Instructional Guide on How to Fix the 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable Error Message
503 Service Temporarily Unavailable is an error message that loads whenever someone tries visiting your website. Imagine someone is searching for something you sell on your website and they find your website. Once they click on it, they land on your website, and instead of showing your product, it shows this “503 Service Temporarily Unavailable” error message. What do you think they will do? They will look somewhere else, and you’ll face the loss of a conversion, loss in profits, and loss of traffic.
Don’t worry. If your website displays this error message, this guide will help you remove it. Here, we’ll take you through a detailed guide on how to fix 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable and also show you how to prevent 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable in the future.
What Is the 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable Error Message?
Put simply, HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable means your website server isn’t ready to handle the request. Usually, the website shows this error message when a server where your site is hosted gets overload or is under maintenance. It’s a generic error message, so it’s hard to know what it’s trying to convey.
Some common reasons this error gets displayed to your website visitors are:
- Update or installation of plugins or themes
- A mistake in the custom code of your website
- A sudden spike in site visitors
Update or Installation of Plugin or Theme
Whenever you update or install any themes or plugins, you ask your website server to perform that task. Suppose your website server space is loaded with other things. In that case, it can become overwhelming, and in return, it’ll stop responding to your requests and display a 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable error message.
Mistake in Custom Code of Your Website
Customized codes can prove pretty helpful, as they let you design a website in your unique way. But, whenever you add customized code to your site, you’re also asking the server to display data in a certain manner. So, wrong code can give wrong instructions, and it can result in displaying an error message like 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable.
Sudden Spike in Site Visitors
Getting more traffic onto your website is good. Everyone likes to have it. But, the sudden increase in site traffic without any specific reason regularly can indicate the problem. If it goes beyond what your server can handle, it can lead to an error like 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable.
If your site becomes the victim of a DDoS attack, your site will start getting a huge amount of traffic and the server won’t respond to each request resulting in this type of error message.
Other Ways a Server Displays the 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable Error Message
Below are some other common ways you may encounter this error instead of the “503 Service Temporarily Unavailable” wording:
- 503 Service Unavailable
- Http/1.1 Service Unavailable
- HTTP 503
- 503 Error
- HTTP Error 503
- HTTP Server Error 503
- Error 503 Backend fetch failed
- Error 503 Service Unavailable
- Error 503 Maximum threads for service reached
- Service Unavailable – DNS Failure
- 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable WordPress
- Error 503 Service Unavailable WordPress
If you know the exact reason behind this error message, you can simply go straight into it and fix it. For example, if this error is caused due to the installation of a new plugin, then simply remove it.
How to Fix 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable
The 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable error is a server-side error message that occurs due to your site server’s problem.
The bad part is that if you aren’t sure what caused this error, you won’t know why an error occurred. However, some of the steps that help to fix the 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable error message are:
1. Roll Back the Recent Update
If you made any updates, such as updating an installed theme to the latest version, and you’re experiencing this error message, you know what the culprit is. Simply log in to admin, and roll back to the previous version.
Once you downgrade to the previous version, verify whether it fixed the error message by opening your site.
2. Deactivate Theme or Plugin
In case you activated any new theme or plugin and this 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable error message shows up, then you’ll require to deactivate it. For instance, if you’ve got a WordPress hosted website, then simply go to:
Plugins >> Active Plugins >> Select that plugin you activated recently and click Deactivate.
Appearance >> Themes >> Activate the theme of your choice and delete the one that’s presently running.
3. Measure Site Traffic
As mentioned earlier, the 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable can occur if there’s a large amount of sudden traffic on your website. Here, the server fails to handle all those requests sent through them. For measuring the traffic, simply look through Google Analytics.
- Offering Discounts: A sudden spike of traffic could be coming if you’re offering a discount offer for popular products or your website got mentioned in any media, etc.
If that’s the case, you should be happy, and take it as an indication to switch to a new hosting provider that offers more resources.
- DDoS or Brute Force Attack: There are different types of cybersecurity attacks on websites. DDoS is one of the attacks where hackers send enormous traffic to your site that overwhelms your server, leading to complete shutdown and displaying 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable.
