It’s a common scenario.  You haven’t gotten an email in an hour, not even that really important email you were expecting from your spouse/co-worker/parent/pet.  Your email seems to be down, but what exactly does that mean? Unfortunately, there are a myriad of reasons why you may not be getting your email.  Could be a problem on your end. Could be a problem on the sender’s end. Or it could be the dreaded “server issue.” The good news: It usually is a server issue.  And there’s an easy way to tell, if you use one of the more popular email providers.

If your email ends in mac.com, me.com, or icloud.com, then Apple provides a very handy system status page at:

http://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/

As you can see from the above screenshot, that’s an easy way to see the status of any Apple online service.

If you’re a user of Gmail or any of Google’s other Apps in the Cloud, steer your browser to:

https://www.google.com/appsstatus

And if you’re a Microsoft user — Hotmail.com/Outlook.com/Skydrive/etc — then go here:

https://status.live.com

Yahoo, sadly, does not have such a status page.

If you use a different email service, check the support page on their website, you might see a similar screen that’ll keep you informed should they ever experience a problem on their end.

And what do you do if you’re not getting your email and you see that your provider is having server issues?  You wait. Don’t worry, your email will get to you. Eventually.