You just got a message from a customer: "Hey, your site isn't loading." Your stomach drops. How long has it been down? Is it down for everyone or just them? What broke?
This guide walks you through exactly how to check if your website is down, what to do about it, and how to make sure you never find out about downtime from a customer again.
Step 1: Check It Yourself
The simplest first step is to open your site in an incognito or private browser window. This avoids cached pages that might make a broken site look fine. If the page doesn't load, try from your phone using mobile data (not Wi-Fi) to rule out local network issues.
Step 2: Use an Online Down Checker
If you can't load the site, use an online tool to confirm it's down for everyone:
- isitdownrightnow.com — Simple and fast
- downforeveryoneorjustme.com — Classic go-to checker
- PagePulse — Set up a free monitor and know instantly next time
These tools send a request to your site from their servers. If they can't reach it either, your site is genuinely down.
Step 3: Check Your Hosting Provider
Most hosting providers have a status page (e.g., status.yourhost.com). Check if there's a known outage. Common hosting issues include:
- Server maintenance windows
- DDoS attacks on shared infrastructure
- Resource limits exceeded (CPU, RAM, bandwidth)
- SSL certificate expiration
- DNS propagation delays after changes
Step 4: Check Your DNS
Sometimes your site is running fine but DNS isn't pointing to it correctly. Use the command line to check:
nslookup yourdomain.com
dig yourdomain.comIf the IP address returned doesn't match your server, you have a DNS issue. This commonly happens after migrating hosts or changing nameservers.
Step 5: Check Server Logs
If you have SSH access to your server, check the error logs:
# Apache
tail -100 /var/log/apache2/error.log
# Nginx
tail -100 /var/log/nginx/error.log
# Application logs
journalctl -u your-app -n 100Common errors you'll find: out of memory, disk full, too many open files, or application crashes.
Common Causes of Website Downtime
| Cause | How Often | Typical Duration |
|---|---|---|
| Server overload | Common | Minutes to hours |
| DNS issues | Occasional | Minutes to 48 hours |
| SSL certificate expired | Preventable | Minutes (once fixed) |
| Code deployment bug | Common | Minutes (rollback) |
| Hosting provider outage | Rare | Hours |
| DDoS attack | Varies | Hours to days |
How to Never Find Out From a Customer Again
The real solution isn't checking manually — it's setting up automatic uptime monitoring. With a tool like PagePulse, your site is checked every few minutes. The moment it goes down, you get an alert. You can fix it before a single customer notices.
Setup takes less than 60 seconds:
- Create a free PagePulse account
- Add your website URL
- That's it — you'll be alerted within seconds if it goes down
You also get an incident timeline showing every outage, its duration, and when it was resolved — invaluable for post-mortems and SLA reporting.