How to know when your app is down
Five things take a web app offline: the host, an expired SSL certificate, a lapsed domain, changed DNS and broken links. How to spot each one yourself.
Most apps built with Lovable, Replit, Bolt or v0 go offline for one of five reasons: the host is down, the SSL certificate expired, the domain lapsed, the DNS changed, or an edit broke links. You can check each yourself in a few minutes, and set reminders for the ones that expire.
The host is down
When your platform has an outage, or your app crashes, visitors get an error or a page that never loads.
Check it yourself: open your app on your phone with Wi-Fi off, since your laptop may show a saved copy. Your platform's status page tells you whether the outage is theirs.
The SSL certificate expired
The SSL certificate puts the padlock in the address bar. It expires every few months and renews automatically; when renewal fails, browsers show a full-page warning such as "Your connection is not private".
On a platform address (like myapp.lovable.app) the platform handles this. On your own domain, renewal usually needs your DNS to keep pointing at the platform, so a DNS change can quietly stop it.
Check it yourself: in Chrome, click the icon left of the address, then Connection is secure, then Certificate is valid to see the expiry date.
The domain lapsed
You rent your domain (myapp.com) from a registrar, usually a year at a time. If the card on file expired or the renewal email went to an old inbox, the domain stops working, and after a grace period someone else can buy it.
Check it yourself: look up the expiry date on ICANN Lookup (for some endings, such as .nl, use your registrar's dashboard). Turn on auto-renew and put the date in your calendar a month early.
The DNS changed
DNS is the internet's address book: it tells browsers which servers your domain belongs to. One wrong record and your domain points nowhere, or your email stops arriving, typically after moving registrars, switching email providers or a mistaken edit.
Check it yourself: screenshot your DNS records at your registrar now, while everything works, and compare when something breaks. Google's Dig tool shows what the rest of the internet sees.
An edit broke links
When an AI builder renames a page or reworks the menu, it can leave links to pages that no longer exist. A related problem is mixed content: an image or script loaded over http:// on your https:// page, which browsers block.
Check it yourself: after each larger change, click through every menu item and button on the published app. Mixed content shows up in Chrome's console (View → Developer → JavaScript Console) as a "Mixed Content" warning.
How Lampwick does it for you
Lampwick runs these checks from its own servers, outside your platform, and alerts you by iPhone push and email, or in Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams or a webhook:
| What breaks | What Lampwick does | When you hear |
|---|---|---|
| Host down | Opens your URL every 5 minutes (Free) to every 30 seconds | After two failed checks in a row: Down: My app |
| SSL certificate | Reads it every 6 to 12 hours | 14, 7, 3 and 1 days before expiry, and when it becomes invalid |
| Domain | Looks up the expiry date daily | 30, 14, 7 and 1 days before |
| DNS | Reads the main records hourly | DNS records changed, with what changed |
| Broken links | Follows the links on up to 250 pages daily | When the crawl finds new broken links or mixed content |
You paste your URL; your app stays as it is. Lampwick checks whether your app loads, not whether a button inside it works. For errors inside it, add the browser error snippet: one line in index.html, which an AI app builder can add for you.
Next step: set it up for your app.