Is My Website Down or Just Me? How to Tell in 5 Minutes

To find out whether your website is down for everyone or just for you, check it from somewhere that isn't your network. Run it through an online down checker, or turn off Wi-Fi and open it on your phone over mobile data. If it loads from outside, the problem is your connection or device. If it fails from outside too, the site really is down, and the error message tells you which layer has failed.

You can do the outside check in a few seconds with our free Website Down Checker. It looks up your domain in DNS, requests the home page over HTTPS (falling back to HTTP), and reports the status code, the response time and whether HTTPS works. The rest of this guide covers what to do with that answer.

Step 1: Is it down for everyone, or just you?

Run at least two of these checks before you do anything else:

1. An outside checker. Our Website Down Checker tests from a server in Germany, so it's completely separate from your office or home network.
2. Your phone on mobile data. Turn Wi-Fi off first, so you're on a different network, ISP and DNS resolver.
3. Someone elsewhere. Ask a colleague or friend on a different broadband provider to try it.

Then compare the results:

Most "the website is down!" calls turn out to be the first row.

Step 2: If it's only you

When the site loads from outside but not for you, work through these causes, roughly in order of how often they come up.

A stale DNS answer on your device

If you or your developer recently changed hosts or DNS records, your computer may still be using the old IP address. Clear the cached answers:

# Windows (Command Prompt)
ipconfig /flushdns

# macOS
sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

In Chrome you can also clear its own cache at chrome://net-internals/#dns. Our guide to DNS propagation explains why old answers stick around until their TTL expires.

To see which IP address you're getting compared with a public resolver:

nslookup example.com
nslookup example.com 1.1.1.1

If the two answers differ, your local resolver (often your router or ISP) is still serving the old record.

A hosts file override

Developers sometimes add a line to the hosts file to preview a site on a new server, then forget to remove it. Look for your domain in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts on Windows or /etc/hosts on macOS and Linux.

Your server's firewall has blocked your IP

This is very common on cPanel hosting. Security tools like cPHulk, CSF/LFD and Imunify360 automatically block an IP address after repeated failed logins to WordPress, cPanel, FTP or email. A member of staff with an old email password saved on their phone can get the whole office blocked, because everyone in the office shares one public IP address.

The giveaway is a site that works on mobile data but times out on office Wi-Fi. Ask your host to check their firewall for your IP address (our What Is My IP tool shows it) and unblock it.

VPN, office proxy or ISP filtering

Corporate VPNs and web filters sometimes block new or wrongly categorised domains. Home broadband and router filters, such as BT Parental Controls and Sky Broadband Shield in the UK, can also block a site they've miscategorised. Try with the VPN off. If an ISP filter is blocking your site, report it to that ISP as a miscategorisation.

Step 3: If it's down for everyone, find the broken layer

A web page loads in layers: the domain resolves in DNS, a connection reaches the server, TLS is negotiated, an optional CDN or firewall passes the request on, and the server builds the page. The error you see tells you which layer failed.

DNS and the domain

If our checker says the domain doesn't resolve, nothing else matters yet. Check:

• Expiry. An unpaid renewal is the most common cause of a sudden, complete outage. Look up the domain at your registrar, or with a WHOIS or RDAP lookup. Our guide on what happens when a domain expires covers the .uk and .com timelines and how to get the domain back.
• Records. Use our DNS Lookup to confirm the A/AAAA records and nameservers still point where they should. Someone may have changed nameservers while setting up email or a new website builder.
• Recent changes. If records were changed in the last day or so, use the DNS Propagation Checker to see which resolvers still have the old answer.

The hosting server

If DNS is fine but the connection times out or you get a 5xx error, the problem is with your host. Check:

• Your host's status page for announced incidents.
• Your hosting control panel for resource limits. Shared hosting accounts get throttled or return 503 errors when they hit CPU, memory or process limits.
• Error logs (error_log files in cPanel, or your server's Apache/Nginx logs) for the exact error after a 500.
• Recent changes. A plugin update, theme edit or deploy just before the outage is the prime suspect. On WordPress, renaming the newest plugin's folder over SFTP or in the File Manager often brings the site back.

If you see unfamiliar files, redirects to spam sites or a defaced home page, treat it as a security incident rather than a normal outage. Our guide to the signs your website was hacked covers the first hour.

SSL/TLS

A certificate that has expired or failed to renew doesn't take the server offline, but browsers show a full-page warning, so for customers it looks the same as an outage. Run our SSL Checker to see the expiry date, issuer and chain. Our guide to common SSL certificate errors matches each browser message to its fix.

