# How to check if a website is down (or if it's just you)

> Four checks, in order: another network, DNS, a direct request with curl, and a look at the response itself. Two minutes, no tools to install.

Published: 2026-07-27 | Updated: 2026-08-09 | Canonical: https://yoping.me/guides/how-to-check-if-a-website-is-down

A site that won't load has two possible problems: the site, or everything
between you and it. The fastest way to tell them apart is to change one thing
at a time. Work through these in order - each one takes seconds.

## Is it down for everyone, or just you?

Load the site on your phone with Wi-Fi turned off. That swaps your network,
your DNS resolver, and your machine in one move. If the site loads over
mobile data, the site is fine and the problem is on your side - usually DNS
cache, a VPN, a proxy, or your office network.

If you don't have a second network handy, a public checker works too, but
treat it as one data point, not a verdict: many only test from a single
location.

## Does the name still resolve?

Ask DNS directly, bypassing your own cache:

```
dig example.com @1.1.1.1 +short
```

No answer means the problem is upstream of the server - an expired domain, a
broken DNS record, or a nameserver outage. An answer that looks wrong (an IP
you don't recognize can still be normal behind a CDN) is worth comparing
against a second resolver:

```
dig example.com @8.8.8.8 +short
```

If both return nothing, stop here: no server change will fix a name that
doesn't resolve.

## Does the server answer at all?

Request just the headers:

```
curl -sI https://example.com
```

Three outcomes, three different problems:

- **A status line comes back** (`HTTP/2 200`, `301`, `502`, anything) - the
  server is reachable. The site may still be broken, but the network path
  isn't the issue. Read the status code: `5xx` means the server or something
  behind it is failing; `4xx` means it answered and refused.
- **`Could not resolve host`** - DNS again; go back one step.
- **A hang, then a timeout** - the server or its network is unreachable.
  A firewall, a dead machine, or an outage at the host.

TLS errors (`certificate has expired`, handshake failures) sit in between:
the server is up, but its certificate isn't. Browsers will refuse the site
even though the machine behind it is running.

## Is it only down from some places?

A site can be up in Europe and unreachable from Asia - routing problems,
regional CDN failures, and geo-blocking all look like "down" to the people
affected. This is the one check you can't do properly from a single laptop:
you need vantage points in different regions, checking on a schedule, so you
also know *when* it started.

That's the part worth automating. YoPingMe checks your site from two regions
you choose out of five probe locations on three continents, and only alerts by
email, webhook, or Slack when both regions agree it's actually down, so one
flaky network path doesn't page you. You pick the two per monitor, so a site
that is geo-blocked in one country stops raising false alarms.
[The free plan covers 10 monitors](https://app.yoping.me/signup), and the first
check runs while you sign up.