What Happens When My Website Goes Down?
When PingPing detects that your website is not responding, it follows a verification and alert process designed to notify you as fast as possible while avoiding false alarms.
Step 1 - Failed Check Detected
PingPing sends an HTTP request to your site at your chosen check interval (as fast as every 30 seconds). If the request fails, due to a timeout, a server error (HTTP 5xx), a connection refused error, or a DNS resolution failure, PingPing flags it as a potential outage.
Step 2 - Two-Location Verification
A single failed check does not automatically trigger an alert. Network issues between one monitoring location and your server can cause false positives. PingPing immediately re-checks your site from a second location on the other side of the world. Only if both checks fail is the outage confirmed.
Step 3 - Downtime Confirmed and Alert Sent
Once PingPing confirms the downtime from both locations, it immediately sends alerts through every notification channel you have configured, such as email, Slack, Discord, Telegram, SMS, or webhooks. The alert includes the URL that is down, the time the outage was detected, and the error type.
From the first failed check to alert delivery is often less than 5 seconds.
Step 4 - Status Page Updated
If you have a status page configured for the affected website, it updates automatically to show the site as "down." Your users can check the status page instead of contacting your support team.
Step 5 - Incident Logged
PingPing records the incident in your dashboard with the exact start time, the error type, and response details. This log continues to update throughout the outage.
Step 6 - Recovery Detected
PingPing continues checking at your configured interval during the outage. As soon as your site begins responding correctly again, PingPing sends a recovery notification confirming the site is back up. The incident log records the end time and total duration.
What Should You Do?
When you receive a downtime alert, check your server logs, hosting provider status, and DNS configuration. For a step-by-step guide, see PingPing's Downtime Response Playbook.