Is my website down? How to check and what to do next

How to tell in two minutes whether your website is down for everyone or just you, what each error message means, and what to fix or send to your host.

Your website will not load, a customer has just texted you a screenshot of an error, and you need to know two things fast: is it really down, and whose problem is it? This guide answers both in the order you should check them, explains what each common error message means, and lists exactly what to send your hosting company so the fix starts on the first reply rather than the third.

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

A surprising number of "outages" are a problem with one computer or one network. Check these before anything else; together they take about two minutes:

1. 1Open the site on your phone with Wi-Fi turned off, so it uses mobile data. If it loads there, the site is up and the problem is on your computer or your office network.
2. 2Use an outside checker such as downforeveryoneorjustme.com or isitdownrightnow.com. They try to load your site from their servers and tell you what they see.
3. 3Try a private or incognito window. If the site loads there but not in your normal window, an old cached page or a browser extension is the cause.
4. 4Ask someone elsewhere to open it. A customer, a friend in another city, anyone not on your network.

Step 2: Read the error message

The error page is not just bad news; it is a clue. It tells you which part of the chain failed: the domain, the connection to the server, the server itself, or the website's own code. Use this table to find where to look.

Step 3: Check the domain hasn't expired

If the error says the site cannot be found, check the domain before the hosting. An expired domain takes the website and your email offline at the same time, which is the giveaway. Look up your domain with our WHOIS lookup and read the expiry date and status. If it has expired, log in to your registrar and renew it straight away: after expiry there is usually a grace period when renewal costs the normal price, followed by a redemption period when it costs much more.

If the domain is current, compare its nameservers in the WHOIS result with the ones your host told you to use. A nameserver change made by someone else (a previous web designer, or a new service you signed up for) sends every visitor to the wrong place. Our guide to keeping control of your domain covers how to stop that happening again.

Step 4: Ask what changed

Websites rarely break on their own. If the site worked yesterday, something changed between then and now, and finding it is usually faster than any diagnosis:

• A plugin, theme or WordPress update, including automatic ones.
• An edit to .htaccess, wp-config.php or a theme file.
• A DNS or nameserver change, or a new email or CDN service.
• A new security plugin or firewall rule.
• An unpaid invoice or expired card on the hosting or domain account.

If you can identify the change, undo it. On WordPress, you can disable all plugins without logging in by renaming the wp-content/plugins folder in your host's file manager; rename it back and re-enable plugins one by one to find the culprit. If you cannot identify the change, restoring yesterday's backup is often the quickest fix. Read the restore steps in our backup tutorial before you need them.

If the site loads, but not as you left it

A page full of pharmacy or casino links, redirects to another site, or a Google warning that the "site may be hacked" is not downtime; it is a compromise. Do not just delete the visible spam, because the way in is usually still open. Follow our hacked website recovery guide from the first step.

Step 5: What to send your host

If the steps above point at the server, contact your host. A ticket that answers the first round of questions up front gets fixed faster. Include:

1. 1The exact address that fails, and whether every page fails or only some.
2. 2The exact error text or a screenshot, and the time it started.
3. 3Whether it fails on mobile data as well as your own network.
4. 4Your public IP address, in case you are being blocked.
5. 5Anything that changed recently, from the list in Step 4.

Serverlys customers can open a ticket from the support page. Mark it urgent if the whole site is down.

So it doesn't catch you out next time

• Set up uptime monitoring. Free monitoring services check your site every few minutes and email or text you when it stops responding, so you hear about it before a customer does. Our uptime explained guide covers what to expect from a host.
• Turn on auto-renew for your domain and keep the card on file current. Use an email address for renewal notices that does not depend on the domain itself.
• Keep automatic daily backups stored away from the server, and test a restore once.
• Update in a staging copy first for anything bigger than a minor release. See our WordPress staging guide.
• Write down who has access to your domain, hosting and DNS. Our guide on who has access to your website has a checklist.