Two hours offline.Nobody surprised.
A scheduled maintenance notice says five things: what will stop working, when (a start and an end in the reader’s own timezone), what still works, what to do meanwhile and where updates will appear. Post it a few days ahead, remind people the day before, swap in a “during” line when the work starts and an all-clear when it ends. The generator below writes all of it from one time window, with the times converted for your visitors.
By the Builderify team
A good maintenance notice answers the questions a customer would otherwise email you: can I still order, when, for how long, and how will I know it’s over. The templates you find first are written for software companies with status pages and engineers on call. A shop needs fewer words and more specifics: the thing that stops, the hours in the customer’s timezone, and the workaround.
One notice, taken apart · a made-up coffee roaster
Scheduled maintenance: Checkout will be unavailable1 on Sunday, November 8, from 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM ET.2 You can still browse the shop and check on an order you have already placed.3 If you need to place an order, please do it before 2:00 AM or after 4:00 AM ET that day.4 We'll post updates on our Instagram page.5
Name the thing that stops working, in the customer’s words: checkout, booking, signing in. “Some services” tells nobody anything.
A weekday, a date, a start, an end and a timezone. A window with no timezone is a guess for anyone who lives somewhere else.
This is the line that stops people giving up on you: what they can still do while the work runs.
The workaround, or simply when to come back. It turns an outage into a time to avoid.
One place you will actually update if the work runs long, so nobody has to email you to ask.
Enter the start, the end and your timezone once. The generator writes five texts, shows the window on your visitors’ clocks and warns you where the times trip people up. It starts with a made-up coffee roaster; replace each field with yours. Nothing you type leaves your browser.
2 hours · Checkout unavailable · Sun, Nov 8, 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM ET
| Timezone | Maintenance window | Note |
|---|---|---|
| ET | Sun, Nov 8, 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM ET | Your time |
| PT | Sat, Nov 7, 11:00 PM to Sun, Nov 8, 1:00 AM PT | Saturday into Sunday |
| UK time | Sun, Nov 8, 7:00 AM to 9:00 AM UK time | |
| Central European time | Sun, Nov 8, 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM Central European time | |
| Your time |
For the Topbar, from the day you announce it
Scheduled maintenance: Checkout will be unavailable on Sunday, November 8, from 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM ET. You can still browse the shop and check on an order you have already placed. We'll post updates on our Instagram page.
While the work is under way
Maintenance under way: Checkout is unavailable until 4:00 AM ET. You can still browse the shop and check on an order you have already placed. We'll post updates on our Instagram page.
Subject and body, for your list
Subject: Planned maintenance on Sunday, November 8: checkout unavailable for 2 hours Hello, Copper Kettle Coffee is carrying out planned maintenance on Sunday, November 8, from 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM ET. During that time, checkout will be unavailable. In other time zones: Sat, Nov 7, 11:00 PM to Sun, Nov 8, 1:00 AM PT; Sun, Nov 8, 7:00 AM to 9:00 AM UK time; Sun, Nov 8, 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM Central European time. You can still browse the shop and check on an order you have already placed. If you need to place an order, please do it before 2:00 AM or after 4:00 AM ET that day. We'll post updates on our Instagram page. Thank you for your patience, Copper Kettle Coffee
One line, for social, a pinned post or a phone message
Planned maintenance · Sun, Nov 8, 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM ET · Checkout unavailable · Updates on our Instagram page
For the banner, social and anyone who asked
Maintenance complete: Checkout is working again. Thank you for your patience. If anything doesn't look right, let us know.
A time that happens twice when the clocks go back, or never when they go forward, is flagged rather than guessed silently. Maintenance windows love the small hours of a Sunday, and so do clock changes.
Two to four in the morning on the East Coast is eleven at night on the West Coast, the day before. When the window crosses midnight for some of your visitors, the generator says so and puts their times in the email.
A Topbar’s schedule runs from the start of its first day to the end of its last, so a banner set to end on the day of the work stays up after it. The generator works out by how much.
