, scalable, and highly available systems. I work primarily with Python, Django, FastAPI, Docker, PostgreSQL, and modern AI tooling such as PydanticAI, focusing on clean architecture, strong design principles, and reliable DevOps practices. I enjoy solving complex engineering problems and designing systems that are maintainable, resilient, and built to scale.
Kingsley Omage
Fullstack software engineer passionate about AI Agents, blockchain, LLMs.
Costea Adrian
Embedded Engineer specilizing in perception systems. Latest project was a adas camera calibration system.
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.