Uptime checks

Find out when your site goes down, usually within a couple of minutes on a paid plan, and see when it starts responding slowly.

What are uptime checks?

Uptime checks confirm, on a schedule, that your site responds to visitor requests. DomainDash checks your site as often as every minute, tracks its response time, and alerts you if the site is down: usually within a couple of minutes on a paid plan, and around six minutes on Free. Paid plans can check from a second location too; see check locations.

How uptime checks work

DomainDash sends a request to your site, as a visitor's browser would. We look at three things:

1. Did your site respond? If we can't reach it, the check fails.
2. Did it respond correctly? Each site has an Expected response setting, which defaults to 200. With 200 selected, any 2xx or 3xx status code counts as healthy. We don't follow redirects, so the redirect response itself counts as healthy. Any other choice (301, for example) must match exactly.
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; individual rows show this as a Slow response
Down	Your site isn't responding, returned a 4xx or 5xx response (unless that is the Expected response you chose) or another status that doesn't match its Expected response, or failed its content check
Paused	Checks have been stopped for this site (you can restart them any time)

A response that takes 1000ms (one second) or longer counts as a slow response, and the site shows "Needs attention" straight away. The threshold is the same for every site and plan.

A certificate, DNS or domain problem doesn't by itself make a site Down, but it does show on the site's badge. The exception is a failed TLS handshake: the uptime check connects over HTTPS, so if the secure connection fails outright, the uptime check fails too and the site shows Down. See domain health check for which badge appears when.

How often we check

The Free plan checks every 5 minutes. Starter, Pro and Business check as often as every minute. Per site you choose 1, 5, 10 or 15 minutes on the Uptime tab of your site settings, within your plan's limit. See the plan comparison for the per-plan figures.

Confirming an incident before we alert you

The site shows Down from the first failed check. The incident is Confirming at that point, and DomainDash sends nothing until the problem repeats, so a one-off network blip doesn't wake you at 3am. How many checks in a row it takes depends on the kind of problem:

• A Down incident is confirmed after two failed checks in a row.
• An incident for a site responding slowly opens after 12 slow checks in a row. The site's status already shows "Needs attention" from the first slow check. The incident is what waits.
• An expiry incident (SSL or domain) opens on the first check, and closes on the first passing check with no Recovering stage.

While a Down or content-check incident is being confirmed, is open, or is recovering, DomainDash checks from all of the site's own locations at once, and a site with one location also borrows the nearest other one. These extra checks start within about 15 minutes.

After the first passing check on a Down or content-check incident, the site page header reads Recovering. Once recovery is confirmed it reads Healthy, unless uptime for the selected timeframe (24 hours by default) is under 97%. In that case it reads Unstable until the figure recovers. Roughly 45 minutes of downtime in a day is enough.

A site that was responding slowly recovers in one of two ways. If no incident has opened for it, the site reads Healthy as soon as a check comes back under 1000ms. If one is open, the first passing check shows Recovering and the next shows Healthy, and the incident itself closes after 12 passing checks. See how incidents work for the full picture.

Understanding your uptime data

When you open a site, the top of the page shows:

• 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 1000ms or more 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 timeframes, from the last hour 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.

When the latest check got a successful response, slow ones included, its row also shows a timing breakdown of each phase of the connection: DNS, TCP, TLS, Server, Download and Total. The breakdown doesn't show for an error response or a failed connection, and it appears only on the first page of the history. When your site is sluggish, the breakdown shows which phase is slow.

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 confirm the page 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?

The Free plan checks every 5 minutes. Starter, Pro and Business check as often as every minute. Per site you choose 1, 5, 10 or 15 minutes, within your plan's limit.

What happens when my site responds slowly?

A response that takes 1000ms (one second) or longer is recorded as a Slow response, and the site shows Needs attention straight away. The site is still reachable. An incident for a site responding slowly is separate: it opens only after 12 slow checks in a row. A slow response doesn't trigger an urgent alert the way a Down site does.

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?

The site shows Down from the first failed check, though DomainDash sends no alert until a second check in a row fails. If the site looks broken but still shows Healthy, it is probably returning a healthy status code with the wrong content. A content check catches that.

Related

• Domain health check for how the uptime, SSL, DNS, and registration checks fit together
• 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