A Postscript 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 Postscript is actually down?
Check two independent sources before changing anything in your store. First, StatusBird's live Postscript status page, which is based on independent checks every 2 minutes. Second, Postscript's own status page at status.postscript.io. 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 Postscript outage look like?
- The Postscript dashboard is unreachable or errors on load
- A scheduled SMS campaign stays queued and never reports sends
- Abandoned checkout and shipping update texts stop firing
- SMS opt-in popups disappear from the storefront
- Inbound customer text replies go unanswered or arrive very late
What breaks in your store
When Postscript goes down, SMS campaigns and automated flows stop sending, so abandoned checkout texts, back-in-stock alerts, and shipping notifications silently stop reaching customers. Opt-in popups served by the Postscript script can stop appearing on the storefront, pausing list growth. Inbound replies and two-way conversations go unanswered, and Shopify event syncing can lag, meaning triggers fire late or from stale data after recovery. The storefront and checkout keep working normally.
For context, Postscript 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.postscript.io to confirm the outage before rescheduling or duplicating sends.
- Push time-sensitive announcements through email instead while SMS is down.
- Do not re-trigger a stuck campaign repeatedly; wait for recovery to avoid duplicate texts and carrier spam flags.
- Watch inbound messages after recovery and answer backlogged customer replies promptly.
- Verify abandoned checkout flows resumed and consider a follow-up campaign to carts missed during the window.
Frequently asked questions
My SMS campaign shows as sending but no one is getting texts. What should I do?
Check status.postscript.io first. If there is an active incident, the campaign is likely queued and will drain once sending recovers, so do not duplicate it or you risk double-texting your list. If the status page is clean, check for carrier filtering issues or a compliance hold on your account instead.
Are abandoned checkout texts lost during a Postscript outage or sent later?
It depends on the incident, but triggers missed entirely during an outage often do not fire retroactively, while queued messages may send late. After recovery, check your flow analytics for a gap, and consider a manual winback send to customers who abandoned checkout during the affected window.
After the outage
Once Postscript 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 Postscript 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 Postscript'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 Postscript reliability page and current status on the Postscript status page, or browse all 84 service grades.
Know before your customers do
StatusBird monitors Postscript 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.