WPX Managed WordPress Hosting experienced an outage that may have impacted thousands of websites. The disruption has continued for hours, and many customers are expressing frustration due to the lack of communication from WPX.
WPX Hosting Site Inaccessible
Even the website of WPX itself became unreachable.
Screenshot of WPX Hosting Unavailability
A page hosted on their knowledge base subdomain (kb.wpx.net) displayed this error message:
Screenshot of WPX Knowledge Base Error Message
WPX Chicago Data Center Issues
WPX issued a templated response to customers complaining on Twitter. The responses began with a comma, possibly intended to insert the Twitter member’s name before it.
WPX Twitter Responses:
, apologized for the inconvenience caused! The Chicago datacenter is having technical issues at the moment. We have been assured that it will be resolved shortly, as the issue is beyond our control.
— WPX.net (@WPX_Hosting) August 2, 2021
, apologized for the inconvenience caused! The Chicago datacenter is having technical issues at the moment. We have been assured that it will be resolved shortly, as the issue is beyond our control.
— WPX.net (@WPX_Hosting) August 2, 2021
, apologized for the inconvenience caused! The Chicago datacenter is having technical issues at the moment. We have been assured that it will be resolved shortly, as the issue is beyond our control.
— WPX.net (@WPX_Hosting) August 2, 2021
The repetitive response contributed to a sense of unease and anger in discussions within the Affiliate SEO Mastermind Facebook Group.
Several members commented on the perceived lack of communication, calling it “useless.” Another group member described the single update on Twitter as “pitiful.”
One member mentioned that while they liked WPX, the company could have gained more goodwill had they been more transparent with information, calling the communication lapse unacceptable.
Is This the Reason for WPX Outage?
The whois information for WPX.net shows that their domain is on the Steadfast ASN (Autonomous System Numbers).
ASN identifies the networks of IP addresses and can reveal what the underlying data center infrastructure is, sometimes giving clues to ongoing issues.
Steadfast maintains data centers in Chicago, aligning with WPX’s tweets that the problem is in a Chicago data center.
So, it’s possible that Steadfast is the underlying infrastructure for WPX hosting, although with the current lack of information from WPX, this cannot be stated with complete certainty.
The Steadfast help page displayed this support announcement:
“Customers are experiencing network intermittency due to an access switch malfunction.
Our alerting system detected one of our switches operating inconsistently. After an initial investigation, our networking team examined a few potential causes for this event.
In the first hour, we restored services to 60% of the impacted clients. We are currently replacing the device causing this interruption and expect to be online within the hour.”
Sometimes Problems Arise
In this case, the problem is beyond WPX’s control. It’s an issue with the underlying infrastructure they rely on.
One customer on Twitter advised patience:
I was experiencing Cloud Cache issues last night, and I thought they fixed it, but a sad way to start the week. Anyway, @WPX_Hosting team has always been kind to me and although I don’t like it, I guess we need to be patient with them.
— siddhesh jain (@siddheshjain90) August 2, 2021
It seems the issue is being addressed, so patience is not bad advice. Problems like this are often unpredictable, and even if the service is in the “cloud,” physical hardware can still fail.
