My site shows Down but it is up
Why a healthy site can look down, and what to do about it.
If PageWarden says a site is down but it loads fine in your browser, one of these is usually the reason.
Bot protection is blocking the check
Many sites use a security service (such as Cloudflare Bot Fight Mode, a WAF, or a "prove you are human" challenge) that blocks automated requests. Your browser passes the challenge; an automated check cannot, so the site looks down to PageWarden even though real visitors get through.
What to do: allow PageWarden's checks through your security service, or relax the challenge on the specific page being monitored. If you are not sure how, email [email protected] and we will help you identify the block.
A firewall or geo-block is in the way
If your site or service only accepts traffic from certain countries or networks, or sits behind a firewall, PageWarden's monitoring servers may be blocked. Because PageWarden confirms failures from several regions, a block that applies everywhere will read as down.
What to do: make sure the thing you are monitoring is meant to be reachable from the public internet, and allow our checks if you filter by network or country.
You are pinging a host that does not answer ping
This is the most common cause of a false down on a ping monitor. Many websites sit behind services that deliberately do not answer ping, even though the site is perfectly up.
What to do: use uptime monitoring for websites, and save ping for servers, devices, and IP addresses you control that are meant to answer.
It really was a blip
If a monitor flicked to down and straight back to up, PageWarden may have caught a genuine brief interruption. Multi-region confirmation filters out most network noise, but a real short outage will still be recorded, which is what you want.