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Website, Email & DNS Health Checklist
Save this page and work through it once a quarter. It covers the problems that cost small businesses enquiries and invoices without showing obvious symptoms first. Each item links to a free check tool or tells you exactly what to look for.
Website health
- Your website loads in under 3 seconds on mobile. — Slow sites lose visitors and enquiries.
- Every form on the site actually delivers a test message. — Test all contact, booking and quote forms quarterly — they fail silently.
- No plugin, theme or CMS update has been pending for more than 30 days.
- Pages look correct on all devices and in a private browser window.
- Your SSL certificate is valid for more than 30 days. — Run the free SSL checker.
- You know who owns the domain, hosting and DNS accounts. — Document this; registrars and hosts change.
Email & DNS health
Mail problems are the most expensive silent failure for small businesses.
- Your domain has a valid SPF record. — Run the free SPF/DMARC validator.
- Your domain has a DMARC policy stronger than p=none. — p=none means your domain can still be spoofed.
- Your MX records point to the provider you actually use for mail.
- Your outbound mail lands in the inbox, not spam. — Send a test to a Gmail and Outlook address.
- Invoices and contact-form replies arrive reliably. — If they stop, that is an emergency, not an annoyance.
- You can log into the mail admin panel without help from the previous IT person.
Security & backups
- Your backups restore successfully, not just 'exist'. — Test a restore at least once per year.
- No admin account uses a password that was reused elsewhere. — Use a password manager.
- Two-factor authentication is enabled on your email admin, CMS and hosting.
- Your site does not expose public .git, .env or backup files. — Run the free misconfiguration scanner.
- Only people who still work with you have admin access.
- Your website has not appeared in a hacked-account or email blacklist check. — Run the free website status checker.
Trust & reputation
- Your site shows a real contact route and response expectation.
- Your business appears consistently across Google Maps, website and social profiles.
- No impostor profiles or fake listings use your business name. — Search your name on social platforms.
- Your website reflects what you actually sell today. — Stale offers lose trust faster than you think.
- You get no silent failure reports from clients saying they 'did not receive' something.
Found something that fails?
If any item on this checklist is broken or you are unsure whether it is, send the domain and the checklist item. I look at the DNS zone, mail flow or server path and tell you what is urgent, what can wait and what it would take to fix — before any work is agreed.