Safe to expose

Port 80 — HTTP

Q: Should port 80 be open to the internet?

Safe to expose. Fine to leave open. Redirect everything to 443 with a 301 and add HSTS.

Unencrypted web traffic. On a modern site its only job is to redirect visitors to HTTPS.

Port

Service

HTTP

Protocol

TCP

Security guidance

Fine to leave open. Redirect everything to 443 with a 301 and add HSTS.

Test port 80 yourself

From your own machine, against any host (swap in your domain):

macOS / Linux — netcat

nc -vz example.com 80

Any OS — nmap

nmap -p 80 example.com

Windows — PowerShell

Test-NetConnection example.com -Port 80

open = a service answered on port 80; closed = the host replied but nothing is listening; filtered = a firewall silently dropped the probe. These test from your network — our port checker tests from the outside, the view that matters for security.

Is port 80 open on your server?

Test it from outside your network — the only view that matters.

Check port 80

Other common ports

20 · FTP data 21 · FTP control 22 · SSH / SFTP 23 · Telnet 25 · SMTP 53 · DNS 110 · POP3 123 · NTP 143 · IMAP 161 · SNMP 389 · LDAP 443 · HTTPS 445 · SMB 465 · SMTPS 587 · SMTP submission 993 · IMAPS 995 · POP3S 1433 · Microsoft SQL Server 1521 · Oracle Database 2082 · cPanel 2083 · cPanel (TLS) 3000 · Node.js / dev server 3306 · MySQL / MariaDB 3389 · RDP 5432 · PostgreSQL 5900 · VNC 6379 · Redis 8080 · HTTP alternate 8443 · HTTPS alternate 9200 · Elasticsearch 27017 · MongoDB