The CDN or proxy in front of the site

If you use Cloudflare, its own error pages tell you where the fault is:

• 521 Web server is down. Your server refused Cloudflare's connection.
• 522 Connection timed out. Your server didn't answer in time, often because a firewall is blocking Cloudflare's IP ranges.
• 523 Origin is unreachable. Cloudflare couldn't route to your server, usually because the DNS record points at the wrong IP address.
• 524 A timeout occurred. The connection worked, but your server took too long to send a response.
• 525 / 526. The SSL handshake between Cloudflare and your server failed, or the certificate on your server is invalid.

In every one of these cases, Cloudflare itself is working. The fix is on your hosting server, so take the error code and the Ray ID shown on the page to your host. The Cloudflare error documentation explains each code.

Checking it yourself from a terminal

If you're comfortable with a terminal, curl shows you exactly what the server sends back:

curl -sI https://example.com/

The first line of the output, such as HTTP/2 200 or HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable, is the status code. Add -v to see the DNS lookup, connection and TLS handshake step by step, which shows exactly where it stops. For more on what each code means, see our HTTP status codes and SEO guide.

Who to contact

Send the problem to the right person the first time:

When you raise a ticket, include the exact URL, the error or status code, when it started, any recent changes, and whether it works on mobile data.

Keeping customers informed during an outage

Customers forgive downtime more easily than silence. Some practical steps:

• Post on the channels you still control. Your Google Business Profile, social accounts and email list keep working when the website doesn't. A short message ("Our website is down; orders by phone on [your number] until it's fixed") stops people assuming you've closed.
• Have a status page that isn't on your own server. A status page on the same hosting account goes down with the site. Several uptime services offer free hosted status pages. Check their current plan limits and terms before you rely on one.
• Use a proper maintenance response for planned work. During planned maintenance, return a 503 Service Unavailable with a Retry-After header rather than a normal page saying "back soon". Search engines treat a 503 as temporary, while a maintenance message served as a 200 can be mistaken for your real content.

Find out before your customers do

All the checks above are manual. To be told the moment a site goes down, you need an uptime monitor that checks every few minutes and alerts you by email, SMS or an app. Free options include the free tiers of hosted services such as UptimeRobot and Better Stack, or the open-source Uptime Kuma if you'd rather run it yourself. Our website monitoring guide covers what else to watch after launch.

MakeItFlow doesn't do minute-by-minute uptime alerts. Our Website Monitoring (Starter plan and up) re-runs a full audit of your saved sites daily or weekly and emails you when the score changes, which catches slower problems such as a certificate close to expiry, a dropped security header or a speed regression. It works alongside an uptime monitor rather than replacing one. For a quick check whenever someone says "the site's down", bookmark the Website Down Checker.

FAQ

How do I check if a website is down for everyone?

Test it from a network that isn't yours. Use an online down checker, which requests the site from its own server, or load the site on your phone with Wi-Fi turned off. If it fails from both, it's down for everyone. If it works from both, the problem is on your side.

Why is my website down only on my Wi-Fi?

The most common causes are an old DNS answer cached on your device or router, a VPN or office web filter, and a firewall on your hosting server that has blocked your office's IP address after repeated failed logins. Flush your DNS cache, try with the VPN off, and ask your host to check whether your IP is blocked.

My site shows a Cloudflare 522 error. Is Cloudflare down?

Usually not. A 522 means Cloudflare is working but your hosting server didn't respond in time, often because the server is overloaded or a firewall is blocking Cloudflare's IP ranges. Contact your host with the error code and the Ray ID shown on the page.

Can an expired domain make my website go down?

Yes. Once a domain expires, the registrar usually stops pointing it at your server, so both the website and email stop working. Renewing quickly normally restores service, though DNS changes can take a few hours to reach every resolver.

Does downtime hurt my Google rankings?

A short outage of a few hours rarely has a lasting effect. Google's documentation says that server errors make its crawlers slow down temporarily. URLs that keep returning server errors over a long period are eventually dropped from the index. For planned work, return a 503 with a Retry-After header and keep the downtime as short as you can.

How can I get alerted when my website goes down?

Use an uptime monitoring service that checks your site every few minutes and alerts you by email, SMS or push notification. Free tiers of hosted services and self-hosted tools like Uptime Kuma are enough for most small businesses. Keep the alert contacts up to date so the alert reaches someone who can act on it.