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- API key expired or was revoked — A third-party service you depend on (payments, email, maps) changed or expired your access key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.
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
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 : )
Sage Fulcher
Hey I'm Sage! Im a Boston area software engineer who grew up in South Florida. Ive worked at a ton of cool places like a telehealth kidney care startup that took part in a billion dollar merger (Cricket health/Interwell health), a boutique design agency where I got to work on a ton of exciting startups including a photography education app, a collegiate Esports league and more (Philosophie), a data analytics as a service startup in Cambridge (MA) as well as at Phillips and MIT Lincoln Lab where I designed and developed novel network security visualizations and analytics. I've been writing code and furiously devoted to using computers to make people’s lives easier for about 17 years. My degree is in making computers make pretty lights and sounds. Outside of work I love hip hop, the Celtics, professional wrestling, magic the gathering, photography, drumming, and guitars (both making and playing them)
hanson1014
Full-stack developer experienced in fixing and deploying AI-generated apps from Lovable, Bolt.new, Cursor, and Replit. I specialize in debugging Supabase integration issues (auth flows, RLS policies, database connections), fixing broken deployments, resolving routing/blank screen problems, and cleaning up messy React/Vite codebases. I also build production apps with the Claude API and have shipped a Mac desktop dev tool (Nexterm from scratch. Based in Hong Kong, fast turnaround.
Kingsley Omage
Fullstack software engineer passionate about AI Agents, blockchain, LLMs.
Mehdi Ben Haddou
- Founder of Chessigma (1M+ users) & many small projects
- ex Founding Engineer @Uplane (YC F25)
- ex Software Engineer @Amazon and @Booking.com
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.
Simon A.
I'm a backend developer building APIs, emulators, and interactive game systems. Professionally, I've developed Java/Spring reporting solutions, managed relational and NoSQL databases, and implemented CI/CD workflows.
Franck Plazanet
I am a Strategic Engineering Leader with over 8 years of experience building high-availability enterprise systems and scaling high-performing technical teams. My focus is on bridging the gap between complex technology and business growth.
Core Expertise:
🚀 Leadership: Managing and coaching teams of 15+ engineers, fostering a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.
🏗️ Architecture: Enterprise Core Systems, Multi-system Integration (ERP/API/ETL), and Core Database Structure.
☁️ Cloud & Scale: AWS Expert; architected systems handling 10B+ monthly requests and managing 100k+ SKUs.
📈 Business Impact: Aligning tech strategy with P&L goals to drive $70k+ in monthly recurring revenue.
I thrive on "out-of-the-box" thinking to solve complex technical bottlenecks and am always looking for ways to use automation to improve business productivity.
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.