Why is my site down?

Regardless of whether you have a small personal homepage or a large corporate extranet, having your website be “down” is always a cause for concern. This document lists the four most common reasons why a site may be currently unavailable.

1. Payment Not Received

In the vast majority of cases, access to a customer’s web space is suspended for non-payment. In most cases, if a bill is outstanding for 30 days or more, an account will be suspended, regardless of the amount due.

If your account is suspended for non-payment, you will not be able to view your web space or receive your e-mails until payment is received. If your domain is registered and resolved, once payment is received, your service should be restored immediately.

Aplus.Net makes every effort to ensure that invoices and billing statements are sent in a timely fashion. Customers can specify how they want to receive their billing notices: we offer delivery via e-mail and by regular mail. It is the customer’s responsibility, however, to make sure that Aplus.Net has the correct and most current contact information for the Customer Contact Person listed on the account. As a policy, Aplus.Net does not seek alternative means to contact a customer if the primary means is faulty, broken, or non-responsive.

Aplus.Net will contact you if – for whatever reason – the credit card information associated with your account becomes invalid (i.e. CC declined, expiration date passed, CC number changed).

2. Expired Domain Registration

An expired domain name can also cause your site to become unavailable. Once a domain name has expired, the world-wide network of domain name servers will no longer contain the information necessary to enable browsers to access your web space or to have e-mails routed to you correctly. In most cases, there is a 7 day “grace period” that extends from the date of expiration during which your web space (and e-mail) will be accessible. After this point, if the renewal for your domain is not processed, your domain registration will expire, and you will experience a loss of service.

In order to check the status of your domain registration, you can perform a WHOIS search. WHOIS is an Internet directory service which can be used to find information about users registered on a server, or other information about the network.

In order to perform a WHOIS search for domains ending in .aero, .arpa, .biz, .com, .coop, .edu, .info, .int, .museum, .net, and .org, point your browser to http://www.internic.com/whois.html. Enter your domain name into the text field found in the body of the page, and click the “Submit” button. On the following page, you will find the registration information for your domain.

The most important field in the information returned by the WHOIS search is the “Status” entry. If this reads anything other than “Active”, your domain is most likely currently not accessible. Please contact Customer Support at (888) 301-2516 in order to find out more information about the status of your domain. If your domain status reads “Active”, your domain is most likely registered and the source of your downtime lies somewhere else.

3. AUP Violation

Aplus.Net will suspend a customer’s account if our administrators identify that the account is in violation of the Aplus.Net Acceptable Use Policy. If your account is being held because of an identified (or suspected) violation, you will need to contact Aplus.Net directly in order to determine if your account can be restored. Decisions about the restoration of service are made on an individual basis and are only made after extensive consultation with the customer themselves.

4. Aplus.Net Network Downtime

Customers of Aplus.Net, like customers of any other provider of services, may experience an occasional and unexpected temporary loss of service at any time.

Aplus.Net maintains one of the industry’s most stable web hosting networks and consistently ranks among industry leaders in terms of the network “up-time” it provides to its customers. If you have a question about the current status of our network, please contact Customer Support.

Contacting Customer Support

Aplus.Net Customer Support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by calling (888) 301-2516 or (858) 410-6900 for International callers. You can also e-mail your inquiries to .