Maintenance mode
Show visitors a "Back soon" page with your own line while your app keeps running, and still open it yourself with a password. For every app and site.
Updated 27 Oct 20261 min read
Before a big change, put your app in maintenance. Visitors see our page saying Back soon, with one line from you, while the app keeps running. You still open it yourself with a password, so you can check your change before anyone else sees it.
Turn it on
Open your app or site, then its Settings tab, then Maintenance.
Type a line for your visitors, like "We're adding new products. Back by 3 pm." Plain words, up to 200 characters; links and
<or>aren't allowed.Choose a password to open it yourself (at least 8 characters). If your project has a staging environment with a password, that password works too.
Switch on Maintenance mode.
Within seconds, every visitor gets the maintenance page. Search engines are told to come back later (a 503 answer with Retry-After), so your place in their results is kept.
Open it yourself
Choose Open it yourself: it opens the password page on your address. After the password, your browser sees the app as usual for 12 hours.
Turn it off
Switch off Maintenance mode. Your line and password are kept for next time.
Asha puts her shop in maintenance at 2 pm, uploads her new product pages, opens the shop with her password to check them, and switches maintenance off at 2:40.
Owners and developers turn maintenance on and off. Laravel's own php artisan down is still among Laravel's helpers on the app's Overview.