Free Tool

Is It Down? Website Status Checker

Check if a website is down or if it's just you. Get status code, response time, IP address, and redirect chain.

Want Deeper SEO Insights?

Recommended Tool

Affiliate

Take your SEO to the next level with Morningscore – an intuitive SEO tool that helps you track rankings, find opportunities, and grow your organic traffic. Perfect for agencies and businesses serious about SEO results.

Rank tracking & keyword research
Competitor analysis & backlink monitoring
Actionable SEO missions & guidance

Disclosure: We may earn a commission if you sign up through our link, at no extra cost to you. We only recommend tools we genuinely believe in. Your support helps us keep supporting this tool! ❤️

Why Check If a Website Is Down

When a website fails to load, it is not always clear whether the problem is on the server's end or yours. Local network issues, DNS resolver problems, ISP routing, and browser cache can all make a working site appear unreachable. This tool checks the website from an external server, giving you an objective answer. If the site responds to our probe but not to your browser, the issue is between you and the server — not the server itself.

Common Causes of Website Downtime

  • Server overload or crash: The web server ran out of memory, CPU, or disk space, or the application process crashed. This is the most common cause of unexpected downtime, especially on shared hosting or undersized VPS instances.
  • DNS failure: The domain's DNS records are misconfigured, the nameserver is unreachable, or a recent DNS change has not fully propagated. Without working DNS, browsers cannot resolve the domain to an IP address and the site appears completely offline.
  • SSL/TLS certificate error: An expired, revoked, or misconfigured SSL certificate causes browsers to block access with a security warning. The server itself may be running, but visitors see a full-page error instead of your content.
  • Traffic spike or DDoS attack: A sudden surge of legitimate or malicious traffic overwhelms the server's capacity. Without auto-scaling or a CDN, the server queues or drops requests, causing timeouts and partial outages for real visitors.

Why Uptime Monitoring Matters

Every minute of downtime costs traffic, revenue, and trust. Search engines that encounter repeated 5xx errors will temporarily demote your pages from results, and visitors who hit a down page are unlikely to return. Proactive uptime monitoring alerts you within seconds of an outage, often before your users notice. Combined with status pages and incident communication, monitoring transforms downtime from a crisis into a managed event.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I tell if a website is down for everyone or just me?
Use this tool to check the website from an external server. If our probe gets a successful response but your browser cannot load the page, the issue is local — your ISP, DNS resolver, VPN, or firewall may be blocking access. If our probe also fails, the website is genuinely down for everyone.
What are the most common causes of website downtime?
The most frequent causes are server resource exhaustion (out of memory or CPU), expired SSL certificates, DNS misconfigurations, and traffic spikes that overwhelm the hosting infrastructure. Database connection limits and failed deployments are also common for application-driven sites.
How long does website downtime typically last?
It varies widely depending on the cause. An expired SSL certificate can be renewed in minutes. A crashed application server typically recovers within 5-30 minutes if monitoring is in place. DNS propagation issues can take up to 48 hours to fully resolve, though most propagate within 1-4 hours.
Should I set up uptime monitoring for my website?
Yes. Uptime monitoring checks your site at regular intervals and alerts you immediately when it goes down. Without monitoring, you rely on visitors reporting the problem — and most visitors simply leave without telling you. Even a basic free monitoring service is better than no monitoring at all.