Is My Website Down? Check Free & Fix It Fast

Your site won't load. Maybe a client just messaged you, maybe you spotted it yourself, maybe the browser is just spinning. Before you start restarting servers or calling your host, you need to answer one question: is the site actually down, or is the problem on your end?

This guide shows you how to check in under a minute, how to read the result, and what to do next, whether the site is down for everyone or only for you.

Step 1: Check the site from outside your own network

Your browser can only tell you what your connection sees. A slow Wi-Fi network, a VPN, a cached DNS record, or a corporate firewall can all make a healthy site look dead. So the first move is to test the URL from somewhere else.

The quickest way is our free instant site checker. Paste the full address (for example https://yoursite.com) and press Check. There's no account and no signup; you get up to 5 checks per hour for free.

The checker sends a real request to the URL and shows you three things:

HTTP status code: the server's answer, such as 200 OK, 404 Not Found, or 503 Service Unavailable
Response time: how long the server took to reply
SSL details: information about the site's security certificate

One limit to know: an online checker can only reach public addresses. It can't test intranet sites, local development servers, or anything else on a private network.

Step 2: Read the result

The checker says 200 OK, but you still can't load the site

Good news: the site is up for the rest of the world. The problem is between you and the server. Work through these in order:

Try another device or network. Load the site on your phone with Wi-Fi turned off. If it works there, the issue is your local network.
Turn off your VPN or proxy and try again.
Clear your browser cache or open a private window. A cached error page can stick around after the site recovers.
Flush your DNS cache or restart your router. If the site's DNS records changed recently (for example after a move to a new host), your computer may still be using the old address.
Check whether your IP is blocked. Security plugins, firewalls, and CDN bot protection sometimes block an IP after too many failed logins or requests. If only you are locked out, this is a likely cause.

The checker returns an error code

The status code tells you roughly where to look. In short:

4xx codes (like 403 or 404) mean the server answered but refused the request or couldn't find the page. That usually points to a configuration, permission, or URL problem rather than a crashed server.
5xx codes (like 500, 502, 503, or 504) mean something failed on the server side: the application crashed, a backend service didn't answer, or the server is overloaded or in maintenance.

For a code-by-code breakdown with likely causes, see HTTP status codes explained.

The check times out or can't connect at all

No response usually means the server is offline, the hosting account is suspended, DNS isn't resolving, or a firewall is dropping traffic. Check your hosting dashboard first, then your domain registrar.

There's a problem with the SSL certificate

If the certificate has expired or doesn't match the domain, browsers will show a full-page security warning and most visitors will leave. To your customers, that looks exactly like being down. Here's why SSL expiry is the silent outage that costs you sales, and how to avoid it.

Step 3: If it's down for everyone, fix it in the right order

Once you know the outage is real, resist the urge to change five things at once. Go from most likely to least likely:

Think about what changed. Most outages follow a change: a deploy, a plugin or theme update, a DNS edit, a new firewall rule. If something changed in the last few hours, start there and consider rolling it back.
Check your host's status page and dashboard. If your hosting provider or CDN has an incident, the fix is on their side and your job is to communicate, not debug.
Look at the error logs. Your server or application logs usually say exactly what broke. A 500 error with a clear stack trace is a much faster fix than guessing.
Check the domain and the certificate. An expired domain or certificate takes a site offline just as surely as a crashed server, and both are easy to overlook.
Check resources. A full disk, exhausted memory, or a database that has hit its connection limit can all bring a site down without any code change.
Re-check from outside once you've made a fix. Run the instant checker again to confirm the site returns 200 before you tell anyone it's resolved.

Step 4: Tell the people who need to know

If you run the site for a client or a business, a short, early message goes a long way: "We've spotted an issue with the site and we're working on it. Next update in 30 minutes." It's far better than the client discovering the outage on their own. Send another message once it's fixed, with a one-line explanation of what happened.

If downtime directly costs money, for example on a store, it's worth knowing roughly what an hour offline is worth to you. We broke down the maths in the real cost of website downtime.

Step 5: Stop finding out by accident

Checking by hand works when you already suspect a problem. The trouble is that most outages start while nobody is looking: overnight, at the weekend, or during a busy day when you're not refreshing the homepage. The usual result is that you hear about it from a customer or a client.

Uptime monitoring fixes that. Instead of you checking the site, a monitor checks it on a schedule, around the clock, and alerts you the moment it fails. With ismysiteup:

The free plan watches up to 5 sites, checking each one every 5 minutes, with no credit card and no trial clock.
Alerts reach you where you'll see them: WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, or email, on every plan including Free.
The first alert goes out as soon as a check fails, follow-ups are batched so a flapping site doesn't spam you, and you get a message when the site recovers.
Each alert includes the status code and response time, so you know straight away whether you're dealing with a timeout or a 500.

Paid plans are listed on the pricing page: Pro at $9/month for 50 monitors with 1-minute checks, and Business at $24/month for 200 monitors with 30-second checks. If you're new to the idea, start with what uptime monitoring is and how it works.

Frequently asked questions

How do I know if a website is down for everyone or just me?

Check it from outside your own network. If the instant checker gets a 200 OK but your browser can't load the site, the problem is on your side: your network, VPN, DNS cache, or a block on your IP. If the checker also gets an error or a timeout, the site is down for everyone.

Is the instant checker free?

Yes. You can run up to 5 checks per hour without an account. If you want a site watched continuously, sign up for free and add it as a monitor.

Why does my site work on my phone but not on my laptop?

Your phone on mobile data uses a different network and DNS resolver. The usual causes are a stale DNS cache, a VPN or proxy, a browser extension, or your laptop's IP being blocked by a firewall or security plugin.

Can I check a site on my local network or intranet?

No. An online checker can only reach public internet addresses. ismysiteup monitors also block private and internal addresses for security, so intranet and LAN hosts can't be monitored.

What's the difference between a website checker and uptime monitoring?

A checker answers "is it up right now?" when you ask. Monitoring asks the same question on a schedule, day and night, and alerts you when the answer changes, so you find out before your visitors do.

Check your site now

Paste your URL into the free instant checker to see whether it's up. If you'd rather never have to ask again, create a free account and let a monitor do the checking for you.

Is My Website Down? How to Check (and What to Do Next)