Is it down for everyone or just you?
This check sends one real request from Vigil's server in Germany (Hetzner, Falkenstein) the moment you press the button. It is a second opinion from outside your own network, and the two answers together usually tell you where the problem is.
| You | This check | What it usually means |
|---|---|---|
| Can't open it | Up (2xx/3xx) | Probably just you: your Wi-Fi or office network, your ISP's DNS, a VPN, a browser extension or a firewall. Try mobile data or another DNS resolver (1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8). |
| Can't open it | Down or 5xx | Very likely down for everyone, or at least for visitors in Europe. Check the site's status page and its social accounts. |
| Works | Down or timing out | The site may be blocking data-centre traffic, or a CDN region or route is failing for some users. Visitors elsewhere may be affected too. |
| Works | Up | Up for both. If something still looks wrong, it may be one page, a login or an API behind the home page: check that exact URL. |
What this check can't tell you: it is one request from one location. A problem limited to one country, one ISP or one CDN edge can be invisible from Germany, and a site that answers our request may still be broken for logged-in users. For a quick look from your own machine, curl -I https://example.com shows the status line and dig example.com (or nslookup) shows whether the name resolves.
Proof you can send: every result gets its own link (/check/r/…) that keeps the measurement, its time and the status code for 30 days, so you can paste it into a ticket to your host or developer instead of a screenshot.
To be told when a site goes down instead of checking by hand, a monitor re-runs this every minute (every 5 minutes on the free plan) and confirms a failure before it alerts you. Related: is it down? live status of popular services, the SSL certificate check and the HTTP request tester.