Guides
Understanding website outages
Plain-English help for figuring out website outages and connection problems. Start with whichever question brought you here.
Causes
Why is a website down? 8 common causes
From server crashes and expired domains to DDoS attacks and bad deploys — the real reasons sites go offline, and what (if anything) you can do about each.
Diagnose
Down for everyone or just me? How to tell
A step-by-step way to figure out whether an outage is on the website's side or your own — and a checklist of local fixes to try.
Reference
HTTP status codes explained (200, 404, 500…)
What those three-digit codes mean in plain English, which ones signal a real outage, and which are perfectly normal.
How-to
How to check if a website is down
Several reliable methods — from our instant checker to ping, browser tools, and status pages — so you always get a clear answer.
Or skip ahead and check a site now