Etsy Down? Shoppers and Sellers Report Problems With Online Marketplace as Outage Reports Spike Friday Morning

NEW YORK — Users of Etsy, the online marketplace for handmade, vintage and custom goods, reported problems with the site Friday. Complaints rose on outage-tracking services in the late morning, Eastern time.

Downdetector, which tracks service disruptions based on user reports, said in a post on X that problems began at 11:09 a.m. EDT.

"User reports indicate problems with Etsy since 11:09 AM EDT," the site said, asking users how they were affected and tagging the post #EtsyDown.

As of late Friday morning, Etsy had not publicly acknowledged a disruption or explained what caused the reports. The extent of the problem, including how many users were affected and which features were involved, could not be independently confirmed.

Partial or limited disruption possible

Not every monitoring service showed trouble. UptimeRobot, which checks Etsy's website from North America every five minutes, reported the site as up as of 11:30 a.m. EDT. It said its monitoring probes could reach etsy.com and complete a full check without errors.

That kind of split is common in online outages. Automated monitors usually test whether a homepage loads, while users may run into problems deeper in the site, such as signing in, searching, adding items to a cart, paying, or managing a shop. A disruption can also hit only certain regions, devices or the mobile app.

User reports on tracking sites often spike when a site is slow or failing for some people even if it is still reachable overall.

Why it matters for sellers

Even a short outage can be costly for Etsy's sellers, many of whom are small businesses and individual makers who rely on the platform for much of their income.

Etsy's marketplace had about 87 million active buyers over the 12 months ending June 30, according to the company's most recent quarterly shareholder letter. The marketplace handled about $2.6 billion in gross merchandise sales in the second quarter alone, up 7.5% from a year earlier.

When the site or app is down, sellers may be unable to:

• Process orders or print shipping labels
• Respond to customer messages
• Update or renew listings
• Check sales and payments

For shoppers, problems can mean failed searches, carts that will not load or checkouts that do not go through.

The timing adds to concerns for sellers. Late October is the start of Etsy's busiest stretch of the year, as holiday shoppers begin ordering personalized and handmade gifts that often take time to produce and ship. Many sellers depend on fourth-quarter sales for a large share of their annual revenue.

Past disruptions

Etsy has had several brief service problems this year, according to IsDown, a third-party site that tracks service incidents:

• March 17: A site issue lasting about an hour
• Feb. 26: An incident lasting about 23 minutes
• Jan. 28: An incident lasting about 38 minutes

Most recent incidents tracked by the service were resolved within an hour.

Users who reported problems to outage trackers in the past have most often cited login failures, pages that would not load on the desktop site or the seller app, and problems with listings and the seller dashboard.

What users can do

During a suspected outage, technology experts generally recommend a few steps before assuming the problem is on a user's end:

• Try the website if the app is not working, or the reverse.
• Refresh the page or restart the app instead of repeatedly resubmitting orders or payments.
• Check bank or card statements before trying again if a purchase seemed to fail, to avoid duplicate charges.
• Wait for service to be restored before changing account settings or passwords, since login problems during an outage are usually not a sign of a security issue.

Sellers with pending shipments can usually print labels once access returns. Etsy has in past disruptions given guidance to sellers through its official forums and help channels.

Company background

Brooklyn, New York-based Etsy connects millions of independent sellers with buyers around the world. Kruti Patel Goyal is the company's chief executive.

The company has been working to revive growth in its core marketplace after several years of slowing sales following the pandemic-era boom in online shopping. In its most recent results, Etsy reported second-quarter revenue of about $668 million, up about 6% from a year earlier.

It was not immediately clear Friday how long the reported problems would last or whether Etsy would comment. This story will be updated as more information becomes available.