A ShipMonk 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 ShipMonk is actually down?
Check two independent sources before changing anything in your store. First, StatusBird's live ShipMonk status page, which is based on independent checks every 2 minutes. Second, ShipMonk's own status page at status.shipmonk.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 ShipMonk outage look like?
- ShipMonk dashboard unreachable or erroring on login
- New orders missing from the ShipMonk order queue
- Store orders stuck in unfulfilled status beyond the normal SLA
- No tracking numbers posting back to your store or customers
- Stock levels not updating after sales
What breaks in your store
During a ShipMonk platform outage, new orders stop flowing from your store to the fulfillment center, so anything sold during the outage sits unprocessed. Tracking numbers and fulfillment confirmations stop posting back to your store, delaying customer shipping emails. Inventory sync freezes, so your storefront can oversell items ShipMonk has already run out of. Orders already picked and handed to carriers are unaffected.
For context, StatusBird's independent monitoring recorded 1 major ShipMonk incident in the last 90 days, with an average duration of 12 minutes. Details are on the ShipMonk reliability page.
What to do during the outage
- Continue accepting orders; the integration should sync the backlog to ShipMonk after recovery.
- Log the outage window and audit that every order from it appears in ShipMonk afterward.
- Manually reduce listed stock on nearly sold out SKUs to avoid overselling while sync is down.
- Flag urgent or expedited orders to ShipMonk support so they are prioritized when processing resumes.
- Proactively email customers awaiting shipment confirmations if the outage lasts more than a few hours.
Frequently asked questions
Will ShipMonk still ship my orders today if their software is down?
Orders that already reached the warehouse floor before the outage are usually picked and shipped, since fulfillment center staff can keep working from batches already released. Orders placed during the outage will not reach the warehouse until sync is restored, so same-day shipment for those is unlikely.
Do I need to re-enter orders that were placed during the outage?
Usually not. The store integration queues orders and syncs them once ShipMonk is back online. Rather than re-entering anything immediately, wait for recovery, then compare your store's order list to ShipMonk's and manually push only the specific orders that failed to sync.
After the outage
Once ShipMonk 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 ShipMonk 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 ShipMonk'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 ShipMonk reliability page and current status on the ShipMonk status page, or browse all 84 service grades.
Know before your customers do
StatusBird monitors ShipMonk 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.