Is my website down?

Down for everyone, or down for you?

The check above runs from our infrastructure, so it answers the only version of the question that matters: can someone who is not you reach your site right now. If it succeeds here and fails in your browser, look at your DNS resolver, your VPN, or an extension blocking the request.

Reading the result

Three things are worth your attention. The status code tells you whether the server accepted the request. The response time tells you whether it is healthy or crawling, and anything past two seconds usually means something upstream is struggling. The response preview is the one people skip, and it is the one that catches the failures that hurt: a page returning 200 with a maintenance notice, or an API returning 200 with an empty array.

One check tells you nothing about tomorrow

A single manual check is a snapshot. Most outages that damage a small product are not the dramatic ones you notice within minutes, they are the quiet ones that run for two days before a user finally emails you.

That is what continuous monitoring is for. Safeship runs this same request on a schedule, validates that the response still looks the way it should, and tells you when it stops. If you use Claude Code or Cursor, the Safeship MCP server can set the whole thing up from your editor in one prompt.

Common questions

Can I check to see if a website is down?

Yes. Enter the address above and the check runs from our servers, outside your network and your ISP. You get the HTTP status code, the response time and the failure reason. If it succeeds here and fails for you, the site is up and the problem is on your side.

Why is my website down?

The common causes, in rough order of frequency: the web server is stopped or out of memory, the domain or hosting plan expired, a recent DNS change has not propagated, an SSL certificate expired, or a deploy shipped a configuration error. The status code above narrows it down: 5xx points at your server, a connection timeout at DNS or the host being unreachable.

Why isn't my website working for me but fine for everyone else?

Almost always something between you and the site rather than the site itself. Try another network, switch from Wi-Fi to mobile data, clear the browser cache or open a private window, and turn off any VPN or ad blocker. A cached DNS record on your machine is the usual culprit after a domain change.

What does a 200 status code mean?

That the server answered and considers the request successful. It does not mean the page is correct. A 200 can carry an empty body, an error page rendered by the application, or JSON missing the fields it should have, which is exactly the class of outage a plain ping never catches.

Why does it say the site is up when I see an error page?

Because many applications return an error page with a 200 status code. The check reports what the server said, not what the page looks like. To catch that case you need a check that validates the response body against what a healthy answer should contain.

Can I get alerted automatically next time?

Yes. This page is a one-shot check. Safeship runs the same check on a schedule and alerts you by email, webhook, SMS or WhatsApp when it fails. Free up to 5,000 checks a month, no card.