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Email templates for telling a client their site was down

Four emails for one outage: detected, still down, resolved, and the morning after. Then two for the awkward cases: the site loads for you but not for their customers, and the outage was your own change. Copy one, fill the brackets, send it.

1. Detected

Send this when you know the site is down and you do not yet know why. Do not guess a cause to sound busy.

Subject: [Site] is not answering

Hi [Name],

[Site] stopped answering at [time]. I am looking at it now.

I will write again when I know more, or within [interval], whichever comes first.

[Your name]

2. Update

Send this on the interval you named. If nothing changed, say that. Silence reads as if you left.

Subject: Still looking at [Site]

Hi [Name],

[Site] is still down. Here is what I know: [one sentence].

Visitors see [what they see]. I expect the next update by [time].

[Your name]

3. Resolved

One sentence they can repeat, then the links. The duration is yours to measure. Do not invent a minute count the checks do not have.

Subject: [Site] is answering again

Hi [Name],

[Site] is answering again as of [time]. The gap was about [duration].

What happened: [one sentence they can repeat].

Status page: [link, or say you do not have one]
Report: [digest link]

[Your name]

4. Follow-up

The next morning, if the site matters enough that they will still be thinking about it. Skip it when the miss was invisible to them.

Subject: [Site] the morning after

Hi [Name],

I opened [Site] again this morning. The [page or form] still works.

The note for your records is on the report: [digest link]

Nothing else for you to do.

[Your name]

5. It loads for me, but their customers say it does not

The templates that rank for this search all start from "our monitoring detected". The harder email starts with the client forwarding a customer's screenshot while the site looks fine on your desk. In an October 2026 r/Wordpress thread, a site owner's customers sent screenshots of a red browser warning while a desktop load came back clean. DecodeTheSERPs asked whether anyone had loaded the site as a phone arriving from a Google result, because that was the case the problem showed up for.

So do not reply "it works for me". Ask for what the visitor saw and how they got there, and give a time you will write back. A homepage check from outside sees one request. It does not see every phone, browser, and link.

Subject: [Site] loads for me. Can you send me what they see?

Hi [Name],

Thanks for passing this on. When I open [Site] from here, it loads. That does not mean your customer is wrong.

Could you send me a screenshot of what they saw, the phone or computer and browser they used, roughly when it happened, and whether they typed the address or came from a search result or a link?

Some problems only show for some visitors: on a phone, from a Google result, or in one browser. I will check those today and write back by [time], even if I have not found it yet.

[Your name]

6. The outage was your change

In a September 2026 r/Wordpress thread, a developer added a few page builder modules and the whole site started returning an error. They only had the WordPress admin login, so they waited on the owner for host access. HongPong's advice was to tell the client plainly when you are working without a safety net.

Send this one before they find out from someone else. Name the change in one sentence and say what you will do differently next time. If you were waiting on access, ask for it in the same mail while they remember why it matters.

Subject: [Site] was down because of a change I made

Hi [Name],

[Site] was down from about [time] to [time] today. The cause was a change I made: [one plain sentence]. I undid it at [time], and the [page or form] works again.

Nothing you did caused this, and there is nothing for you to do.

Before I try that change again, I will [test it on a copy of the site / do it outside your busy hours]. I will tell you the day before.

[Your name]

Quiet months, when nothing broke, are a different note: maintenance emails for quiet months.

Questions

Do I email the client on every failed probe?

No. You email when a person should know. Confirmed subscribers on a public status page get one mail when the site goes down and one when it recovers, not one mail per probe. Certificate expiry is a different email, and it goes to you, not to them.

Should I admit the outage was my fault?

Yes, in one sentence, with the fix and what changes next time. If you know the cause and leave it vague, it reads worse when they find out.

What if I do not have a status page?

Say so in the resolved email, and send the digest link. A missing status page is not a reason to skip the note.

Can I put the downtime sentence in the resolved email?

Yes, if you calculated it from their revenue on the downtime cost calculator. Do not drop in a generic cost of downtime.

Plans are Starter at $9/month for up to 5 sites, Studio at $29/month for up to 25 sites, and Agency at $79/month for up to 100 sites. Studio is the plan marked recommended. Starter, including a trial, keeps a small Powered by RetainerProof link on the client digest and the public status page. Studio and Agency remove that link. Prices are on the pricing page.

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