Here is the counterintuitive finding from 180 days of monitoring data: when tracking pages break, the carrier is usually fine. UPS, USPS, and FedEx online systems all ran the 180 days ending July 2026 with zero major incidents. AfterShip, the tracking-page platform used by thousands of stores, earned a D grade in the same window: 2 major incidents totaling 3,548 minutes, about 59 hours, the worst record among all 84 services StatusBird monitors.
Is your tracking provider down?
If your store uses AfterShip, Narvar, or another branded-tracking layer, check it first: AfterShip's live status and history. When the tracking layer is down, every order's tracking page breaks at once, customers see blank or stale pages, and "where is my order" tickets spike. The carrier data underneath is intact the whole time, which is why checking the carrier first wastes your time.
Is it one carrier's feed rather than your tracking page?
If only some shipments are stale (all USPS, say, while UPS updates fine), the issue is a single carrier's data feed. Carriers' public systems rarely have major outages, but individual tracking feeds can lag; check the carrier statuses directly: UPS, USPS, FedEx.
Is it a scan gap, not a system problem?
A package that shows "label created" for two days usually has not been scanned yet: origin scans get missed at pickup, and the next facility scan backfills the history. This is a physical-world gap, not a data outage. It resolves on its own, but it drives tickets; setting expectations in your shipping-confirmation email ("tracking may take 24 to 48 hours to activate") measurably reduces them.
Did an integration break after a platform or app change?
If tracking numbers stopped flowing to your tracking page after a migration, app update, or checkout change, the sync between your store and the tracking provider is the suspect: re-auth the connection and check webhook delivery.
Why this matters more than it seems
Tracking pages are the most-visited post-purchase surface, and every hour they are broken converts directly into support tickets. Given that the tracking layer, not the carriers, is where the 59 hours of downtime lived, the monitoring conclusion writes itself: watch your tracking provider like you watch your payment provider. The full shipping-stack picture is in UPS vs USPS vs FedEx.
Start monitoring your stack free with StatusBird: 3 services, no credit card required. Pro is $29/month for all 84 services with SMS, email, Slack, Teams, and Discord alerts within 2 minutes of a status change.