Skip to main content
Submit a request

My website is down or showing a 500 error

Maxim Tsitsejev
Updated

Applies to: All plans (Self-Managed and Managed).

A "down" site is almost always one of four things: an application error (a 500), an account suspension (usually billing), a DNS or nameserver problem, or a resource limit (a 508). This article helps you tell them apart quickly and gather the right details before you contact us.

On Managed plans we monitor 24/7 and may already be working on it. On Self-Managed, checks are self-serve — but you can still send us what you find.

Symptoms

  • A blank white page, or "500 Internal Server Error".
  • "Error 508 Resource Limit Is Reached" — your account hit its CPU, memory or process limit.
  • "This account has been suspended" — a billing or policy hold.
  • The site won't load at all, times out, or shows a different host's "coming soon" page (a DNS/nameserver issue).
  • A security warning or "Not secure" (that's usually SSL/HTTPS, not an outage — see the SSL article below).

Common causes (most likely first)

  1. Application error (500). A bad plugin/theme/update, a broken .htaccess, a wrong PHP version, or a fatal code error. This is the most common cause and is something on the site itself, not the server being down.
  2. Resource limit (508). Your account briefly exceeded its CloudLinux LVE allowance (CPU/RAM/entry processes). Each account is isolated, so a spike on your site shows a 508 without affecting neighbours. It often clears on its own within a minute.
  3. Account suspended. Most suspensions are an unpaid invoice. Check your client area first.
  4. DNS / nameservers. The domain isn't pointed at us, a record was changed, or a recent change hasn't propagated. Your nameservers should be ns1.maxinodes.com and ns2.maxinodes.com, and your hosting A record should point at 185.185.49.198.

Quick fixes

Work through these in order.

  1. Confirm it's not just you. Try the site in a private/incognito window and on mobile data. A cached page or local network can fake an outage.
  2. Check your client area for a suspension. Log in at my.maxinodes.com, open Services -> My Services, and confirm the service is Active. If it's Suspended, check Billing -> My Invoices for an unpaid invoice and pay it. You can pay by PayPal, card, bank transfer (SEPA) or cryptocurrency.
  3. For a 500: read the real error. A white page hides the detail. In cPanel (open your service in the client area, then Log in to cPanel), open the Errors or Metrics section to see the most recent error log lines, which usually name the file or plugin at fault.
  4. For a 500: undo the last change. If it broke right after an update, plugin install, or edit, revert that change. Rename .htaccess to .htaccess.bak in File Manager to rule out a redirect rule. For WordPress, deactivate plugins (rename the wp-content/plugins folder) to isolate the culprit.
  5. Check your PHP version. In cPanel, Select PHP Version — a recent app or framework may require a newer PHP than is set.
  6. For a 508: wait a minute and reload. Resource limits are usually momentary. If it keeps happening, your site is using more than the plan allows — optimise it (caching, fewer heavy plugins) or consider upgrading. LiteSpeed Cache is enabled on our nodes and helps a lot.
  7. For a "can't load / wrong site": check DNS. Confirm your domain uses the two nameservers above at your registrar, and check your records in the client area (DNS is managed in the client area, not the cPanel zone editor). Customer websites are served over both IPv4 and IPv6 (dual-stack): when your domain uses our nameservers, the zone we create contains both the A record to 185.185.49.198 and the AAAA record to 2a00:7c80:0:286:c::10, so check both are present and correct. If you keep DNS at another provider, add both records there yourself.

If that did not work

Restore from a backup, then send us the details. We use JetBackup writing to Backblaze B2:

  • Self-Managed: self-restore in cPanel -> JetBackup (retention depends on your plan — Lite weekly, Plus 7 days, Pro 14 days).
  • Managed: daily off-site backups kept 30 days — ask us to restore a point in time.

When you contact us, include the four things that let us start immediately:

  • Your domain.
  • The exact error text (e.g. "500 Internal Server Error", "Error 508", "account suspended"), copied verbatim.
  • When it started and what changed just before (an update, a deploy, a DNS edit).
  • The page or URL that fails, and whether it's the whole site or one page.

Related articles

Comments

0 comments

Please sign in to leave a comment.