Account
Why Your Account Was Suspended
Suspension is a pause, not a deletion. Your sites stop serving and your mailboxes stop accepting mail, but nothing has been erased, and the great majority of suspensions clear the moment the underlying cause is fixed.
There are two independent things that get called suspension, and the first thing to work out is which one you have.
Which Kind of Suspension Is It?
Your site is suspended. Visitors see a holding page. You can still sign in to the panel, and the site shows a banner reading "Site Suspended" with the note "This site has been suspended. Contact support for assistance."
Your account is suspended. You cannot sign in at all. The login page returns "Your account has been suspended. Contact support."
Both usually have the same cause, and an account suspension normally brings the site suspension with it.
What Visitors See
A suspended site returns a holding page rather than an error. It is deliberately calm and deliberately not indexed by search engines.
The page is headed "This site is paused for now." and reads: "The hosting for this website is on hold at the moment. Nothing is lost. If you are the site owner, sign in to settle your account and it will be back online, usually within minutes." It offers two buttons, one to your account and one to Kapsule.
Technically the site returns a temporary status, not a permanent one, and tells search engines not to index the holding page. Your rankings are not thrown away by a short suspension.
Certificate renewal keeps working during a suspension. The specific path browsers and certificate authorities use for validation is exempt from the holding page, so your HTTPS certificate does not lapse while you sort things out.
The Most Common Cause: A Failed Payment
Almost every suspension is the fourteenth day of the payment failure ladder. The ladder is fixed and you are warned repeatedly before it reaches this point.
| Day | What happens |
|---|---|
| 0 | The renewal charge fails, subscription becomes past due, payment failure email |
| 1 | Automatic retry |
| 3 | Automatic retry |
| 7 | Suspension warning email, naming the exact suspension date |
| 14 | Services suspended, account access suspended |
| 30 | Subscription cancelled |
The suspension warning email states the impact plainly: sites stop serving, mailboxes stop accepting mail, and domains stop responding, but data is safe and untouched, and paying any time before the date keeps everything running.
To fix it: update the card and pay. See When a Payment Fails and Payment Options and Saved Cards. A successful payment restores your account access and brings your sites back automatically.
Do not wait for day 30. At day 14 you are suspended but recoverable. At day 30 the subscription is cancelled, which is a different and much more disruptive situation.
Other Causes
An expired free trial. A trial that runs out moves through its own ladder, becoming read-only before it is suspended. Add a card and choose a plan to continue.
An annual or bank-transfer renewal that was not paid. These follow a grace period rather than the card retry ladder, and suspension follows a week after the grace period ends.
Abuse. A confirmed breach of the acceptable use policy can suspend a single service or the whole account. This is a staff decision, not an automated one, and it does not clear itself: see below.
A refused charge in a restricted jurisdiction. Where a charge cannot lawfully be taken, the renewal is refused and held for review rather than suspending anything. If you are in this position you will be contacted.
Fraud checks do not suspend anything on their own. Where an order trips a fraud signal, the order is held for a person to look at, and nothing is charged or cancelled automatically.
Getting Unsuspended
For a payment suspension: pay. Go to Billing, open the subscription, update the card if needed, and use Retry payment now. Access is restored on a successful charge, and your sites come back on their own. Give it a few minutes: the change is applied to the web servers by a background process, which is why the holding page says "usually within minutes" rather than "instantly".
For an abuse suspension: open a support ticket or reply to the notice you received. There is no automatic lift. A person has to review the case and clear it, and that requires you to have dealt with whatever caused it. If your site was compromised and being used to attack others, cleaning the site is the prerequisite: see What to Do If Your Site Is Hacked.
For a trial expiry: choose a plan and add a card.
If you cannot sign in at all, email support@kapsulehost.com from the address on the account, and quote your Support Key if you have it noted somewhere.
What Happens to Your Data
Nothing is deleted at suspension. The suspension emails say so explicitly, and the mechanism supports it: suspension changes what the web server does with requests, and it does not touch your files, your databases, or your mailboxes.
Your backups continue to exist. Your domains remain registered to you: a domain is a registration with its own expiry date, and suspending hosting does not release it.
Email is the one place where a suspension causes losses you cannot recover. Mail sent to a suspended mailbox is rejected at the door, and the sender gets a bounce. Those messages are not queued and delivered later. If you run your business email with us, treat a suspension warning as urgent.
Avoiding It Next Time
- Keep a valid card on file, and keep a spare. An expired card is the single most common cause. See Payment Options and Saved Cards.
- Make sure the warning emails reach a person. Billing email cannot be switched off, but it can be sent to an address nobody reads. Check where yours goes. See Managing Your Email Notifications.
- Watch the renewal reminders. Three go out before each renewal, at 14, 7, and 3 days. See Renewals and Auto-Renew.
- Give a second person the Billing role, so a suspension does not depend on one person being at their desk. See Inviting Team Members and Setting Roles.
- Keep your site clean and updated, so it never becomes the source of an abuse report.
Troubleshooting
I paid and the site is still showing the holding page. Enforcement is applied by a background process rather than instantly. Wait a few minutes and clear your browser cache. If it persists beyond that, contact support.
I can sign in but my site is suspended. Site suspension and account suspension are separate. Check the Billing page for anything past due.
I cannot sign in and I have no idea why. Email support@kapsulehost.com from the address on the account. Check that address for a suspension notice first, including spam.
My mailboxes are rejecting mail. That is expected during suspension. Senders receive a bounce. There is no queue to release afterwards.
One site is suspended and my others are fine. Suspension follows the subscription. Each subscription is billed separately, so one can lapse while the others are current.
Was I warned? The ladder sends a payment failure email at day 0, retries at days 1 and 3, and a suspension warning at day 7 naming the exact date. If none arrived, your billing email is wrong or being filtered. Fix that first.