When your website breaks — a checkout that won't load, a suspended page, emails that suddenly land in spam — the first instinct is to Google the symptom and burn three hours in forum threads. Stop there. This guide is the calm version: the quick checks that work on any platform, the three things a rescue always fixes, and the exact moment to hand it to someone who does this for a living.
Check these first, yourself
Clear the store or site cache — A ready-made copy of your pages kept warm so the server doesn't rebuild everything on every visit., refresh in a private window, then try your phone on mobile data (not the office WiFi). The symptom changing just by switching network is a clue it's your location, not your site.
Check a third-party status page — Shopify Status, your host's status page, your payment provider's status. Sometimes nothing you control is broken.
Look for a hold-up notice from your host, registrar — The company where your domain name is registered — whoever controls that account controls the domain., or payment processor. 'Suspended', 'verify your account', or an unpaid invoice looks exactly like an outage.
Write the symptom down in plain words before you call anyone: what page, what button, what error message, when it started. That description is worth more than an hour of diagnosis.
Should you fix it yourself or call a rescue?
Still have questions?
Is Shopify easier to keep running than WordPress?
Shopify runs its own hosting — The service that runs your site on a server; the plan you pick decides your speed ceiling and your crash risk., so the server side is invisible to you — but you still hit checkout, app, billing, and access problems, and when you do, you're a merchant, not a developer. On WordPress you own the whole stack: more control, more ways to break. The rescue model covers both.
Which of the 20 rescues is mine?
You don't have to know. You send the symptom in your own words, and the diagnosis names the ticket. Hacked WordPress, a checkout that crashes on a big day, slow page loads, emails in spam, a stolen domain, a developer who vanished — each maps to one flat-rate rescue.
Will I need to learn code to manage the fix?
No. You approve a plain-English plan, get a plain-English report at the end, and keep every access key. If you want, you never have to touch anything technical at all.