Announce it three days to a week ahead, remind people the day before, and post again when the work starts and when it ends. The bigger the thing that stops, the earlier the first notice: a week for checkout or bookings during opening hours, a few days for a short window at three in the morning. One notice is easy to miss; four short ones, each saying something new, are not.
A week to three days before
Email the customers who would notice, and put the before banner up across the site. A week ahead suits work that stops orders or bookings; three days is enough for a short window in the small hours.
The day before
Post the status line on social, change your voicemail if people phone to order, and check the banner shows on the pages that matter.
When the work starts
Swap in the during text. If the whole site is going down, this is when your platform’s maintenance page takes over, because your banner goes down with the site.
If it runs over
Post the extended notice with a new end time and when the next update will be. Silence after the promised end is what makes people write in.
When it’s done
Post the done line, switch the banner off, and test the thing that was down the way a customer would: place an order, book a slot, sign in.
Closing for a few days rather than a few hours? That is a closure, not maintenance, and the holiday closure message generator covers it, Google opening hours and voicemail included. Counting down to the moment something comes back is a job for a countdown timer on the page, though for a two-hour window plain times are clearer.
Put it where the people who would hit the outage will look first: a banner on every page, a popup on the page that is going down, an email to the customers who use it, and social for when the site itself is unreachable. The same words everywhere, so nobody gets two different end times.
| Channel | When | What goes there | Covered by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Banner across every page | Before and during | The before banner from the day you announce it; the during text once work starts. | In BuilderifyTopbar, with start and end dates |
| Popup on the affected pages | The days before | A popup limited to your checkout, booking or sign-in pages, so the people about to use them see it first. | In BuilderifyPopups, with page rules and dates |
| Announcement in the widget | On the day | A short title and a sentence in the widget visitors already open. It goes live when you post it and expires on its own. | In BuilderifyNotifications |
| Email to customers | A week to three days before | The full notice, sent to the customers who would notice the outage. | In BuilderifyBroadcast, schedule it for later |
| Booking calendar | When you announce it | If booking or your team is affected, close the day or give it different hours, so nobody books into the window. | In BuilderifyBookings date overrides |
| Social and pinned posts | The day before and during | The status line and the done line. This is also where updates go if your site is down. | Outside BuilderifyYour social accounts |
| Voicemail | The day before | One sentence with the window and what to do meanwhile, if customers phone to order or book. | Outside BuilderifyYour phone provider |
| Your maintenance page | During, whole-site work only | What visitors get while the site is down: the during text, sent with a 503 status. | Outside BuilderifyYour platform or host |
The mechanics of a banner with an end date, on Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, WordPress and Webflow as well as in Builderify, are in the guide to scheduling an announcement bar to end on its own. The only thing to add for maintenance is the warning above: a schedule that runs in whole days ends at midnight, not when your work does.
Four notices cover a maintenance window from start to finish: one before, one during, one if it runs over and one when it’s done. Each is short enough for a banner and works as the first paragraph of an email. Replace every bracket, then read it on a phone.
For the banner and the email, a few days ahead.
Scheduled maintenance: [what’s affected] will be unavailable on [weekday, date], from [start time] to [end time] [timezone]. [What still works.] If you need to [do the thing], please do it before [start time] or after [end time]. We’ll post updates on [where].
For the banner, your maintenance page and a pinned post.
We’re carrying out scheduled maintenance. [What’s affected] is unavailable until about [end time] [timezone]. [What still works.] Updates are on [where]. Thanks for bearing with us.
Post it before the end time you promised has passed.
Our maintenance is taking longer than planned. [What’s affected] is still unavailable, and we now expect it back by [new end time] [timezone]. [What still works, or the workaround.] We’re sorry for the wait. Our next update will be on [where] by [time].
For the banner, social and a reply to anyone who asked.
Maintenance complete: [what’s affected] is working again. Thank you for your patience. If anything doesn’t look right, [how to reach you].
“Some services may be affected”
Say which ones. If you don’t know yet, say what you do know and when you’ll know more.
