When USPS 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 USPS specifically.
How do I confirm USPS is actually down?
Check two independent sources before changing anything in your store. First, StatusBird's live USPS status page, which is based on independent checks every 2 minutes. Second, USPS's own status page at developers.usps.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 USPS outage look like?
- USPS rates not appearing or erroring at checkout
- Address validation failing during checkout or in your shipping software
- USPS label purchases failing or hanging in ShipStation, Shippo, or similar tools
- Tracking pages stuck with no new scans across many shipments at once
- usps.com or USPS developer APIs slow or unreachable
What breaks in your store
When USPS systems go down, address validation and rate lookups fail, which can block or degrade checkout for stores that depend on live USPS rates. Label purchasing through connected shipping software errors out, stalling fulfillment for the large share of orders many small stores send via USPS. Tracking stops updating, so customers see packages frozen at their last scan and support volume climbs. Mail and packages already in the postal network continue moving; the outage is in the digital layer.
For context, USPS 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
- Offer a flat-rate shipping option at checkout so orders keep flowing without live USPS rates.
- Route urgent shipments to UPS or FedEx while USPS label creation is down.
- Disable strict address validation temporarily rather than blocking checkouts on a failing API.
- Queue USPS orders and batch-print labels once the API responds again.
- Post a banner or send an email telling customers tracking updates are delayed, not lost packages.
Frequently asked questions
Did my customers' packages get lost because tracking stopped?
Almost certainly not. USPS tracking outages affect scan data reaching the website and APIs, not the physical mail stream. Missing scans typically appear retroactively after systems recover, so ask customers to wait a day before opening claims.
How do I keep shipping orders when USPS label APIs are down?
Use a second carrier configured in your shipping software for time-sensitive orders, and let the rest queue. If only the API is down, you can sometimes still buy individual labels through Click-N-Ship on usps.com. Batch-process the backlog when the API returns.
After the outage
Once USPS 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 USPS 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 USPS'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 USPS reliability page and current status on the USPS status page, or browse all 84 service grades.
Know before your customers do
StatusBird monitors USPS 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.