Regional checks
See how your site performs from different parts of the world, because fast for you doesn't always mean fast for everyone.
Overview
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. DomainDash lets you monitor your site from multiple regions so you can spot performance differences and make sure your site works well for everyone, wherever they are.
How regional checks work
When you add a site, DomainDash checks it from a primary region, the location closest to where most of your visitors are. You can optionally add a second region to compare, which gives you a clear picture of how geography affects your site's performance.
We currently check from servers in:
- Europe: Ireland, United Kingdom, Germany
- North America: US East (Virginia, Ohio), US West (N. California, Oregon)
- Asia Pacific: Singapore, Australia (Sydney), Japan (Tokyo)
Enabling regional checks
- Open your site settings
From your site's overview page, click the three-dot menu in the top-right corner and select Settings. Then navigate to the Uptime tab.
- Choose your primary region
Under Where to check from, select the region closest to most of your visitors as your primary location. This is where the majority of your checks will run from.
- Add a secondary region
Optionally, pick a second region to compare against. Choose somewhere your visitors also come from, or somewhere geographically distant from your primary region to get the broadest picture.
- Save your changes
Click Save changes and you're done. DomainDash will start running checks from both locations, and you'll see the results on your site's overview and uptime pages.
You can also enable a region directly from the response time chart on your site's overview page. Click on a region pill and confirm in the modal that appears.
Understanding regional data
When you have two regions enabled, the response time chart on your site's overview and uptime pages shows two overlaid lines, one for each region. This makes it easy to compare performance at a glance:
- Primary region is shown as the main chart line.
- Secondary region is shown as a second line in a different colour.
If the lines are close together, your site performs similarly from both locations. A big gap means visitors in the slower region are having a noticeably different experience.
What the differences mean
- Small gap (under 100ms): Normal. A little variation between regions is expected.
- Moderate gap (100--300ms): Worth noting. Visitors in the slower region 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 region.
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 reduces load times for distant visitors. Popular CDN options include Cloudflare, Fastly, and AWS CloudFront.
Related
- Uptime monitoring for how uptime checks and response times work
- Site settings for configuring check frequency, regions, and more