How to pitch a business whose website is down

By 67Leads Team · Published 7 Nov 2026 · Updated 7 Nov 2026 (US Central) · 6 min read

To pitch a business whose website is down, check the site yourself on the day you call, note exactly what a visitor sees (an error, a parked domain, a security warning), then tell the owner that plainly and offer to fix it or replace it; they already paid for a site once, so you do not have to convince them they need one. As of 7 Nov 2026, 7,827 of the 122,822 US local businesses in 67Leads that list a website (6%) list one that did not load when we last checked, and 4,902 of those have 10 or more reviews.

Why a site that is down is a warm lead

A business with no website has to be persuaded that a website matters. A business whose website is down has already decided it does. Someone built it, someone paid for it, and somewhere along the way it stopped working: a domain lapsed, a hosting plan expired, a certificate was not renewed, a plugin update broke the page.

The owner often does not know. They do not visit their own site; they are on jobs. The listing still points customers at the address, so every customer who clicks it sees an error and goes back to the search results. That is the whole pitch, and it is true.

The second advantage is that the conversation starts with help, not a sale. "Your website isn't loading" is useful information whether or not they hire you. Owners remember the person who told them.

Find businesses with a broken site

Start with a list of businesses that list a website on their public listing, then check which of those sites load. 67Leads does the first pass for you: every listed site is visited by our enrichment, and the ones where no page loaded are flagged as site down. The site-down study shows how common that is by trade, and the no-website finder counts the site-down businesses for any trade and town alongside the ones with no site at all.

Sort the list by reviews. A business with dozens of reviews and a dead site is losing customers every week. One with no reviews may have closed, which is often why the site lapsed.

Then check each one yourself. A site can be down for an afternoon and back the next morning. The website down checker tests any single address and tells you what came back.

Work out what failed before you call

"Your site is down" is good. "Your domain expired on the 3rd and it's showing a parking page" is much better: it proves you looked and it tells the owner what kind of problem it is. Here is what the common failures look like and what they usually mean.

HTTP status codes are documented publicly if you want to read what each one means (MDN). Certificate warnings are more common than they used to be because certificates are short-lived; Let's Encrypt, the most widely used free certificate authority, issues certificates that last 90 days and expects them to renew automatically (Let's Encrypt). When the renewal fails, visitors see a warning that most will not click past.

A lapsed domain is the case to move fast on. Registrars usually hold an expired domain for a grace period before releasing it, and the owner can often renew it in that window. After that, someone else can register it. Never buy a prospect's lapsed domain yourself to use as leverage.

The call or email, word for word

On the phone:

"Hi, is this the owner of [business name]? My name's [your name], I build and look after websites for [trade] companies in [town]. I'm calling because I tried to open your website this morning, the one on your Google listing, and it's showing [what you saw]. I wasn't sure if you knew. Customers who click it from Google are seeing the same thing."

Then let them react. Most will say they did not know. Follow with:

"It looks like [the likely cause]. I can tell you exactly what's wrong and what it would take to get it back up, or to replace it with a simple new page if the old one is gone. Would that help?"

By email, if you have an address that still works:

Subject: [business name] website isn't loading

"Hi [first name], I tried to open [their address] today from your Google listing and got [what you saw]. Customers clicking through will see the same. It usually means [likely cause]. Happy to tell you what it would take to fix, no charge for that. [your name]"

Keep the email short and factual, include your postal address and an opt-out line, and do not use alarm words in the subject. CAN-SPAM requires a subject line that is not misleading (FTC).

Price the fix and the follow-on separately

Site-down prospects often need two things: the fix now, and someone to keep it from happening again. Price them separately so the first yes is easy.

• The fix. Renew the domain, reconnect the hosting, renew the certificate, restore from backup. If it is a 30-minute job, charge a fair small fee; do not dress it up as a rebuild.
• The rebuild. If nothing is left, offer the same one-page site you would sell a business with no website. Our guide to pricing your first local business website covers how to set that number.
• Care plan. Hosting, renewals, backups and updates for a monthly fee. This is what stops the site going down again and it is the recurring revenue in this niche.

Be honest when the fix is trivial. Owners who are told "it was just the renewal, here's how to turn on auto-renew" tend to come back when they need real work, and they tell other owners.

Mistakes that lose the deal

• Calling on stale data. Check the site the morning you call. If it came back overnight, you are the person who called with wrong information.
• Blaming the old developer. You do not know what happened. Describe what you see, not who is at fault.
• Overstating the damage. Do not claim lost revenue figures you cannot back. "Customers clicking your listing see an error" is enough.
• Holding the domain hostage. Never register a lapsed domain to sell back. It is unethical and in some cases a legal problem.

Questions

How many local business websites are down?

As of 7 Nov 2026, 7,827 of the 122,822 sellable US local businesses in 67Leads that list a website (6%) list one where no page loaded when our enrichment last visited.

How do I check if a business website is down?

Open it in a private browser window and on your phone's mobile data, and run it through the website down checker, which reports what the server returned.

Should I pitch a site-down business by phone or email?

Phone first if you can, because the email on a broken domain may also be broken. The cold-call script for web designers adapts easily: swap the no-website line for what you saw on their site.

Find the site-down businesses in your trade and town with the no-website finder: it counts both businesses with no website and those whose site did not load, with the first rows by name.

No card. Search is free with contacts masked.

Sources

1. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status
2. https://letsencrypt.org/docs/faq/
3. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business