// UPTIME CHECK
Is my website down?
Checks your site from an external server, so you can tell whether it's down for everyone or just for you.
What this measures
A one-shot "is my website down?" check from our server — an external vantage point, so it helps answer whether your site is down for everyone or just for you. It reports up or down with the response time, and when the site is down it names the exact stage that failed — DNS, TCP connection, TLS handshake, HTTP error, or timeout — and automatically retries once to tell a momentary blip from a real outage.
How to read your result
- Up or down
- Up means the server answered with any HTTP status below 500. A 404 or a login redirect still counts as up — the server is alive and responding. Down means a 5xx server error or a failure before any response arrived.
- The failure stage
- Down verdicts name where the attempt died. DNS: the domain did not resolve. TCP: the server machine was unreachable. TLS: the secure handshake failed. HTTP: the server answered with a 5xx error. Timeout: it accepted the connection but never finished responding. Each stage points at a different culprit.
- The automatic retry
- A failed first attempt is retried after two seconds. If the retry succeeds, the failure was transient — worth noting, not worth paging anyone. If both attempts fail at the same stage, you are looking at a real, consistent outage.
- Response time
- Total time to complete the request, including any redirects. Under 500 ms is good; 500–1500 ms is acceptable; slower suggests an overloaded server or a long redirect chain even though the site is technically up.
Common causes & fixes
- Failed at DNS
- The domain itself is not resolving — an expired domain registration, deleted records, or a nameserver change gone wrong. Your server may be running fine; nobody can find it. Run the DNS check here to see what resolvers currently return.
- Failed at TCP or timeout
- The machine is unreachable or not answering: a crashed or stopped server, a firewall blocking the port, or a host-level outage. Check your hosting provider's status page and control panel first.
- Failed at TLS
- The server is up but the secure connection cannot be established — most often an expired certificate. Run the SSL check here for the expiry date and the exact reason.
- HTTP 5xx error
- The server is reachable but the application on it is failing: a crashed process, an unreachable database, a bad deploy, or exhausted resources. Your hosting error logs will name the specific error — 500 is a generic crash, 502/504 mean a backend behind a proxy stopped answering, 503 means overloaded or in maintenance.
Frequently asked questions
Is my site down for everyone or just me?
This check runs from our server, not your device. If it says up but you cannot reach the site, the problem is local to you — your DNS cache, network, or a firewall. If it says down, the site is unreachable from our vantage point too — a strong sign it's down for everyone, not just you.
My site returns a 404 — why does the check say up?
A 404 is the server answering "no such page" — the server itself is alive, which is what an uptime check measures. Only 5xx statuses and connection failures count as down, because those mean the server cannot serve anyone.
The first attempt failed but the retry worked. Should I worry?
A single transient blip — a dropped connection, a brief restart — is usually nothing. But if you see it every time you check, something is marginal: an overloaded server or a flaky network path deserves a look before it becomes a real outage.
Can this monitor my site continuously?
This is a one-shot check — it tells you the status right now. Continuous monitoring means running a check like this on a schedule and alerting you on failure; run this check again whenever you want the current answer from an external vantage point.
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