Is My Website Down Right Now? How to Check and Fix It

You've just noticed your website might be down. Maybe a customer emailed, maybe you tried to visit it yourself, or maybe your monitoring tool just alerted you. Whatever triggered the question — is my website actually down right now? — this guide walks you through how to confirm it and what to do next.

Step 1: Confirm It's Really Down

Before panicking, rule out the possibility that the problem is local to you.

Check from a Different Network

The most common "my site is down" situation is actually "my site is down for me" — caused by a local network issue, ISP problem, or your IP being blocked. Try:

• Open your phone on mobile data (not WiFi) and visit your site
• Ask a colleague in a different location to check
• Use a VPN to check from a different IP address

If the site loads on mobile data but not your office network, the problem is local — a firewall, DNS configuration, or ISP issue.

Use an Online "Is It Down" Checker

Tools like Domain Monitor check your website from multiple global locations simultaneously. If the check returns an error from all locations, your site is genuinely down. If it shows green from most locations but red from one, there may be a regional issue.

Other quick options:

• Use your browser's developer tools (F12 → Network tab) to see the specific error code
• Try curl -I https://yourdomain.com from the command line to get headers

Read the Error

The error your browser shows tells you a lot:

Step 2: Diagnose the Cause

Once you've confirmed the site is genuinely down, identify why.

Check DNS Resolution

# Check if your domain resolves
nslookup yourdomain.com

# Or use dig
dig yourdomain.com

If DNS isn't resolving:

• Check your DNS provider's status page
• Verify your DNS records haven't been accidentally deleted
• Check if your domain registration is still active (expired domains stop resolving)

An expired domain is a surprisingly common cause of "my website is down." Domain expiry monitoring prevents this with advance warnings.

Check if the Server is Reachable

# Ping the server
ping yourdomain.com

# Check if port 443 is open
telnet yourdomain.com 443

If ping works but HTTPS doesn't, the web server process has likely crashed.

Check Your Web Server

If you have server access:

# Check if Nginx is running
systemctl status nginx

# Check if Apache is running
systemctl status apache2

# Check if your Node.js app is running
pm2 status

A stopped web server is one of the most common causes of downtime. Restart it and check if the site comes back:

systemctl restart nginx

If it keeps crashing, check the logs:

journalctl -u nginx --since "10 minutes ago"
tail -100 /var/log/nginx/error.log

Check Application Logs

If the web server is running but the site returns 500/502/503 errors, the problem is in your application:

# Check application logs (adjust path for your setup)
tail -100 /var/log/your-app/error.log

# For Docker containers
docker logs <container_name> --tail=100

Look for errors around the time the site went down.

Check Disk Space

A full disk is a sneaky cause of website failures:

df -h

If a filesystem is at 100%, clear space (logs, temp files, old deployments) and restart your application.

Check Recent Deployments

Did anything change just before the site went down? Recent deployments are the most common cause of sudden outages. Roll back to the previous version if a deployment coincides with the failure time.

Step 3: Fix It

The fix depends on what you found:

DNS not resolving: Restore your DNS records, contact your DNS provider, or renew your domain registration.

Web server crashed: Restart the web server. Investigate logs to understand why it crashed and prevent recurrence.

Application error: Check application logs, identify the error, fix the code or configuration, redeploy.

Disk full: Free up disk space, add storage capacity.

SSL error: Check certificate validity and configuration. SSL certificate monitoring with advance warnings prevents SSL-caused downtime.

High traffic / overload: Scale up resources, enable caching, or implement rate limiting.

Step 4: Communicate During the Outage

If you have users, communicate:

1. Update your public status page immediately with an acknowledgement
2. Post to social media if significant user impact
3. Notify affected users if you can identify them

Users who know you're working on it are significantly more understanding than users who have no information.

Step 5: Prevent It Happening Again

Once you've fixed the immediate issue:

• Set up uptime monitoring so you know the moment this happens again — before customers tell you
• Do a post-incident review to understand the root cause
• Set up SSL and domain expiry alerts if those were factors
• Test your deployment pipeline to ensure rollbacks work

How to set up uptime monitoring from scratch is covered in how to set up uptime monitoring.

Why "Waiting for a Customer to Report" Doesn't Work

Without monitoring, the average business discovers website downtime 4-6 hours after it starts — through customer complaints, social media, or stumbling across it themselves. Every hour of undetected downtime represents lost revenue, damaged reputation, and frustrated users.

Automated uptime monitoring detects failures within 1-2 minutes and alerts you immediately via SMS, Slack, or email. The cost of monitoring is a fraction of the cost of a single significant outage.

Stop waiting for customers to tell you your site is down. Set up automated monitoring at Domain Monitor.

Related Articles

• "Website Down Checker: How to Check If Your Site Is Offline Right Now"
• "How to Check If a Website Is Down: Tools and Methods"
• "Check Website Availability Online: Tools and Methods"