Is the website down, or is it just me?

Acutis · plain-English network help · updated June 2026

The quick answer

When a site won't load, there are only two possibilities: it's down for everyone (a real outage) or it's down just for you (something on your side). The fastest way to tell them apart is to change one thing and see if the site comes back. Try it on a different network — like switching your phone off Wi-Fi to mobile data. If it loads there, the site is fine and the problem is your network or device. If it fails everywhere, the site itself is probably down. The rest of this guide gives you cleaner checks to confirm which one it is.

Test 1 — Try another network or device

This single test settles most cases. Pull out your phone, turn off Wi-Fi so it uses mobile data, and open the same site.

• Loads on mobile data, fails on your Wi-Fi → the site is up; the problem is your home network, router, or device.
• Fails on both → either the site is genuinely down, or something between you and it (like DNS) is broken on a level that affects every device in your house.

You can also try a different browser or an incognito/private window. If it works there, the original browser's cache, extensions, or a stored cookie is the culprit — not the site.

Test 2 — Check DNS across resolvers

A huge share of "the site is down" moments are actually DNS — the system that turns a name like example.com into the numeric address your browser connects to. If your DNS resolver can't (or won't) return the address, the site appears dead even though its servers are running perfectly.

The clean test is to ask more than one DNS resolver for the same name. If your provider's resolver fails but a public one like 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 returns an address fine, the website is up — your DNS is the broken link. If every resolver fails to find the name, the domain itself may have a problem.

Test 3 — Check the provider's status

If the site really does seem down everywhere, see whether the company knows. Most large services run a status page (often at status. in front of their name) that reports current outages. Their social accounts and third-party "is it down right now" outage trackers are also quick sanity checks — if thousands of people report the same thing in the last few minutes, it's a real outage and there's nothing to fix on your end except wait.

For a site you run yourself, also confirm the basics: the domain hasn't expired, the hosting bill is paid, and any recent change didn't take it offline.

It's (almost) always DNS

There's a running joke among network engineers: when something breaks, "it's always DNS." It's a joke because it's so often true. DNS sits in front of nearly every connection, it caches old answers, and it fails in ways that look exactly like the destination being down. A few DNS-flavored symptoms worth recognizing:

• "Server not found" or "can't resolve host" — classic DNS wording, not a sign the site is offline.
• One site moved and now won't load for you — your computer may be holding a stale cached address. Flushing DNS forces a fresh lookup.
• Some sites work, others don't — a struggling resolver, not a coincidence of multiple sites all going down at once.

So before you conclude a website is down, rule DNS out. It's the most common impostor.

A simple decision flow

1. Open the site on mobile data or another device. Works? → It's your network/device, not the site.
2. Still failing? Check DNS across resolvers. One resolver works? → It's your DNS, not the site.
3. Every resolver fails and other devices fail too? Check the provider's status page and outage trackers.
4. Status page shows an incident, or many people are reporting it? → It's a real outage. Wait it out.