Check a website in one click
Pingvera instantly checks not just whether a site opens, but its health: availability and response time, how many days are left on the SSL certificate, and when the domain registration expires. No sign-up.
We check availability, SSL and domain expiry. Results are cached for 10 minutes.
What we check in one click
The check answers not "does the server ping" but "does the site work as a business". One request returns:
- Availability and response time — checked from several locations at once — Amsterdam, Lauterbourg and Nuremberg in Europe, plus Buffalo in the United States.
- SSL certificate — the expiry date and how many days are left.
- Domain registration expiry — when it runs out and whether it's time to renew.
Why "the site opens" is not the same as "the site works"
The most expensive failures don't take a site down. A domain nobody renewed switches off the site and the mailbox on it at the same instant. An expired certificate greets every visitor with a red "not secure" warning. Both look, to a plain ping, exactly like a healthy site — the page is still served and the server still answers 200.
A regular uptime monitor shows a green checkmark in both cases. That's why we check the whole set of things that quietly break a site's ability to do business, not just whether it answers a request.
The site doesn't open: where to start
If the check shows the site is unreachable, work through it in this order:
- Find out if it's down for everyone or just for you. Our check runs from our own servers — if it loads here but not for you, the cause is on your side: your ISP, a stale DNS cache, a VPN, antivirus software.
- Check the domain and the certificate. An expired domain or an expired certificate look exactly like "the site is broken", but both get fixed at the registrar or certificate authority, not on the server.
- If all of that is clean — the problem is the server or hosting: the web server crashed, the disk filled up, or the site is overloaded.
A one-off check vs. continuous monitoring
A one-off check answers "what's wrong right now". But a domain doesn't expire the moment you remember to look, and a site doesn't go down while you happen to be watching it — usually the first person to notice is a customer.
Continuous monitoring checks the site every minute from the same regions and alerts you the moment something breaks: the site goes down, a certificate is about to expire, a domain is running out, or a contact form stops delivering leads. Free for up to 5 sites.
See also
- Check a website's SSL certificate — expiry date and why auto-renewal breaks.
- Check domain registration expiry — the date registration runs out.
- Check availability from multiple regions — is it down for everyone, or just some?
- Check a WordPress site — core version, plugins, signs of a hack.
- How to check if a website is really down
- Know your client's site is down before they call
How is this different from a regular uptime check?
Most tools only tell you whether the site opens or not. Pingvera also shows what breaks a business quietly: an expiring SSL certificate, an expiring domain, a hack. It's a snapshot of site health, not just a ping.
The site opens for me but not for my client — why?
Usually one of three things: the site is blocked or slow for a specific ISP or region, there's a regional DNS or routing issue, or your client's browser or network is holding onto a stale cached result. Our check runs from our own servers, from 5 different regions — if it loads there, the cause is most likely on your client's side, not the site.
Do you check sites that don't use SSL at all (HTTP only)?
Yes — availability and domain expiry are checked regardless of whether the site uses HTTPS. If there's no certificate to read, the SSL line simply reports that none was found instead of an expiry date.
Do I need to sign up?
No. A one-off check is free and requires no sign-up. Sign-up is only needed if you want continuous monitoring with an alert before your customer notices a problem.
How often can I check?
The result for each site is cached for 10 minutes so we don't add extra load to the site being checked. For continuous monitoring with checks every minute, put the site under ongoing monitoring in Pingvera.