What is the HTTP 503 Service Unavailable Error and How to Solve it

Running into errors on your website can be intimidating. However, most errors give you some clue as to what caused them, which can make troubleshooting these common issues a lot easier. The 503 error is not as polite, unfortunately, and doesn’t give you much information to go on.

What's the HTTP 503 Service Unavailable Error?

A 503 Service Unavailable error means that the page or resource is unavailable. There are many reasons why a server might return a 503 error, but some common reasons are maintenance, a bug in the server's code, or a sudden spike in traffic that causes the server to become overwhelmed.

An important thing to remember is that the 503 error is a server-side error. That means the problem exists with the website you’re trying to access, and not with your computer. That’s both good and bad news. It’s good news because there’s nothing wrong with your computer, and it’s bad news because there’s usually nothing you can do to solve the problem from your end.

How to solve the 503 Status Unavailable error?

Refresh the page

A 503 error indicates a temporary problem, and sometimes that problem is very temporary. A site might be getting overwhelmed with traffic, for example. So, refreshing the page is always worth a shot. Most browsers use the F5 key to refresh, and also provide a Refresh button somewhere on the address bar. It doesn’t fix the problem very often, but it takes just a second to try.

Check If the Site Is Down For Other People

Whenever you fail to reach a site (for whatever reason), you can also check if it’s just you that’s having a problem connecting, or if other people are having the same trouble.

If you get a report saying the site is down for everyone, there’s not much you can do but try again later. If the report shows that the site is up, then the problem might be on your end. It’s very rare this is the case with a 503 error, but it is possible, and you can try some of the things we describe in the next couple of sections.

Fix faulty firewall configurations.

Your firewall is your website's gatekeeper, protecting your site from malicious visitors or distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Sometimes, a faulty firewall configuration will cause your firewall to deem requests from a content delivery network as an attack on your server and reject them, resulting in a 503 Service Unavailable Error. Check your firewall configuration to pinpoint and fix the issue.

Sift through your server-side logs.

There are two types of server-side logs -- applications logs and server logs. Application logs recount your website's entire history, letting you see the web pages requested by visitors and the servers it connected to. Server logs provide information about the hardware running your server, revealing details about its health and status. Sift through both types of server-side logs to uncover any alarming information about your server or website.

In summary

That should be everything you need to know about 503 Service Unavailable errors. While there's usually not much you can do when you see a 503 error, hopefully some of these steps will help the next time you encounter one.