Uptime checks

Know straight away when your site goes down, so you can fix it before your visitors even notice.

What are uptime checks?

Uptime checks regularly confirm whether your site responds to visitor requests, so a problem gets caught and fixed before it costs you traffic. DomainDash checks your site as often as every minute, tracks response time, and tells you the moment something goes wrong, whether it's completely unreachable or just responding slowly. On paid plans we check from a second location too; see check locations. You'll be the first to know, not the last.

How uptime checks work

DomainDash sends a request to your site, just like a real visitor would. We look at three things:

1. Did your site respond? If we can't reach it at all, we mark it as Down.
2. Did it respond correctly? We check that the HTTP status code matches what you expect (usually 200 OK). If something else comes back, we flag it.
3. How quickly did it respond? We measure the full response time in milliseconds and track it over time so you can spot trends.

Based on these checks, your site gets one of these statuses:

Status	What it means
Healthy	Your site is responding normally and loading quickly
Needs attention	Your site is responding, but a check came back slow (above the slow threshold); individual rows show this as a Slow response
Down	Your site isn't responding or is returning an unexpected error
Paused	Checks have been stopped for this site (you can restart them any time)

By default, a response slower than 1000ms (one second) counts as a slow response and moves the site to "Needs attention". This threshold is the same across plans.

How often we check

How often we check depends on your plan: paid plans check as often as every minute. The more often we check, the sooner you hear about a problem. You can set the frequency per site in your site settings, within your plan's limits. See the plan comparison for the per-plan figures.

Confirming an incident before we alert you

A single failed check doesn't open an incident. DomainDash waits for confirmation first, so a one-off network blip doesn't wake you at 3am. How many consecutive checks need to agree depends on the kind of problem:

• A Down site needs two consecutive failed checks before the incident opens.
• A slow response is treated more patiently: a site has to stay slow for around a dozen checks in a row before it's flagged, so a brief wobble won't bother you.
• Expiry warnings (SSL or domain) open on the first confirmed check.

When a site looks down or returns the wrong content, DomainDash also re-checks it from your other locations in parallel: a quick burst across regions to rule out the possibility that one prober is having a bad moment rather than your site actually being down. See how incidents work for the full picture.

Understanding your uptime data

When you open a site, you'll see a few key pieces of information at the top:

• Uptime percentage: the proportion of checks that came back healthy in your selected timeframe. Anything above 99.5% shows in green.
• Average response time: how long your site typically takes to respond, in milliseconds. Under 300ms is great, under 1000ms is OK, and anything above that counts as a slow response.
• Total checks: how many individual checks we've run in the current timeframe.

Below these stats, a response time chart shows how your site's response speed has changed over time. Each point on the chart represents a check. Switch between different timeframes, from the last hour right up to a full year, using the buttons at the top of the page.

The check history

Scroll down to see every individual check we've run, most recent first. Each row shows:

• The HTTP status code (like HTTP 200)
• The response time in milliseconds
• Which location the check ran from
• When it happened

A check that came back slow is labelled Slow response in this list. (That's the per-check measurement; the site's overall status badge shows "Needs attention" when this happens.)

For the most recent check, you'll also see a timing breakdown showing how long each phase of the connection took: DNS lookup, connecting to the server, waiting for a response, and downloading the page. When your site is sluggish, this points you straight to where the slowness is — so you spend your time fixing the problem, not hunting for it.

How long do we keep check history?

Your plan determines how long uptime check history is retained. See the plan comparison for the figures, or upgrade your plan for longer history.

Going beyond a 200 response

A 200 OK status doesn't always mean the page is right. A deploy could leave the right status code but the wrong content. Content checks let you confirm the page actually contains what it should: a phrase, a CSS selector, or a snippet of JSON. See content checks for how to set them up.

Common uptime issues

When DomainDash flags an uptime problem, the uptime troubleshooting section walks you through what's happening and how to fix it. The most common ones:

• Site is down — start here if you're not sure which issue you have.
• Connection refused — the server is actively rejecting connections. Usually a stopped web server or firewall rule.
• Connection timeout — the server isn't responding at all. Usually overload, a deadlocked process, or a silent firewall drop.
• DNS resolution failed — the domain can't be resolved to an IP address.
• HTTP 5xx response — 500, 502, 503, 504. The server is broken or overwhelmed.
• Site responding slowly — DomainDash records a Slow response and the site moves to "Needs attention". Guides you through isolating the bottleneck phase.

See all uptime troubleshooting pages for the full list.

If your site goes Down, DomainDash opens an incident automatically and sends you a notification. See How incidents work for more on that.

Frequently asked questions

How often does DomainDash check my site for uptime?

How often we check depends on your plan: paid plans check as often as every minute. The more often we check, the sooner you hear about a problem. See the plan comparison for the per-plan figures.

What happens when my site responds slowly?

If your site responds but takes longer than usual (by default, above 1000ms, or one second) the site moves to Needs attention and the individual check is recorded as a Slow response. The site is still reachable, just sluggish. A slow response doesn't trigger an urgent alert the way a Down site does, but it's a sign worth looking into.

How is uptime percentage calculated?

Uptime percentage is the proportion of checks that returned a healthy status over the selected timeframe. Anything above 99.5% is highlighted in green. Slow responses count as healthy for uptime percentage; only Down checks reduce it.

Can DomainDash check a site that requires authentication?

DomainDash checks public URLs only. For an authenticated site, configure a public health-check endpoint (such as /health or /ping) that returns a 200 status code without requiring login, then point DomainDash at that path in your site settings.

Why isn't my site marked as Down when it's broken?

DomainDash uses a confirmation process: a single failed check doesn't open an incident. A Down site needs two consecutive failed checks before the site is marked Down. This filters out one-off network blips that don't represent real incidents.

Related

• Domain health check for how uptime, SSL, DNS, and registration roll up into one status
• SSL certificates for checking your site's security certificate
• Content checks for confirming the page contains what it should
• Check locations for comparing performance from different parts of the world
• How incidents work for what happens when your site goes down