A Freshdesk outage is not something you can fix, but how you respond in the first 15 minutes decides how much it costs you. This guide covers confirming the outage, limiting the damage, and keeping customers informed.
How do I confirm Freshdesk is actually down?
Check two independent sources before changing anything in your store. First, StatusBird's live Freshdesk status page, which is based on independent checks every 2 minutes. Second, Freshdesk's own status page at status.freshdesk.com. If the official page still shows green, do not assume you are wrong: vendors often acknowledge incidents well after they start. If both look clean, the problem is more likely your store's configuration or a specific integration.
What does a Freshdesk outage look like?
- Agents cannot log into Freshdesk or the dashboard fails to load
- The support portal and knowledge base return errors for customers
- The chat or messaging widget on your store fails to load
- New tickets stop appearing even though customers say they emailed
- Freshdesk API integrations and automations stop executing
What breaks in your store
When Freshdesk is down, support agents lose access to the ticket queue, so customer inquiries pile up unanswered and SLA timers keep running against open tickets. Incoming emails to support addresses are typically still received and converted to tickets once service recovers, but live channels like chat widgets and portal logins fail outright, leaving customers with no immediate way to reach you. Any order lookups, automations, and integrations tied to Freshdesk also stop working.
For context, Freshdesk has had no major incidents in the last 90 days of StatusBird's independent monitoring (100.0% availability), so a real outage is unusual. That makes it easy to mistake one for a problem on your end, which is why confirming first matters.
What to do during the outage
- Check status.freshdesk.com to confirm the incident and affected data center.
- Monitor your support mailbox directly through your email provider so urgent messages get answered even without the helpdesk.
- Post a notice on your contact page and social channels giving a direct email or phone fallback.
- Keep a shared doc of replies sent from the raw mailbox so agents can reconcile tickets after recovery and avoid double responses.
- After recovery, triage the backlog by oldest and highest urgency first and check that delayed emails converted to tickets.
Frequently asked questions
Are customer emails lost while Freshdesk is down?
Generally no. Email travels through mail servers that retry delivery, and Freshdesk converts queued messages to tickets once it recovers, so expect a delayed burst rather than losses. Messages sent through the chat widget or portal during the outage are the ones most likely to have failed.
How do I keep answering customers during a Freshdesk outage?
Go around the helpdesk: log into the underlying support mailbox directly and reply from there, and route urgent contacts to phone or social DMs. Track what you answered manually so agents can close or merge the duplicate tickets that appear when Freshdesk catches up.
After the outage
Once Freshdesk recovers, verify the affected workflows end to end rather than trusting the status page. Note the start and end times while they are fresh: if you are on a paid Freshdesk plan with an SLA, documented downtime is what a service credit claim is built on. See how to claim SLA credits for the process.
How this data is measured
StatusBird checks Freshdesk's status every 2 minutes, around the clock, independently of the vendor. The availability figure counts major and critical outages only; minor degradation is excluded so numbers are not skewed by vendors that report small blips near-continuously. Grades run from A+ to F. See the live numbers on the Freshdesk reliability page and current status on the Freshdesk status page, or browse all 84 service grades.
Know before your customers do
StatusBird monitors Freshdesk and 83 other services online stores depend on, plus your own storefront, every 2 minutes. When something goes down you get an SMS, email, or Slack alert with plain-English context, usually before the official status page catches up. Start monitoring free, no card required for the free plan.