My phone won’t ring when messages come in

Do you mean a call or a message? Your phone won’t alert for messages if you are wearing an Apple Watch. It will alert on the watch instead.

If you phone isn’t ringing for calls:

FIRST: Are there missed calls in Phone/Recents on the phone? If they are not the problem is in the network, because the calls aren’t getting to your phone. Contact your carrier: 

check with your carrier that they don’t have a local outage, and that you didn’t have any settings that would have immediately invoked voicemail, such as call forwarding.

check up on them at Down Detector - outages

If they are in Recents here’s what to check:

Check the MUTE switch on the left side of the phone, above the volume buttons. It should be towards the screen

Check the volume setting. With the Home screen displayed, press the VOLUME UP button on the left side of the phone. It’s above the VOLUME DOWN button.

Go to Settings/Phone. There’s a switch for Silence Unknown Callers. If it is on any calls from numbers not in your contacts will go directly to voicemail.

Also in Settings/Phone: Make sure Call Forwarding is off.

iOS 14 & older: Go to Settings/Do not Disturb. Turn it off if it is on. Also turn off Scheduled. With both off none of the other switches there matter.

iOS 15: Go to Settings/Focus, and verify that all focus settings are disabled.

iOS 16: Open the Control Center and turn off Focus.

Go to Settings/Sounds & Haptics. Make sure there is a sound assigned to Ringtone.

Go to Settings/Accessibility/Touch/Call Audio Routing and make sure Auto-Answer Calls is off.

Go to Settings/Screen Time/Communications Limits. Tap each of the 2 entries and make sure both are “Everyone"

Restart your phone-->RESTART your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

If all else fails, talk your carrier into replacing your SIM card (thanks to ASC user DShelbyD)