Monitoring Guide
Website Down Checker Workflow for Fast Outage Triage
Updated 2/26/2026 • 6 min read
Build a website down checker workflow that confirms outages, narrows root cause, and speeds incident response.
Separate Detection From Diagnosis
Detection answers one question: is the service reachable. Diagnosis answers why it is failing. Keep those concerns separate in your runbook so response stays focused.
Your checker should declare suspected downtime first, then attach diagnostics like DNS failures, TLS errors, or elevated latency.
Use a Consistent Triage Ladder
A fixed triage order reduces panic and shortens mean time to acknowledge incidents. Teams move faster when everyone validates the same signals in the same order.
- Check edge reachability and HTTP status.
- Check app health endpoints and dependency health.
- Check recent deploys, config changes, and infrastructure events.
Publish Status Updates Early
Acknowledge incidents quickly with clear, factual language. Early communication reduces duplicate support load and gives users confidence that the issue is being handled.
Even if root cause is unknown, publish scope, impact, and next update time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should a website down checker run from one region or many?
Many regions are better for customer-facing services because they reveal partial outages and CDN routing problems that a single probe can miss.
How do I prevent alert fatigue?
Use severity thresholds, suppress duplicate alerts, and close the loop with clear recovery conditions. Avoid paging for every transient timeout.
What belongs in the first public incident update?
Include issue start time, impacted surfaces, current user impact, and when the next update will be posted.