HTTPS Checker: scan your web page for HTTPS issues

Martin Brinkmann
Mar 17, 2016
Updated • Sep 20, 2017
Development
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14

HTTPS Checker is a free program for Windows that provides you with the means to scan all pages of a website for HTTPS related issues.

Rolling out HTTPS on an established site has become a lot easier in recent time. While that is the case, it still very important to make sure that the implementation does not cause any issues such as duplicate content, mixed content warnings or certificate validation issues as it can backfire if that is the case.

HTTPS Checker limits the crawls per run to 250 but you may increase that limit and add functionality to it by upgrading your subscription to one of the paid plans.

Free is however a good start when it comes to checking a website initially, and it is often the case that pages share common characteristics and issues which can then be fixed once for all pages so that a scan of all pages of a site may not be necessary at all.

HTTPS Checker

The program asks for a simple registration on first start and prompts you for a url that you want to scan afterwards.

Simply enter the url in the form and wait for the scan to complete. You can limit the number of issues in the advanced options and will notice that other options, such as changing the user agent are restricted to paid accounts.

The scan may take a while to complete depending on the account level, Internet connection, site that is scanned and advanced parameters you have set before the scan.

HTTPS Checker reveals the following "global" information about the scanned pages:

  • Active mixed content.
  • Passive mixed content.
  • Insecure redirects.
  • Insecure canonical links.
  • Insecure links to the same domain.
  • Insecure social links.
  • Insecure sitemap links
  • SSL certificate validation.
  • If the strict transport security header is used.
  • If the HTTP site redirects to HTTPS.
  • When the SSL certificate expires.

When you scroll down you find information about each page or element on the site and its issues.

There you find listed the issue found, and the code on the page that caused it. Some items may be easy to fix, for instance by switching from using a protocol, e.g. https://www.ghacks.net/, to a protocol-relative notation, e.g //www.ghacks.net/ while others may prove to be difficult to resolve.

The program does not provide you with tips on resolving the issues encountered during a scan apart from linking to guides that may assist you in that task.

You may want to re-run the scan after fixing some of the issues to make sure they are resolved. While you are limited to 250 pages per scan if you are using a free account, you don't seem to be limited in the number of scans you can run.

Closing Words

HTTPS Checker is a useful program for webmasters who are in the process of adding HTTPS to their site, or have done so in the past already. A scan reveals potential issues that are sometimes easy to overlook, especially when it comes to large sites with thousands of pages.

Summary
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4 based on 14 votes
Software Name
HTTPS Checker
Operating System
Windows
Software Category
Development
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Comments

  1. Andrew said on September 20, 2017 at 12:12 am
    Reply

    Updated link to app: https://httpschecker.net/

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on September 20, 2017 at 6:12 am
      Reply

      Thank you!

  2. Fabio said on January 3, 2017 at 1:25 pm
    Reply

    Where did you get this HTTPS Checker??

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on January 3, 2017 at 1:26 pm
      Reply

      The link is always in the summary box below the article.

      1. Anonymous said on January 3, 2017 at 1:33 pm
        Reply

        Ah, sorry. Got it!
        Thanks

  3. mike said on October 12, 2016 at 12:04 pm
    Reply

    Yes we recommend it ourselves for that). HTTPS Checker is for mixed content, which Qualys’ SSL checking service doesn’t handle.
    http://www.scanyourweb.com

  4. buck said on March 19, 2016 at 10:24 am
    Reply

    I use SSLSlueth addon in Firefox, which gives a rating out of 10 according the the strength of the https connection.

    Useful info to have displayed right next to the address bar, particularly when a site’s certificate has expired.

  5. nonqu said on March 17, 2016 at 7:05 pm
    Reply

    You don’t actually need a third party software. https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html is an amazing scanner. I don’t know if it reveals mixed content as I have 0 on my websites, but it does do everything else mentioned in this article.

    1. Neil Whelan said on March 18, 2016 at 4:38 pm
      Reply

      Qualys is a great service for checking the SSL certificate (we recommend it ourselves for that). HTTPS Checker is for mixed content, which Qualys’ SSL checking service doesn’t handle.

      1. nonqu said on March 18, 2016 at 8:20 pm
        Reply

        I find the handshake simulation at qualys invaluable. You can show it to your supervisor and tell him why you need to cut off IE6 and disable SSL3 – because his own device can be compromised. But I also may work at one of the last companies that still have clients using IE6…

    2. Tom Hawack said on March 18, 2016 at 12:38 am
      Reply

      Qualys is nice but long to perform. Here I usually check https integrity via ‘SSL Checker by SSLshopper’ at sslshopper dot com/ssl-checker.html

  6. All Things Firefox said on March 17, 2016 at 5:42 pm
    Reply

    This isn’t directly related to the software, but is Ghacks going to completely move to HTTPS and if so what is the timeline? Currently, there is a mixed-content warning and most images are blocked.

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on March 17, 2016 at 6:41 pm
      Reply

      Coming, but not sure when. First the theme, hopefully this month, then when everything is settled down, HTTPS.

      1. All Things Firefox said on March 17, 2016 at 6:56 pm
        Reply

        Looking forward to it all!

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