Check locations

See how your site performs from different parts of the world, because fast for you doesn't always mean fast for everyone.

What are check locations?

Check locations are the places DomainDash runs uptime checks from. Your site might load in under a second from your office, but visitors on the other side of the world could be waiting three or four times longer. By checking from a second location, you can spot the difference and make sure your site works well for everyone, wherever they are.

Every site is checked from a primary location. The Free plan checks from that single location. Every paid plan checks from two: on Starter, DomainDash alternates between your two locations, checking one on each cycle; on Pro and Business, both are checked on every cycle, so you get two continuous lines on the chart to compare side by side.

DomainDash checks from at most two locations per site.

Plan availability

Multi-location checks is available on Starter, Pro and Business. See the plan comparison.Free checks from a single location. Starter alternates between two locations; Pro and Business check both at once.

How check locations work

When you add a site, DomainDash checks it from a primary location — the place closest to where most of your visitors are. On any paid plan, you can add a second location to compare, which gives you a clear picture of how geography affects your site's performance.

We currently check from servers across Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and South America. You'll see the full list of locations you can choose from in the location picker in your site settings — so you can check from wherever your visitors actually are.

Choosing where to check from

1. Open your site settings

   From your site's overview page, open the toolbar menu and choose Settings, then go to the Uptime section.

2. Choose your primary location

   Under Where to check from, pick the location closest to most of your visitors as your primary. This is the main place your checks run from.

3. Add a second location (paid plans)

   On any paid plan, pick a second location to compare against. Choose somewhere your visitors also come from, or somewhere geographically distant from your primary to get the broadest picture. Starter alternates between the two locations; Pro and Business check both at once. The Free plan checks from the single primary location.

4. Save your changes

   Click Save changes and you're done. If you've added a second location, DomainDash will check from both, and you'll see the results on your site's overview and uptime pages.

You can also enable a location directly from the response time chart on your site's overview page. Click a location pill and confirm in the modal that appears.

Understanding location data

When two locations are checked simultaneously (Pro and Business), the response time chart on your site's overview and uptime pages shows two overlaid lines, one for each location. This makes it easy to compare performance at a glance:

• Primary location is shown as the main chart line.
• Second location is shown as a second line in a different colour.

If the lines are close together, your site performs similarly from both places. A big gap means visitors in the slower location are having a noticeably different experience — and now you can see it, rather than wonder about it.

(On the Free plan your site is checked from a single location, so the chart shows one response time line. On Starter, checks alternate between your two locations rather than running both at once.)

What the differences mean

• Small gap (under 100ms): Normal. A little variation between locations is expected.
• Moderate gap (100--300ms): Worth noting. Visitors in the slower location might notice the difference, especially on slower connections.
• Large gap (300ms+): Significant. Consider using a CDN (content delivery network) to cache your site's content closer to visitors in the slower location.

Those thresholds aren't arbitrary. Google's research on mobile page speed found that the probability of a visitor bouncing increases by 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds — so even a few hundred milliseconds of difference can move real numbers.

Using a CDN

A CDN stores copies of your site's pages and assets on servers around the world. When a visitor requests your site, they get served from the nearest CDN server rather than your origin server, which dramatically improves response times for distant visitors. Popular CDN options include Cloudflare, Fastly, and AWS CloudFront.

Frequently asked questions

Which locations does DomainDash check from?

DomainDash runs checks from servers across Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and South America. You pick a primary location per site, and optionally a second location to compare. The full list of locations you can choose from is shown in the location picker in your site settings.

Are multi-location checks available on every plan?

They're on every paid plan. The Free plan checks from a single location. Starter checks from two locations, alternating between them on each cycle; Pro and Business check both locations at the same time, so you can compare two response-time lines side by side. See the plan comparison for the details.

Why are my response times different between locations?

Distance and routing. Data travels along undersea fibre cables at roughly the speed of light, so a request from London to Sydney has to make a ~17,000 km round trip — adding around 270ms of unavoidable round-trip delay before your server even responds. A CDN that caches content closer to visitors usually closes this gap dramatically.

How do I add a second check location?

Open your site's settings, go to the Uptime section, and pick a second location under "Where to check from". You can also enable a location directly from the response time chart on the site overview — click a location pill and confirm.

Related

• Uptime checks for how uptime checks and response times work
• Server locations for the world map of where your site's servers live
• Site settings for configuring check frequency, locations, and more