The 7 Stages of Grief When Your Website Goes Down

By Dakota Hagler, HaglerDesigns (Longview, TX)

Your website going down is a tiny, very modern tragedy. Here are the seven stages of grief every business owner moves through, usually within about an hour.

1. Denial

“It is probably just my wifi.” You refresh eleven times. You try your phone. You ask a friend to check. The friend confirms your worst fear.

2. Anger

“It was working FIVE MINUTES AGO.” You did not change anything. The website changed itself, apparently, out of spite.

3. Bargaining

“If it comes back up, I promise I will finally set up those backups everyone keeps mentioning.” You will not, until next time.

4. Depression

You imagine every customer hitting the error page right now and silently driving to a competitor. The number grows in your mind.

5. Frantic Googling

You paste the error into a search bar and read forum posts from 2014 by people with vaguely similar problems and no answers.

6. The help-desk hold music

You are caller number fourteen. The music is somehow both soothing and infuriating.

7. Acceptance (and a plan)

It comes back. You promise yourself this will never happen again, unmanaged. This time you actually mean it.

Downtime is not a question of if, but when. The businesses that shrug it off are the ones with backups, monitoring, and someone to call.

Which stage hits hardest for you? Confess in the comments.