Down for everyone or just for you?
If a website does not load there are two possibilities: the site's server is broken – or the problem is on your way there (Wi-Fi, provider, DNS cache, firewall, VPN, browser extension). This check requests the address from a different place. If the site responds here, your connection is the problem. If it does not respond here either, it is down for everyone.
What the result means
- Responds with 200: the site is reachable. Not for you? Flush the DNS cache, try another network (mobile), disable extensions and VPN.
- 301/302: the address redirects; the target is the actual page. Long chains slow things down.
- 403/404: the server is alive but serves no page: access forbidden or the address does not exist. Often only a subpage is affected.
- 500/502/503/504: the server responds but the application behind it is broken (crash, maintenance, overloaded backend). That is a real outage.
- DNS error: the host name cannot be resolved – domain expired, name servers broken or a typo.
- Connection failed / timeout: the server is off, a firewall blocks or the network is overloaded.
- TLS error: certificate expired or wrong host name – browsers show a warning instead of the page.
Don't wait for customers to call
A check shows the moment. Anyone running websites for clients wants to know when a site goes down – before the client notices. DomainWarn checks every domain around the clock every minute from several locations, confirms outages via a second location and reports them by email, Slack, Teams or SMS; plus certificates, DNS, email authentication and domain expiry.
Frequently asked questions
- The site responds here but not for me – what now?
- Flush the DNS cache (restart the router or ipconfig /flushdns / sudo dscacheutil -flushcache), try another network (mobile instead of Wi-Fi), disable browser extensions, proxy and VPN. If it persists, a filter is blocking (company firewall, parental control, hosts file).
- Where is the check run from?
- From our server in Germany (Frankfurt). Continuous monitoring additionally checks from further locations and only confirms an outage via a second place.
- Does the tool check subpages and login areas too?
- Any publicly reachable address. Pages behind a login usually respond with 401 or 302 to the sign-in page – that counts as reachable.
- Why does the tool show 403?
- The server refuses access, often a bot protection or geo-block rejecting the check request. For real visitors in a browser the page is usually still reachable.