What is a website status checker?
A website status checker sends an HTTP request to a URL from outside your network and reports whether the site answered. Visual Sentinel’s checker also returns the status code, response time, SSL state, DNS timing, and redirects. It answers “is this site down?” without an account.
Is my website down right now?
Enter your URL in the checker above. Visual Sentinel sends real external HTTP requests from available check regions and reports the status code, response time, SSL certificate status, DNS timing, and redirect path. If every region fails while your browser works, compare from another network or create a continuous monitor to confirm whether the issue is regional, cached, or firewall-related.
How do you check if a website is down or just unreachable from me?
Use a checker that runs outside your local network and compare the result with your browser, mobile data, or another connection. If Visual Sentinel reports the site is up from its check regions but it fails for you, the issue is usually local DNS, ISP routing, browser cache, or a firewall rule. If every checker region also fails, the site, origin server, CDN, or DNS path likely needs investigation.
What does partially reachable mean?
Partially reachable means at least one Visual Sentinel check region can reach the site and at least one region cannot. That usually points to regional DNS propagation, CDN edge trouble, ISP routing, firewall geoblocking, or a hosting issue affecting only part of the internet.
Is the website status checker really free?
Yes. The on-demand website status checker is free and does not require an account, email address, or API key. Fair-use rate limits protect the service from abuse. The checker is funded by Visual Sentinel’s paid monitoring plans, which monitor sites continuously instead of only when you run a manual check.
What do the different HTTP status codes mean?
200 means the site loaded successfully. 301 and 302 are redirects to another URL. 403 means access is forbidden. 404 means the page does not exist. 500 is a generic server error. 502 means a gateway (Cloudflare, Nginx, load balancer) could not reach the origin. 503 means the origin is overloaded or in maintenance mode. 504 means the gateway timed out waiting for the origin. Visit /blog/what-is-502-bad-gateway-and-how-to-fix-it for a full gateway-error diagnosis guide.
Why does my site load for me but the checker shows it is down?
Three common causes: a CDN cache served the page to your browser while the origin is down, your browser has an active session cookie that bypasses access control, or the site blocks the checker through a firewall, bot rule, or geoblocking policy. Try an incognito window from mobile data and review CDN or firewall logs to reproduce what the checker sees.
How do I monitor a website continuously instead of checking on demand?
Sign up for a Visual Sentinel account. Free covers 3 monitors with 10-minute HTTP checks, SSL expiry alerts, email, and browser push with no card. Solo and Starter allow 5-minute uptime checks; Business and Agency allow 1-minute checks. Additional notification channels depend on the plan, and confirmation or alert-delay settings can add time before a message is sent.
Does the checker also test SSL certificates and DNS?
An HTTPS website check reports certificate validity, issuer, and days remaining, plus DNS lookup timing for the request. For selected DNS record values, use /tools/dns-checker, which provides one service-resolver observation rather than a global propagation matrix. For leaf-certificate identity, trust, hostname, and expiry details, use /tools/ssl-checker; it does not report protocol or cipher coverage.