Frequently Asked Questions

Alert Down is a free, web-based service with a singular goal: to provide quick, accurate real-time status of any website on the Internet. Our purpose is fundamentally simple: the question, 'is this for everyone or just me?'. If you are unable to access a website, we act as an objective third-party testing service. We submit requests to our high speed server infrastructure. This lets us know if the server for the website is even listening to internet traffic and responding to requests. This indicates if there is a global outage of service or if it is only you experiencing the issue. It could be that the problem is your internet connection, browser, or device. In addition, we provide dashboards to deliver information like response time, uptime history, event logs, etc. that provide the user with a full picture of how well the website they are trying to access is performing, and if it is reliable. Example is an invaluable resource for website owners, developers, and just regular people using the Internet.

Yes, the core functionality of Alert Down is, and always will be, completely free for everyone. We believe that having access to basic uptime information is a fundamental need for anyone who relies on the internet. Our free service includes a generous number of on-demand checks per day, allowing you to investigate any website you're having trouble with. For users who require more advanced capabilities, such as a higher volume of checks, continuous 24/7 monitoring, and instant downtime alerts via email, we offer a free user account. Creating an account is simple and provides significant benefits without any cost, ensuring that both casual users and professionals can get the value they need from our platform.

Whether someone is a leisure web user or professional web owner or developer, they will find the tool valuable. For the casual web user, the main value proposition is immediate peace of mind. If they aren’t able to access a favorite social media site, email service, or retail site, Example will let them know in a matter of seconds if the availability problem is the user's problem or a more widespread issue. Thus, they will avoid frustration troubleshooting their network their end. For the website owner or developer, Alert Down is an essential diagnostic tool. It gives them an external, impartial view of their site's availability. Seeing an 'Issues' or 'Down' status could be the user's first clue they have a significant issue with their hosting or server configuration. Those metrics also provide extra information like the response time and incident history. This additional information supports tracking the site's performance and whether the hosting provider has been delivering the service levels communicated in the service level agreement (SLA).

Using our tool is specifically made to be as easy as possible. First from our home page at https://alertdown.online/, you will see a search bar at the top that is easy to find. In the search bar, you can type or paste the domain name of the website that you want to check (e.g., 'example.com') -- you don't need to include 'http://' or 'www.'. Once you're done, click the 'Check' button. Our system runs a series of real-time checks for you. After a few seconds, the system will geo-locate the requested website and redirect you to a status page with a dashboard on current status, performance, historical data, etc.

This is an extremely usual situation, and it usually indicates a local problem on your side. If our world check indicates a site is 'Up', it means their server is up and running. These are the most probable culprits of your connectivity issue:
1. Browser Cache: Your browser may be caching an outdated, faulty version of the site. Try clearing your browser's cookies and cache, or open in incognito/private mode.
2. DNS Cache: Your computer or your router may contain an old DNS record. A reboot of your router and computer usually fixes it.
3. ISP or Network Block: Your Internet Service Provider (ISP), or a firewall on your work/school network, may be blocking the site.
4. VPN Issues: If you are connected via a VPN, it may be triggering routing issues. See if disabling it for the moment will solve the problem.

This is an important distinction. 'Down' is the state when the server for the website is not responding at all. Our requests are timing out, and we are receiving no communication back at all. This is a critical outage, meaning the server is likely offline or there's a major network failure. A status of 'Issues', on the other hand, means the server is online and responding, but it's not serving the website correctly. It's sending back an HTTP error code, typically in the 4xx or 5xx range. A common example is '403 Forbidden', where a security system is blocking our automated check, or '503 Service Unavailable', indicating the server is overloaded or in maintenance mode. So, 'Down' means no one is home, while 'Issues' means someone is home, but they won't open the door.

When you ask for a check, there are multiple layers of checks that our backend system will perform. First, we perform a DNS lookup against the domain name to ensure that the domain name resolves to an IP. If the DNS check passes, we then attempt to connect to the server on the standard web port for HTTP (80) or HTTPS (443). The heart of the service is a server-side HTTP GET request. The process is as follows; we send a request with an appropriate browser User-Agent header to check the website headers. We then check the HTTP status code that the server provides. For the report, we even do an SSL certificate check to check the certificate's validity and expiration date. This layered approach of checks provides reliability and assurance for our overall assessment of a site's health.

Response Time, expressed in milliseconds (ms), refers to an important value representing website performance and health. It reflects the time taken from the time our server issue a request, to the moment it receives the first byte of a response. A small response time value (generally under 500ms) shows a fast, healthy server and is generally a good experience for users. A large response time (over 1000ms or a full second) may mean it is under a load, misconfigured, or that our server is geographically far away. No matter the reason though, response time that constantly isn't meeting or exceeding 1000ms can be seen as a warning to an underlying issue that might cause outages. Interestingly, for the end user. Slow response time means slow page load, which can be extremely frustrating.

We calculate uptime percentages based on the check history we keep for each individual website in our database. When a status page is used by a user to check the status of a website, we take a check with a status of 'up', 'down', or 'issues' each time an individual check records the websites status. When calculating the uptime for the prior 24 hours, we look for the checks for that website that were taken within the last 24 hours. We then count the number of checks that were successful (or 'up') divided by the total checks made for that timeframe. We then multiply it by 100 to get a percentage. For example, if there were 200 checks in 24 hours and 198 were on 'up' status, the uptime will equal (198 / 200) * 100 = 99.00%.

Setting up a free account opens up some powerful features. The obvious benefit is all this makes it much easier to increase the number of on-demand website checks you can do in a day. This is useful for checking multiple websites. Also, opening an account is the first step towards researching spy-based features, which will include continuous 24/7 monitoring of your most important websites so that you receive immediate alerts via email the second our system identifies a change in status. You also have the bonus of viewing a history of the websites that you checked yourself, creating your own monitoring dashboard.

The alerts system for our website monitoring service is intended to be both fast and reliable. Once you set-up a monitor (that's a future feature for registered users), our system will check your website from our servers on a periodic schedule. The moment a check fails and we verify the site is 'Down', our system will trigger an email notification to your registered email address. We also use a professional email delivery system to ensure these important alerts get delivered successfully, as expected, without ending up in your spam folder. This way, you are able to deal with problems quickly, sometimes even before your users notice any problems on your site.

Yes absolutely. At Alert Down user privacy and data security is our number one priority. Your account information, including email address, is saved in a secure manner and is not shared or sold to a third-party for any marketing purposes. Your history of sites you check is tied to your account, and it is altogether private information. We use standard security practices to secure our database in order to help ensure that your information is private. We want to be a useful, trustworthy tool, and that trust starts with being respectful of your privacy.