My Wix site stopped working. Here is what actually happened.

The four things that really happen to a builder site

A website builder keeps your site running while you keep paying it. When something stops, it is almost always one of four things. None of them mean your business is in trouble. They mean a payment, a plan or a policy changed, and nobody told you in words you could act on.

• A lapsed subscription. A card expired, a renewal charge failed, or the plan was cancelled by mistake. The account still exists. The published site is switched off.
• A plan downgrade that removes the custom domain. You move to a cheaper plan, or the plan you were on is retired. Your pages survive on a builder address, and your own domain stops pointing there.
• An unpaid renewal. The bill came due, the charge did not go through, and after a grace period the site was unpublished. Nothing was deleted. It was taken offline.
• The builder changed what the free plan includes. Free tiers get trimmed. A feature you had last year, such as connecting your own domain, may now need a paid plan.

How to tell which one you have

Start with your own address on your phone, not the laptop you always use. A saved copy on your own device can show the old working site and hide the problem. Then work through the checks below.

Naming the cause matters, because it decides what you can still recover from the account and what no longer exists to buy back.

• Search your email for the builder's name. Look for renewal reminders, failed payment notices, or a message about your plan changing.
• Log in to your builder account and open the billing page. It usually shows your plan, the next renewal date, and whether a payment failed.
• Check whether your own domain still shows as connected inside the account. If it has been removed, your pages are still there on a builder address.
• If your address opens a page that is not your site, a for-sale notice, or a blank page, the domain connection is what broke.
• If your address opens nothing at all but your email still works, the domain is fine and the published site is what stopped.

What the builder's support will and will not do

Support will help you with their product. They can tell you which plan you need, take a payment, and walk you through reconnecting a domain. If your problem is a single failed payment, that is worth doing today.

What they will not do is get the site back for free, build you a newer one, or make it work well on a phone. If the plan that hosted your site no longer exists, they cannot sell it back to you at any price.

• They will take your payment and restore the plan you were on, if it is still sold.
• They will help you point your domain back at their servers once you are paid up.
• They will not rebuild, redesign or speed up the site as part of a support ticket.
• They will not hand you the site as files you own. Rented builders do not give you a copy.
• They will not stop the same thing from happening again next year while you stay on the subscription.

Why your site often cannot simply be switched back on

Sometimes it can be, and if the fix is one payment, pay it. But there are three cases where switching it back on does not work the way you hope.

Case one, the plan that hosted your site is retired. Builders retire older plans. When yours is gone there is nothing to reactivate, and the replacement plan may not run the site you had.

Case two, the domain connection was removed. Putting it back means paying for a plan that includes a domain, then waiting for the change to spread across the internet.

Case three, the site was never built for a phone anyway. Reactivating it puts back the same slow desktop layout that sends callers away, and you are paying again for the thing that was not working.

What your customers see while this is going on

Most of them never tell you. They searched your name or tapped your listing, something did not load, and they moved on to the next business. You get a quiet week and no explanation for it.

A site that opens to an error or a blank page reads as a closed business. A site that opens on a builder address looks like a side project, and people who are ready to spend money do not trust it.

• Your map listing can keep sending people to an address that no longer loads.
• People who found you before cannot check your hours, your services or your prices.
• Anyone who wants to call you has to hunt for the number, and most will not bother.
• The job goes to whoever's site loads first. That is not a judgement on your work.

Why a rebuild on your own domain removes the subscription

Your domain is the one piece you own outright. It is registered in your name, you renew it once a year, and no website builder can switch it off. The site sitting on it was always the rented part.

When the site is rebuilt on your domain, the monthly subscription stops being part of the story. There is no plan to downgrade, no free tier to change, and no renewal to forget. The pages are yours, on your address.

Here is what you get:

• Five pages: home, services, about, FAQ and contact.
• Your own services, your area and your opening hours, taken from your public listings.
• A real map and a tap-to-call button, so nobody has to copy a number to reach you.
• Built phone first and loads in under a second on a normal mobile connection.
• Live on the domain you already own within 24 hours of you saying yes.
• $600 flat, one time. No retainer, no monthly fee for the first year, no contract and no sales call.

How to get this fixed

LocalSiteShop finds local US businesses whose website is broken, missing or unusable on a phone, rebuilds the whole site, and sends the owner a free preview before asking for anything. Of the local business websites we checked across eight US metros, 27% were broken.

You see the finished site on your own phone before you pay, and you keep the preview either way. Payment is by a reply-to-email link, card or bank transfer, and there is no sales call at any point.

You can look at real rebuilds at https://preview.localsiteshop.com/ and judge the work yourself.

Questions we get about this