A time with no timezone
“2 to 4 AM” is a different two hours in every timezone your customers live in. Add ET, UK time or whatever yours is, every time.
“Brief downtime”
Give the end time instead. Brief to you is an evening to someone who wanted to order.
Silence after the end time
If it runs over, post the extended notice before the promised end, with a new time, not after.
If the whole site has to go down, show a short “under maintenance” page that returns HTTP status 503 (Service Unavailable) with a Retry-After header, not a normal page and not a 404. The 503 tells search engines the outage is temporary. Google’s guide to pausing a site says that if you urgently need to disable it for one or two days, you should return an informational error page with a 503 instead of all your content, and use the Retry-After header “with a best effort date or duration”.Google
Keep it short-lived. Google’s crawler documentation says server errors make it slow down crawling, and that pages already in the index are kept but “eventually dropped” if the errors go on.Google The same guide calls taking a whole site down something for “a very short period of time (a few days at most)”, and notes that Google can’t refresh your titles or descriptions while pages return a 503.Google
If only part of the site is affected, leave the rest up. For a business that pauses, Google suggests disabling the cart as the simplest approach, and says it doesn’t affect how the site appears in Search.Google A checkout outage needs a banner and a popup, not a maintenance page.
HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable Retry-After: 7200 Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 <!-- or the end time as a date, in GMT --> Retry-After: Sun, 08 Nov 2026 09:00:00 GMT
Retry-After takes a number of seconds (7,200 is 2 hours) or a date in GMT.RFC 9110 Use the end of your window.
curl -I https://yourdomain.com during a test and look for 503 and Retry-After on the first lines. Google suggests the same check.GoogleRetry-After: 600, ten minutes.WordPress For longer work, check that your maintenance plugin or host does the same.Builderify carries the notice to your visitors and your customers before the work and, when the site stays up, during it. It doesn’t take your site down for you or serve the maintenance page: that is your platform’s or your host’s job.
An email to 300 customers is 150 credits, an announcement is 5, and the widget that shows the banner counts page loads like any other. Every account gets 250 free credits a month and there is no monthly fee. One-time packs start at $9, and purchased credits never expire. The full rate card is on the pricing page.
0.5 credits
per email sent with Broadcast
5 credits
per announcement you publish
10 credits
per 1,000 page loads with the widget on them
Write the window once, then put it where your customers will see it: a Topbar with start and end dates across the site, and the same notice to your list with email campaigns from your own domain.
Start freeFive things: what will stop working, when it starts and ends in the reader's own timezone, what still works, what to do meanwhile and where updates will appear. For example: "Checkout will be unavailable on Sunday from 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM ET. You can still browse the shop. We'll post updates on our Instagram page."
Three days to a week ahead, depending on what stops: a week for checkout or bookings during opening hours, a few days for a short window in the small hours. Then remind people the day before, post a during notice when the work starts and an all-clear when it ends.
A short maintenance page sent with HTTP status 503 and a Retry-After header giving the end of the window. Google's guide to pausing a site recommends a 503 page for an urgent outage of one or two days and warns against returning a 503 for robots.txt. If only checkout or booking is affected, keep the rest of the site up and use a banner instead.
Always name the timezone, and check whether the window crosses midnight anywhere your customers live: 2:00 to 4:00 AM Eastern is 11:00 PM to 1:00 AM Pacific, on the day before. Put the converted times in the email. The generator on this page converts the window for the timezones you pick and flags the ones where it crosses midnight.
No. Builderify shows the notice before the work and while the site stays up: a Topbar or popup with start and end dates in your website's timezone, an announcement in the widget, and an email to your list with Broadcast. Its widget loads from your own pages, so it can't show while the whole site is down; use your platform's maintenance page for that.
Google’s and WordPress’s pages were read on 29 October 2026; check the current versions before you rely on them. The Builderify details come from the module pages and the rate card on this site. The business, the dates and the times in the examples are made up: check them against your own calendar before you publish.
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