Knowledge Base

Summary

Shipstore or the Merchant App shows "503 Service Unavailable" or "HTTP Error 503". A service on the server that runs the Shipstore site has stopped, and it has to be started on that server. Nothing on your station needs to change, so restarting the Merchant App or rebooting will not help.

Problem

You cannot reach the Shipstore site or the Merchant App, and you see this on the screen:

503 Service Unavailable

You may also see it written as "HTTP Error 503". Restarting the Merchant App, checking advanced settings and rebooting the station make no difference. If your company has more than one server, only the stations that use the affected server are down, so some people may still be working normally.

Cause

A service on the server that runs the Shipstore site has stopped. A 503 means the server answered you but had nothing running to give your request to, so it sends the error straight back without ever reaching Shipstore. Nothing on your station is at fault. This often happens after someone has been working on that server remotely.

How to check: if more than one person gets the same 503, and a reboot changes nothing, the problem is on the server.

This is not the same as "502 Bad Gateway". A 502 means something did answer but sent back something unusable, so the checks and the fix are different. If you see 502 rather than 503, use the Merchant App is down or all stations time out at sign-in article instead.

Fix

1. Note the exact wording on the screen. "503 Service Unavailable" or "HTTP Error 503" points at the server. Any other message belongs in a different article.
2. Check who else is affected. Ask one or two other people to load Shipstore, and note whether they use the same server you do.
3. If your company hosts Shipstore on its own server, tell your IT team that the Shipstore site is returning 503 and that the application pool for the site needs to be started in IIS (Internet Information Services) on the host server. That is the whole fix and it takes a moment.
4. If Shipstore hosts your site, email support@shipstore.com. Include the exact error wording, roughly what time it started, how many people are affected, and whether anyone was working on the server recently.
5. Do not keep restarting the Merchant App or rebooting. Nothing on your station will change the result.
6. Once you are told it is back, load Shipstore and process one shipment before sending everyone back to work.

What you should see

Shipstore loads with no 503 on the screen, a test shipment processes normally from a station that was down, and everyone who was affected can get in.

Related articles

• Merchant App is down or all stations time out at sign-in. Use when there is no 503 and the app hangs, times out, or shows "502 Bad Gateway".
• Merchant App will not register: ports or IP blocked. Use when only your company is affected right after your IT changed firewall, network or security settings.