Website Status Checker

How to use the website status checker

1. Enter the address of the website or page you want to test, for example example.com or https://example.com/shop. If you leave out https://, we add it for you.
2. Click "Check Website Status". Our server requests the page right away, just like a visitor's browser would.
3. Read the result. You'll see whether the website is up or down, the HTTP status code, the response time, the final URL after redirects and, if something failed, the exact reason.

The check runs from our server, not from your device, which is what makes it useful for answering the classic question: is this website down for everyone, or just for me?

Is the website online? What "online" really means

"Online" means more than a server being switched on. A visitor can only use a website when every link in the chain works: the domain resolves in DNS, the server accepts the connection, the SSL certificate is valid and the application returns a working page. That's why this checker reports three kinds of outcome:

• Online: the site answered with a 2xx or 3xx status code, so visitors can load it.
• Online but broken: the server answered, but with an error such as 403, 404, 500 or 503. Technically reachable, practically unusable.
• Offline: no usable answer at all, because of a DNS failure, timeout, SSL error or refused connection.

A simple ping can't tell these apart: many servers answer pings while the website on them shows errors, and others block pings while the site works fine. Checking the actual web page, as this tool does, is the reliable way to check if a website is online. Our guide how to check if a website is online or down compares all the methods.

Down for everyone or just me?

Compare what you see with what the website status checker reports:

Swipe sideways to see the whole diagram

You can open the site	Our check	What it most likely means
No	Up	The problem is on your side: connection, DNS resolver, browser extension, VPN, proxy or firewall.
No	Down	The website itself has a problem. Wait, or contact the site owner or hosting provider.
Yes	Down	The site probably blocks automated requests or traffic from data centres, or restricts access by region.
Yes	Up	Everything is working. If a specific page fails, check that exact URL.

If the problem seems to be on your side, try a hard refresh (Ctrl+Shift+R, or Cmd+Shift+R on a Mac), a private window, another browser, or your phone on mobile data. Our guide How to Check If a Website Is Online or Down walks through every step.

What the results mean

A website counts as up when the final response has a 2xx or 3xx status code. Everything else counts as down, and the checker tells you which layer failed:

Result	Meaning	Where to look next
HTTP 200	The page loaded normally.	Nothing to fix.
HTTP 301 / 302	The address redirects; we follow up to 5 redirects and report the final page.	Long chains slow pages down: inspect redirects.
HTTP 403	The server refused access, often a firewall or bot protection rule.	Security plugin, CDN or firewall settings.
HTTP 404	The page doesn't exist at this address.	Check the URL, or add a redirect if the page moved.
HTTP 500	The application failed while building the page.	Application and web server error logs, recent updates.
HTTP 502 / 504	A proxy or load balancer got no valid or timely answer from the app behind it.	Application process, upstream timeouts.
HTTP 503	The server is overloaded or in maintenance mode.	Server resources, maintenance settings.
DNS failure	The domain name could not be resolved.	DNS records, domain registration.
Timeout	No answer within 15 seconds.	Server load, network, firewall.
SSL/TLS error	The secure connection failed, often an expired or mismatched certificate.	SSL certificate checker.
Connection refused	The server is reachable but nothing accepts web connections.	Web server process, hosting control panel.

For a complete explanation of the codes, read Understanding HTTP Status Codes. For the most common reasons websites go offline, see What Causes Website Downtime?

How this website status checker works

Swipe sideways to see the whole diagram

When you submit an address, our server sends an HTTP GET request with the User-Agent UptimeStatsBot/1.0 and waits up to 15 seconds for an answer. We follow up to 5 redirects, read the response headers and at most 64 KB of the page, then close the connection. The response time is measured until the first response headers arrive.

For security, the checker only accepts public http:// and https:// addresses and refuses private, local and reserved network addresses, so it can't be used to probe internal systems. The number of checks per visitor is limited to prevent abuse.

Keep in mind that this is a single check from a single location. If you need to know why a site is slow rather than whether it's up, the website response time checker breaks the response down into DNS, connection, SSL and server time.

Checking your own website? Automate it

A website status checker answers "is it up right now?". It can't tell you about the outage that happens at 3 a.m. or while you're in a meeting. That's what uptime monitoring is for: the same check, repeated automatically every few minutes, with an alert when your site goes down and another when it recovers.

UptimeStats does this for free for up to 5 websites, every 5 minutes, with confirmation checks before alerting, response time charts, incident history and SSL expiry tracking.