ShipStation is the connective tissue between your Shopify orders and your shipping carriers. When it goes down, new orders stop syncing, labels stop printing, and your fulfillment team is left staring at a loading screen while orders pile up.
Unlike a payment processor outage, a ShipStation outage is often invisible to your customers — until packages stop arriving. Here's how to handle it.
Step 1: Confirm it's ShipStation, not an integration issue
Check status.shipstation.com. ShipStation maintains a public status page listing issues with their API, carrier connections, and web app separately.
Signs of a ShipStation outage versus a local issue:
- Orders not importing from Shopify despite normal order volume
- The ShipStation web app loading slowly or showing errors
- Label generation failing for multiple orders, not just one
- Carrier rates not loading at checkout (if you use ShipStation's rate quotes)
If only one carrier's labels are failing (e.g., UPS but not USPS), the issue may be with that carrier's API rather than ShipStation itself. Check the carrier's status separately.
Step 2: Assess which orders are at risk
Not all ShipStation outages affect all functionality. Identify quickly:
- Orders that were in the queue waiting to be labeled — these are stuck
- Orders that had labels already printed — these are safe and can still ship
- Same-day shipment commitments — these are urgent
Sort your open orders by required ship date. Anything with a same-day or next-day SLA is your immediate focus.
Step 3: Process urgent orders manually if the outage lasts
If ShipStation is down for more than 30 minutes and you have same-day shipments, go directly to your carrier's website:
- USPS: click.usps.com
- UPS: ups.com/ship
- FedEx: ship.fedex.com
You can create labels directly without ShipStation. It's manual and slower, but it gets packages out the door. Enter the order details from Shopify's order view — all the customer address and item info is there.
Step 4: Notify your warehouse or fulfillment team
If you have a 3PL or warehouse team, let them know immediately. They may have their own workarounds or carrier accounts that bypass ShipStation entirely. The worst outcome is a warehouse team that keeps working under the assumption ShipStation will come back any minute while orders pile up unshipped.
Step 5: Update customers with pending shipments if needed
If the outage extends more than a few hours and you have customers expecting same-day shipping notifications, send a proactive update. Keep it brief:
"We're experiencing a technical issue with our shipping platform. Your order is safe and will ship as soon as the issue resolves — typically within a few hours. We'll send your tracking information as soon as it's available."
Proactive communication cuts support tickets in half and almost always generates goodwill rather than complaints.
Step 6: After recovery — audit unsynced orders
When ShipStation comes back, do not assume all orders synced cleanly. Go to your import log and check for any orders from the outage window that need to be manually re-imported. Shopify orders that came in during a ShipStation API outage may not have synced automatically.
How to get alerted the moment ShipStation goes down
ShipStation doesn't text you when their platform has an issue. By the time you notice orders aren't syncing, the outage may be an hour old.
StatusBird monitors ShipStation every 2 minutes and sends you an SMS the moment a status change is detected. You'll know before your warehouse does. Start monitoring free.
ShipStation outage checklist
- Confirm on status.shipstation.com
- Identify which orders had labels already printed (safe) vs. waiting (at risk)
- Prioritize same-day and next-day shipments
- Create urgent labels manually via carrier websites if needed
- Notify your warehouse or 3PL immediately
- Send proactive customer updates if shipments will be delayed
- After recovery, audit import log for unsynced orders