A Vertex 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 Vertex is actually down?
Check two independent sources before changing anything in your store. First, StatusBird's live Vertex status page, which is based on independent checks every 2 minutes. Second, Vertex's own status page at status.vertexinc.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 Vertex outage look like?
- Checkout hangs or errors at the step where tax is calculated
- Orders completing with zero or obviously wrong tax amounts
- Tax calculation timeout errors in your platform or ERP logs
- Vertex cloud dashboard or APIs unreachable
- Invoices failing to post in your ERP because tax calls do not return
What breaks in your store
When the Vertex tax calculation service is unavailable, your checkout cannot get a live tax amount for the order. Depending on how your integration handles failure, checkout either blocks entirely, hangs at the payment step, or falls back to an estimated or zero tax amount that may be wrong. Wrong tax collected creates compliance cleanup work later, and blocked checkouts stop revenue outright. Back-office invoicing and ERP transactions that call Vertex can also fail or queue.
For context, StatusBird's independent monitoring recorded 1 major Vertex incident in the last 90 days, with an average duration of 1 hour. Details are on the Vertex reliability page.
What to do during the outage
- Enable your integration's fallback tax mode, such as cached or estimated rates, if it offers one.
- Decide explicitly whether to block checkout or accept estimated tax and reconcile later, and document that choice.
- Flag orders placed during the outage for tax review and correction afterward.
- Queue back-office invoicing jobs rather than letting them fail permanently.
- Consult your tax advisor on correcting any under-collected or over-collected amounts.
Frequently asked questions
Can I legally keep selling if Vertex is down and tax is estimated?
Merchants remain responsible for remitting the correct tax regardless of how it was calculated at checkout. Many businesses keep selling with cached or estimated rates and true-up afterward, absorbing small differences. Flag affected orders and review them with your tax team once service is restored.
Why did my checkout stop working when only my tax provider went down?
Most integrations call Vertex synchronously during checkout to compute the order total, so a timeout there can stall the whole flow. Ask your developers or platform vendor to configure a timeout with a fallback rate so a tax service outage degrades gracefully instead of blocking sales.
After the outage
Once Vertex 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 Vertex 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 Vertex'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 Vertex reliability page and current status on the Vertex status page, or browse all 84 service grades.
Know before your customers do
StatusBird monitors Vertex 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.