It could also be possible that hackers may try a brute-force attack and gain access to your site. They tried sending so many requests through combinations of usernames and passwords that caused a strange spark in traffic that led to the 503 services temporarily unavailable error message.
However, to mitigate such attacks, we recommend having proper website security measures such as scanning your site regularly for malware, vulnerability scanning, and using security tools such as DigiCert Secure Site Pro SSL.
4. One by One Deactivate Plugin or Theme
It rarely happens, but your current plugin or theme might be creating an issue that leads to this 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable error message. Usually, a Plugin or Theme can become a reason for such error if anyone has done an update or installed it freshly.
To verify if this is the cause, we recommend going to the activity log and checking when your theme or plugin has been last installed or updated. Sometimes, two or more people have admin rights, and if someone has done an update, it may be creating an issue.
If the plugin or theme hasn’t been updated, we suggest deactivating the plugin one by one and to try to deactivate your current theme. It should mostly solve the 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable error issue.
5. Contact Your Hosting Provider
When you register and subscribe to any hosting plan, your hosting provider allocates a certain amount of space that the website can use. If your website requires more than allocated space, then you must upgrade your hosting plan.
Furthermore, if you’re using a shared hosting plan, other websites are also allocated on the same web server on which your website is hosted. So, your resource could get hog from your server, which leaves little space for you to work with, and your site won’t get a sufficient share of resources it needs to work smoothly, resulting in the server error message.
Another possible reason could be your server is under maintenance for updates. Usually, the hosting provider sends an email one to two days in advance, before any update occurs. So, it’s recommended you check whether you’ve received an email from your hosting provider.
Lastly, you can contact your hosting provider and ask what’s wrong and why your site shows this error message. Also, ask whether you’re required to upgrade your plan or if there’s some other issue.
Negative Impact of the 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable Error Message on Your Website
If your website continuously shows the 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable error message for a long duration, it can negatively impact your website. For instance,
- Site visitors will stop coming to your website, and it won’t go unnoticed by Google search engine. In return, Google will conclude that your website isn’t fulfilling visitors’ needs and expectations, lowering your site SERP rankings.
- Once your site ranking starts dropping, your revenue will also be affected. So, if you’re someone whose income relies on a website, then it’s not good.
- Damage to your reputation.
- All your SEO efforts that bought your site to a high ranking will be wasted.
How to Prevent Your Site from Displaying 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable Again
There are certain steps you can take that can help your site avoid this error message. Before you do them, we recommend taking a complete backup of your site using a tool like Sectigo Codeguard. If anything goes wrong, you will have an old backup to help you bring back the site to its working condition.
Some of the steps you should take to prevent your site from facing 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable error message are:
Make Use of Staging Feature
Usually, updates, addition to themes, and custom codes are among the major reasons your site displays errors. As the business grows, site features, looks, and many other things change from time to time.
However, before making anything live, you should make those changes on a dummy site and check whether all changes are working properly. Most importantly, your website isn’t facing any issues. A staging site is a good option for this.
Many secure hosting providers offer a staging site that lets you replicate your site with a few simple clicks. So, you can fix any error like the 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable or improper functions easily without affecting your live site.
Upgrade to a Better & Secure Hosting Provider
Overloading of the server is the number one reason why your website faces a 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable error message. Overloading of servers can be due to many reasons. For instance, your website is getting traffic, and your server isn’t able to handle it. In that case, you should upgrade your hosting plan.
Furthermore, if your hosting server often stays down, that could also be why your site starts facing error messages. So, to avoid such a scenario, it’s good to change your hosting provider to a better one that is more reliable and secure.
Wrapping Up
Those who run an online business or have a website should be aware that issues can arise sooner or later. The best approach is to stay alert and take proactive measures. So, you can mitigate the errors like 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable without losing your reputation.
Here, we’ve discussed what this error message means, some common reasons why you’re facing such an error, the steps to fix it, and how to prevent it in the future. We hope this post helps you if you are faced with any of these issues.