Check locations

See how your site performs for visitors in different parts of the world.

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. Checking from a second location shows you the difference.

We currently check from servers across Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and South America. The location picker in your site settings shows the full list.

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

DomainDash checks every site from a primary location. It defaults to the location nearest you, and you can change it when you add the site.

How many locations you get depends on your plan:

• Free checks from the primary location only.
• Starter allows two locations and alternates between them, checking from one on each cycle.
• Pro and Business allow two locations and check from both every time, so you get two continuous lines on the chart to compare.

When you add a site on a paid plan, DomainDash gives it a second location: the nearest one to your primary, unless you pick one with Add a second location in the add-site dialog.

A site doesn't gain a second location when you upgrade. If you added the site on the Free plan, or a downgrade or the end of the trial cut it back to its primary location, add the second one yourself using the steps below. You choose at most two locations per site.

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 tab.

2. Choose your primary location

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

3. Add a second location (paid plans)

   On a paid plan, pick a location in the Secondary field. A site created on a paid plan already has one there, which you can change. A site added on the Free plan, or cut back to its primary location by a downgrade or the trial ending, has none until you add it. Choose somewhere your visitors also come from, or somewhere geographically distant from your primary to get the broadest picture.

4. Save your changes

   Click Save changes. You'll see the results on your site's overview and uptime pages.

You can also enable a location 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

On Pro and Business, the response time chart on your site's overview and uptime pages shows two overlaid lines, one for each location:

• The primary location is the main chart line.
• The second location is a second line in a different colour.

On the Free plan the chart shows one response time line.

If the lines are close together, your site performs similarly from both places. A big gap means visitors in the slower location are waiting longer.

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.

For context, 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.

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, the nearest CDN server answers in place of your origin server, which cuts 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. The location picker in your site settings shows the full list.

Are multi-location checks available on every plan?

They're on every paid plan. The Free plan checks from one location per site. Starter alternates between its two locations, and Pro and Business check from both every time. 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, and London to Sydney is about 17,000 km each way, which adds around 270ms of round-trip delay before your server responds. A CDN that caches content closer to visitors usually closes most of this gap.

How do I add a second check location?

On a paid plan, open the site's settings, go to the Uptime tab, and pick a location in the Secondary field under Where to check from. A site created on a paid plan already has one, which you can change there. A site added on the Free plan doesn't gain one when you upgrade, so add it yourself. You can also enable a location 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