Is my website down?
We check your site from the outside, exactly as an ordinary visitor would: whether the server responds, how fast, whether it redirects to https and whether both the www and non-www variants work. If the site opens for us but not for you, the cause is somewhere in between, and we explain where to look.
What exactly we check
- The https response: status code and time to first byte
- An http request: whether it lands on https or stays on an unencrypted connection
- The second name variant: with and without www
- The IP address the domain points to, and the server that answers
We check the home page. A single subpage can return an error even when the home page answers correctly.
How to read the result
The site responds, but it does not open for you
The server works, so the obstacle is somewhere in between. Check in this order: a private browsing window, a different network (your phone without wi-fi), the DNS cache on your computer. If it works on mobile data but not in the office, look at the firewall and content filter on your company network.
No response
The server refused the connection or failed to answer in time. The usual causes: exhausted hosting resources, a server that is switched off, an expired domain, or a firewall blocking outside traffic.
Code 500, 502 or 503
The server accepted the connection and reports its own error. This is an application failure, not a network one: a code error, a lost database connection, exhausted memory or overload. Check the server logs from the last few minutes.
Code 403 or 404 on the home page
The site answers but refuses to show content. This is usually a directory misconfiguration, a block left in place after maintenance, or a deleted entry file.
Time to first byte above 1.5 seconds
The site works, but visitors wait more than a second and a half for anything at all. Typical causes: a database with no caching, an overloaded shared server, or a plugin calling someone else’s server on every visit.
Most common causes
An outage only some visitors see
The www and non-www variants can have separate configurations. If one of them fails, half of the links on the internet send your customers nowhere, and you never see it.
The site answers with code 200 but shows nothing
An application error can return an empty page with a correct status code. A status check alone will never catch that, which is why monitoring also watches for a fragment of the actual content.
A failure right after a deployment
Most outages start after an update or a release. If the site stopped working today, start by asking what changed in the last twenty-four hours.
Questions and answers
Where do you check the site from?
From our server, over the public internet, exactly like an ordinary visitor. We need no access and no changes to your site.
Does the check put load on my site?
It is a handful of ordinary HTTP requests, about as much as a single visit. We do not crawl subpages or download files.
It works for you but not for me. What now?
Try it from another network and in a private window. If it works there, the cause is your network, your browser or a DNS entry on your machine, not the server.
How do I hear about an outage before a customer calls?
That is what monitoring is for. The free plan checks your site every five minutes and writes to you when two checks in a row come back bad.
You checked once. We check every five minutes.
The free plan watches your home page, the SSL certificate and the domain expiry date. No card, no expiry date on the plan itself.
- A pulse check every 5 minutes, with a second check confirming an outage
- A warning before the certificate and the domain expire
- Email notifications with no limit
- Seven days of statistics, one account
How we watch this day to day: Availability monitoring ›
Other tools
SSL certificate
Expiry date, issuer, name coverage and everything else that makes the padlock disappear.
Domain expiry
When the domain expires, who the registrar is and whether anyone can move it without your knowledge.
SPF, DKIM and DMARC
Why your email lands in spam, and whether someone can send invoices from your address.
Security headers
Eight items you set on the server in a quarter of an hour, and every audit asks about them.