You type your address, and the page just spins. Before you call your host or start restoring backups, find out whether the site is really down, or whether the problem is only on your side. This takes a few minutes and saves a lot of panic.

1. Rule out your own connection

  • Try another site, such as a large, well-known one. If that fails too, the problem is your internet connection, not your website.
  • Switch networks. Open the site on your phone using mobile data, with Wi-Fi turned off. If it loads there, your office or home network is the problem, not the server.
  • Try a private window to rule out a broken extension or a cached copy. If it works in the private window, clear your browser's cache and cookies for the site.

2. Look at what the browser actually says

The message tells you where the problem is:

  • "This site can't be reached" or "server not found" (a DNS error) usually means the domain's DNS records are wrong or missing, or the domain has expired.
  • "Connection timed out" or "took too long to respond" points to the server or the hosting network being unreachable or overloaded.
  • "Connection refused" means the server answered, but nothing is listening for web traffic, for example because the web server software stopped.
  • A browser warning about the connection not being private means the SSL certificate has a problem. The site is running, but visitors are being stopped. See SSL certificate errors explained.
  • An error page with a number: 500 means something broke inside the site's code, 502 or 504 usually means the web server could not get an answer from the application behind it, and 503 means the server is overloaded or in maintenance.

3. Check from the outside

A single browser only tells you about one connection. To know whether the site is down for everyone, check it from somewhere else: another person's phone, another country, or a free "is it down" website. Our free tools can help with the likely causes: the SSL certificate checker shows whether the certificate is valid, and the domain expiry checker shows whether the domain registration is still active.

4. Check the usual suspects

If the site is down for everyone, work through the common causes:

  1. Did the domain expire? An expired domain stops working within hours or days. See what happens when a domain expires.
  2. Did the certificate expire? See SSL certificate expired: how to fix it.
  3. Is your hosting provider having a problem? Check their status page and your account for suspension notices or unpaid invoices.
  4. Did you change something recently? A plugin update, a code deployment or a DNS change an hour ago is the most likely culprit.
  5. Is the server out of resources? A full disk, exhausted memory or a traffic spike can take a site down.
  6. Was the site hacked? Hacked sites are sometimes taken offline by the host. See my website was hacked: what to do first.

Do not rely on finding out yourself

Most outages are not noticed by the owner first. They are noticed by a customer, often hours later, and often at night. Checking by hand only works when you happen to look.

A monitor does this for you around the clock. ServerMonitor requests your pages every minute, confirms a failure with a second check, and alerts you by email, Telegram, Slack or webhook, so you hear about it before your customers do. See what to monitor on your website for a sensible setup.