When Atlassian tools go down, engineering velocity grinds to a halt. Sprint planning sessions get cancelled, pull request reviews stall, and documentation becomes inaccessible. The challenge is quickly determining whether Jira/Confluence/Bitbucket is experiencing a platform-wide outage or if the issue is specific to your organization, SSO configuration, or browser.
Atlassian Products: Which Status Page to Check
Atlassian publishes a unified status page at status.atlassian.com covering all cloud products. Here's what each product covers:
How to Check if Atlassian is Down (5 Methods)
1. Official Status Page
Visit status.atlassian.com and filter by product. You can subscribe to email or webhook notifications per product to get notified automatically.
2. Test Atlassian API Directly
For Jira Cloud, test the API endpoint:
curl https://your-domain.atlassian.net/rest/api/3/serverInfo
A valid JSON response with baseUrl and version fields confirms Jira is operational. A timeout or 5xx error indicates a platform issue.
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3. Check Atlassian Community Forums
The Atlassian Community (community.atlassian.com) and Atlassian Support channels on X/Twitter quickly surface widespread issues.
4. Distinguish Platform vs. Organization Issues
Many "Atlassian is down" reports are actually organization-specific issues:
- SSO/SAML failures: Your identity provider (Okta, Azure AD) may have expired certificates or misconfigured SAML assertions. Test logging in with basic email/password to isolate.
- IP allowlist changes: Atlassian Access IP allowlists may block access after network changes.
- Data residency issues: Organizations using Atlassian Data Residency may have regional restrictions affecting access.
5. Use Automated Monitoring
For teams that depend on Atlassian for engineering workflows, automated monitoring provides instant alerting when Atlassian services degrade.
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Better Stack monitors uptime for Jira, Confluence, GitHub, and your entire DevOps stack. Get instant alerts when critical tools go down.
Try Better Stack Free →Why Does Atlassian Go Down? Common Causes
- AWS Regional Outages: Atlassian Cloud runs primarily on AWS. AWS us-east-1 incidents have historically caused Atlassian availability degradations.
- Search Infrastructure: Jira's search (Elasticsearch-based) frequently degrades independently of issue viewing and creation. Slow searches are the most common Atlassian complaint.
- Authentication Service: Atlassian's identity platform (account.atlassian.com) can have outages that prevent login across all products simultaneously.
- Bitbucket Pipelines: Bitbucket's CI/CD infrastructure uses separate worker pools that can be affected by resource constraints during high build volume periods.
- Third-Party App Marketplace: Poorly behaved Marketplace apps can cause performance degradation for specific Jira instances without being a platform-wide issue.
The 2022 Atlassian Outage: What We Learned
In April 2022, Atlassian experienced a major incident affecting approximately 400 customers for up to two weeks due to a mistaken script execution that deactivated accounts. Key lessons:
- Always export/backup critical Jira project data, even for cloud-hosted services.
- Confluence pages should have export procedures documented in your runbooks.
- Bitbucket repositories should be mirrored to GitHub or another provider for critical code.
- Atlassian now provides enhanced data protection, but backups remain your responsibility for business continuity.
Action Plan: What to Do When Atlassian is Down
For Engineering Teams:
- Switch to GitHub Issues or Linear for immediate task tracking if Jira is down.
- Use Slack/Teams channels for sprint coordination.
- Git operations still work locally — push to backup remotes if Bitbucket is down.
- Post a Slack message with status page link so everyone stops checking independently.
For Product Managers:
- Reschedule sprint ceremonies if Jira is inaccessible — don't run planning without visibility into backlog.
- Keep a local copy of the current sprint's issues as a Google Sheet for quick reference.
- Check if Atlassian Data Management (data exports) are accessible for recovery.
Manage your Atlassian service account credentials securely
Service accounts for Jira automation, Bitbucket pipelines, and Confluence API access should be stored in a team password manager. 1Password Business integrates with Atlassian's SCIM directory.
Try 1Password Free →Frequently Asked Questions
Is Jira down or is it something with my account?
Check status.atlassian.com. If Jira shows "Operational" but you can't log in, try: (1) different browser, (2) incognito window, (3) different network, (4) checking your SSO/identity provider status. Account-specific issues like locked accounts or SSO failures are often misidentified as platform outages.
Is Confluence separate from Jira?
Yes and no. Atlassian runs them on shared infrastructure but they are separate products with separate service components. A Jira outage may not affect Confluence and vice versa. Always check status per product on status.atlassian.com.
How do I get notified automatically when Atlassian has an outage?
Subscribe at status.atlassian.com — click "Subscribe to Updates" and choose email, SMS, or webhook. You can subscribe per product (e.g., only Jira, only Bitbucket). For team-wide alerts, configure Atlassian's webhook notifications to post to your Slack channel.
Does Atlassian offer SLAs?
Yes. Atlassian Cloud provides a 99.9% uptime SLA for Jira Software, Confluence, and Bitbucket on Standard and Premium plans. SLA credits are available for customers who experience uptime below the contracted threshold. Enterprise plans include higher SLAs and premium support.
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