2026-06-10 · 7 min read
How to check if your website is down
Learn how to tell if your website is down for everyone or just you. Step-by-step guide with free uptime checks, ping tests, and status pages.
Why downtime feels confusing
When a website fails to load, the first question is almost always the same: is it down for everyone, or is the problem on my side? Your browser might show a cached error page, your office Wi-Fi could block a port, or a VPN might route traffic through a region where the site is blocked. That is why an independent check from the public internet matters. A proper website down checker sends an HTTP request from our remote servers, the same way a new visitor would reach your server.
Downtime is expensive even when it is brief. E-commerce stores lose checkout revenue, SaaS products miss sign-ups, and support teams get flooded with tickets. Search engines may crawl your site during an outage and record errors that affect visibility. The faster you confirm a real outage versus a local glitch, the faster you can escalate to hosting, DNS, or application teams. Bookmark a reliable checker and use it before you reboot your router or clear cookies.
Step 1: Run an external HTTP check
Open Qikot's website down checker and enter your full URL including https://. The tool performs an HTTP GET request and returns the status code, response time, and whether the connection succeeded. Status codes in the 200–399 range usually mean the server responded. Codes like 502, 503, and 504 point to gateway or origin failures. A timeout or DNS error suggests the hostname does not resolve or the server is unreachable.
If the checker reports your site as up but you still cannot load it locally, the issue is likely client-side: browser extension, DNS cache, corporate firewall, or geographic blocking. Try another network or device. If the checker reports down, proceed with server-side investigation. Repeat the test from the uptime monitor after changes to confirm recovery.
Step 2: Measure latency and packet loss patterns
Availability is only half the story. A site can return HTTP 200 while responding so slowly that users abandon it. Use the ping test to send four HTTP latency samples from our servers and compare minimum, average, and maximum times. High variance often indicates unstable routing or overloaded servers. Pair latency data with the down checker during incidents to see whether slowness precedes a full outage.
Application teams should test critical paths separately: homepage, login, API health endpoint, and payment callback URL. A homepage might load while the API is failing, which breaks mobile apps silently. Document which URLs you test so on-call engineers follow the same playbook every time.
Step 3: Inspect headers and upstream errors
When status codes look wrong, inspect response headers with the HTTP header checker. You might discover a CDN serving stale error pages, a misconfigured redirect loop, or missing cache-control directives. Headers also reveal server software, security policies, and whether HTTPS enforcement is active. This is especially useful after migrations or WAF rule changes.
Compare headers before and after deploys. If Server or Via values change unexpectedly, traffic may be hitting the wrong origin. Share header output with your hosting provider — it is often faster than describing symptoms in plain language.
Step 4: Communicate during an incident
Once you confirm an outage, tell stakeholders quickly. A free public status page lets you combine uptime, SSL, and speed checks into one shareable link. Customers refresh the page instead of opening duplicate support tickets. Encode monitors in the URL — no database or login required. Pin the link in Slack, email footers, and social channels during maintenance windows.
After recovery, run the down checker again and archive timestamps. Post-incident reviews benefit from exact status codes and response times. Over time you will notice patterns: deploy-related regressions, certificate expirations, or DNS propagation delays.
Prevention checklist
Check your site after every production deploy, DNS change, and SSL renewal. Monitor domain and certificate expiry with the domain expiry checker and SSL checker so registration or TLS issues never masquerade as mysterious downtime. Schedule a five-minute weekly review: run checks, note response times, update your status page if needed.
Free tools remove the excuse that monitoring is too expensive for small teams. Qikot runs checks on demand from our servers with no accounts and no stored history. Explore all free monitoring tools, pick the URLs that matter, and keep this workflow one click away when something breaks.
Common false alarms
Browser extensions, antivirus HTTPS scanning, and corporate proxies frequently make healthy sites appear broken locally while external checks pass. Before opening a severity-one incident, confirm with the website down checker from a phone on cellular data. Document the HTTP status code in your ticket — 'site broken' without evidence wastes engineering cycles. Teach support staff to request screenshots plus the exact URL path customers cannot reach.
Scheduled maintenance windows should trigger proactive communication, not surprise checks. If you use a status page, update it before maintenance begins so external monitors and humans align on expected downtime versus unplanned outages.
Mobile app and PWA considerations
Progressive web apps and hybrid mobile shells often call API subdomains while marketing site loads fine — customers report app down when only api.example.com fails. When investigating app outage reports, check API health URL with Website Down Checker separately from homepage. Certificate expiry on API subdomain breaks mobile while website green.
Push notification services and deep links may route through different hostnames — maintain monitor list matching mobile team documentation, not only web team URLs.
Scheduled maintenance communication
Planned downtime should never surprise customers who learned from external checker first — update Status Page before maintenance, run Uptime Monitor to confirm maintenance mode response matches expected 503 or challenge page, then verify recovery checks after completion. Unplanned maintenance discovered by checker before you remembered to update status page means process gap — fix process not just server.
Document maintenance window in support macros so staff quoting same Status Page link reduces contradictory messaging during controlled outages.
Geographic and CDN edge failures
A site can appear down in one country while healthy elsewhere when CDN edges fail or DNS geo-routing misbehaves. Run the Website Down Checker from your location, then ask a colleague in another region or use mobile data on a different carrier. Pair with DNS Propagation Checker after changing authoritative records — stale resolver caches mimic regional outages even when your origin is fine.
Document which CDN POP or hosting region serves each hostname. During incidents, compare Ping Test latency against baseline weeks — sudden spikes often precede hard failures. Share checker output with hosting support; timestamped HTTP status codes accelerate ticket triage compared to vague user reports.
Post-incident documentation habits
After every confirmed outage, log start time, detection method, root cause, and recovery verification URL. Note whether Uptime Monitor caught the issue before customers or vice versa — that gap informs whether you need additional monitors on checkout, API, or admin paths. Archive HTTP Header Checker snapshots if misconfigured redirects contributed to the failure.
Small teams skip postmortems because nobody died, but repeat failures stem from undocumented fixes. A one-page runbook linking all free tools and your Status Page URL costs thirty minutes to write and saves hours on the next incident. Treat downtime checks like fire drills: predictable process beats heroic debugging.