When ShipBob goes down, do three things first: confirm the outage is on their side, protect whatever the outage is breaking in your store, and tell affected customers before they find out the hard way. This playbook walks through each step for ShipBob specifically.
How do I confirm ShipBob is actually down?
Check two independent sources before changing anything in your store. First, StatusBird's live ShipBob status page, which is based on independent checks every 2 minutes. Second, ShipBob's own status page at status.shipbob.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 ShipBob outage look like?
- New orders not appearing in the ShipBob dashboard
- ShipBob dashboard unreachable or timing out on login
- Orders stuck in unfulfilled status in your store long past normal processing time
- Tracking numbers not posting back to orders or customer emails
- Inventory levels frozen or mismatched between ShipBob and your storefront
What breaks in your store
When ShipBob's platform is down, new orders stop syncing from your store into ShipBob, so warehouse fulfillment silently stalls even though your storefront keeps taking orders. Tracking numbers and fulfillment confirmations stop flowing back, which delays shipping notification emails to customers. Inventory counts also stop syncing, so your store may oversell items that are actually out of stock at the warehouse. Physical warehouse operations may continue on orders already received, but visibility and new order intake are broken.
For context, ShipBob 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
- Keep taking orders; they will queue and sync to ShipBob once the platform recovers.
- Note the outage start time so you can verify every order placed after it eventually reaches ShipBob.
- Manually lower stock or pause ads on low-inventory SKUs to reduce overselling risk while inventory sync is frozen.
- Email customers with time-sensitive orders to set expectations about a possible one-day fulfillment delay.
- Contact ShipBob support about any urgent orders so they can be prioritized once systems return.
Frequently asked questions
Are my orders lost if they were placed while ShipBob was down?
No. Orders remain in your store platform and the integration syncs them to ShipBob once service is restored. After recovery, compare your store's order list against the ShipBob dashboard for the outage window and manually push any orders that did not sync.
Does a ShipBob outage stop packages that were already shipped?
No. Packages already handed to carriers keep moving normally because carriers operate independently of ShipBob's software. The outage mainly affects new order intake, tracking updates in your dashboard, and orders not yet picked in the warehouse.
After the outage
Once ShipBob 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 ShipBob 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 ShipBob'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 ShipBob reliability page and current status on the ShipBob status page, or browse all 84 service grades.
Know before your customers do
StatusBird monitors ShipBob 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.