How Healthy Is Your Website?

A website health check is a full inspection of whether a site is actually working — not just whether its server responds. It checks availability and speed, confirms every file the page needs loads (scripts, styles, images, fonts), checks the SSL certificate and its chain, inspects redirects, and measures response time. Instead of a single "up" or "down" answer, it returns the specific failures so you know exactly what to fix.

Run an instant check: paste your URL into the free site scan on this page to see availability, the page's assets, SSL, and redirects in about 20 seconds with no signup. To know if your site is healthy over time, set up continuous monitoring so checks run on a schedule and after every deploy — a single point-in-time check only tells you about this moment.

A complete website health check covers five layers: (1) availability — is the server responding, and how fast; (2) the page and everything on it — every script, style, image, and font loading correctly; (3) SSL — a valid certificate, full chain, and secure connection; (4) redirects — no loops or broken chains; and (5) speed. Sitewatch runs 20 detection rules across these dimensions.

Yes. Sitewatch offers two free instant tools with no signup: the site scan on this page runs a full health check on any URL, and the Is My Website Down tool answers whether a site is up right now. For continuous automated health checks with alerting, the free plan covers 1 site at no cost.

Manually: after every deploy, plugin update, or configuration change — that's when most breakage happens. Automatically: the Free plan checks every 30 minutes (1 site), and paid plans go down to every 5 minutes. The single most important moment to check is right after pushing changes, which is why deploy hooks trigger an instant check on every release.

An uptime check asks "is the server responding?" A health check asks "is the website actually working?" Health checks confirm every part of the page works — scripts, styling, images, third-party tools — plus SSL and redirects, not just whether the server answered. An uptime tool sees a healthy server and reports green; a health check sees the broken page behind it.

Because "up" only measures whether the server returns a response. The server can answer normally while a script is missing, your styling is served the wrong way, a third-party tool fails, or a redirect loops. The page "loads" but doesn't work. A health check inspects each of those layers, which is why it catches the failure your uptime monitor misses.

It should. Sitewatch continuously checks certificate validity (warning at 30 days, critical at 14), validates the full certificate chain, and flags outdated, insecure connections. It also tracks domain expiry automatically. An expired certificate or broken chain blocks every visitor with a browser warning — so SSL is a core health dimension, not an add-on.

Yes — that's the core of a page-level health check. Sitewatch opens your page and confirms every linked file (scripts, styles, images, fonts) actually loads on each check. When one goes missing or is served the wrong way, you get an incident naming the exact file, not a vague "something is wrong."

No. Sitewatch checks your site from the outside — the same way a browser does — so there's no plugin, agent, or code to install, and zero performance impact on your site. Paste a URL into the free scan to check instantly, or add a site to start continuous monitoring. Setup takes about 60 seconds.

A passing instant check means availability and the parts checked were healthy from one location at one moment. Health changes after the next deploy or cache refresh, and some issues (an intermittent third-party failure, a certificate expiring next month) only surface over time. For confidence that your site stays healthy, run continuous monitoring rather than relying on a single snapshot.

The Is My Website Down tool answers one urgent question: is this URL up or down right now? This health check is broader and proactive — it inspects availability, the page's assets, SSL, and redirects across multiple dimensions and frames ongoing health. Same underlying technology, different intent: one is a quick status check, the other is a full diagnostic.

The Free plan monitors 1 site with scheduled health checks and alerting at no cost. Starter is $9/month for 25 sites, and Pro is $19/month for 100 sites. SSL and domain expiry monitoring are included on every plan, including Free. The instant scan and Is My Website Down tools are free for anyone with no account.