TransitPacket

How to Run a 10-Minute Network Health Check for a New Client

A fast, repeatable checklist for freelance IT consultants and small MSPs to run before touching a new client's infrastructure — three checks, ten minutes, no surprises later.

If you're billing by the hour, the worst way to start a new client engagement is discovering — three weeks in — that their domain is about to expire, or their SSL cert lapsed last Tuesday, or their DNS has been quietly misconfigured since the last person who touched it left. None of that is your fault, but it becomes your problem the moment you're the one holding the account.

This is the health check to run before you do anything else. Three checks, in this order, about ten minutes total. No new tools to install — everything here is free and runs in your browser.

Step 1: DNS Lookup — confirm the basics actually resolve

Start with DNS Lookup. Type in the client's domain and look at what comes back:

  • A / AAAA records — do they point where the client thinks their site is hosted? A mismatch here is the single most common "why is the site down" call you'll get.
  • MX records — is mail routing where you'd expect? If a client mentions email problems in the first conversation, check this first.
  • NS records — which nameservers are authoritative? If they don't match the registrar or DNS provider the client thinks they're using, that's a flag — it usually means an old provider never got fully migrated away from.

You're not trying to memorize DNS theory here. You're looking for anything that doesn't match what the client told you about their setup.

Step 2: WHOIS — check who actually owns the domain, and for how long

Next, run the same domain through WHOIS Lookup. This is the check people skip, and it's the one that causes actual emergencies.

Look at:

  • Expiration date — this is the big one. A shocking number of small businesses have a domain sitting a few weeks from lapsing because whoever set it up left the company, or the card on file expired. If you catch this on day one, you're a hero. If you catch it after the domain actually lapses, you're doing an emergency recovery instead of billable work.
  • Registrar — does it match who the client thinks manages their domain? If it's registered somewhere nobody at the company recognizes, you've just found your first real finding to bring back to them.

Step 3: SSL Checker — make sure the certificate isn't a ticking clock

Last, run their site through SSL Checker.

  • Expiration date — same logic as the domain: a cert that's fine today but expires in three weeks is a problem you want to flag now, not discover when the site starts throwing browser warnings.
  • Trust status — if the tool flags the certificate as untrusted or self-signed and the client didn't mention that intentionally, that's worth a direct conversation before you assume it's fine.

What to do with what you find

Write down anything that didn't match expectations — mismatched DNS, an expiring domain, a certificate nobody's watching. Bring it back to the client as a short, plain-language summary: what you checked, what you found, and what you'd recommend doing about it. That's a real deliverable from ten minutes of work, and it's the kind of thing that makes a client trust you with the bigger engagement.

Bookmark this page — it's built to be your repeatable first-day checklist for every new client, not a one-time read.

FAQ

Why just these three checks — DNS, WHOIS, and SSL?

Because they catch the problems that actually bite you mid-engagement: DNS misconfigurations that break email or routing, a domain that's about to lapse because nobody renewed it, and a certificate that's going to expire while you're in the middle of unrelated work. All three take seconds to check and can save you an emergency callout later.

I found a problem. Do I fix it immediately or tell the client first?

Flag it first, unless it's actively broken right now. You're doing a health check, not a change request — walking in and changing DNS or renewing a domain without sign-off is how you end up owning a problem you didn't create. Document what you found, tell the client plainly what it means, and get the go-ahead before touching anything.

How often should I re-run this for clients I already have?

Once a quarter is reasonable for most small-business clients, or right before any major change (new hosting, new domain registrar, a migration). It's a five-minute re-check at that point since you already know what you're looking at.