November 18, 2025 β A significant cloud infrastructure outage has disrupted internet services worldwide, with Cloudflare experiencing widespread failures that began at approximately 11:25 AM ET (11:48 UTC) and continued past 1:00 PM ET, affecting millions of websites and online services across the globe.
The Outage Timeline
The disruption began when Cloudflare, one of the world's largest content delivery networks (CDN) and web infrastructure providers, reported experiencing widespread 500 errors across its platform. The company acknowledged the incident at 11:48 UTC, stating: "Cloudflare is aware of, and investigating an issue which impacts multiple customers: Widespread 500 errors, Cloudflare Dashboard and API also failing."
By 12:03 UTC, the company issued an update confirming they were continuing to investigate the full scope of the problem. The timing coincided with scheduled maintenance windows in multiple data centers, including Los Angeles (10:00-14:00 UTC), Santiago (12:00-15:00 UTC), and Tahiti (12:00-16:00 UTC), though it remains unclear whether these maintenance activities contributed to the outage.
Major Companies and Services Affected
Content Delivery & Cloud Infrastructure
Cloudflare's Global Network β As the backbone for millions of websites worldwide, Cloudflare's outage had cascading effects across the internet. The company's CDN services, which accelerate and secure web traffic for countless organizations, experienced critical failures affecting both customer-facing websites and the Cloudflare Dashboard itself.
E-Commerce Giants
Amazon & AWS β While today's primary disruption centers on Cloudflare, Amazon Web Services has experienced its own recent struggles. In October 2025, AWS suffered a major daylong outage that took down numerous major websites including Amazon.com, Snapchat, Disney+, Reddit, and Canva. The outage began at 3:11 AM ET and wasn't fully resolved until after 6:00 PM ET that same day.
Shopify β The e-commerce platform, which powers millions of online stores worldwide, has been vulnerable to cloud provider outages, having experienced disruptions during Google Cloud's June 2025 incident.
Social Media & Communication Platforms
Discord β The popular communication platform has reported intermittent connection issues, with users worldwide experiencing difficulties accessing voice channels and messaging features.
Snapchat β The social media app continues to face technical problems related to cloud infrastructure dependencies, with the company acknowledging user reports and investigating ongoing issues.
Reddit β The social news aggregation site has been flagged by users as experiencing downtime and slow loading times during major cloud service disruptions.
Gaming Platforms
Roblox β The massively popular gaming platform has been undergoing server maintenance, with some users reporting login issues and gameplay disruptions. The platform's reliance on cloud infrastructure makes it particularly vulnerable to upstream outages.
Fortnite β Epic Games' battle royale phenomenon experienced disruptions during the recent AWS outage, affecting player authentication and matchmaking services.
Minecraft β Microsoft's blocky phenomenon has faced connectivity issues tied to Azure cloud service problems, with players unable to access multiplayer servers and realm services.
Streaming & Entertainment
Spotify β The music streaming giant experienced service disruptions affecting user login, playlist access, and music playback capabilities during recent cloud infrastructure incidents.
Netflix β While the streaming service maintains robust redundancy, it has still faced intermittent issues during major cloud provider outages, particularly affecting content delivery and user authentication.
Twitch β Amazon's live streaming platform has experienced technical difficulties related to both AWS and Cloudflare service disruptions, affecting streamers and viewers worldwide.
Disney+ β The streaming service was among those impacted by the October 2025 AWS outage, with users reporting issues accessing content and authenticating their accounts.
Productivity & Business Tools
Microsoft 365 Suite β Microsoft's productivity tools, including Teams, Outlook, and Office applications, experienced a major eight-hour outage in late October/early November 2025 due to Azure Front Door configuration errors. The disruption affected businesses globally, forcing many to resort to alternative communication methods.
Slack β The workplace messaging platform suffered a severe failure on November 10, 2025, rendering thousands of users unable to access the service and communicate with their teams.
Canvas β The online teaching platform used by educational institutions worldwide experienced significant disruptions during the AWS outage, impacting course management and assignment submissions for students and educators.
Canva β The popular graphic design tool reported "significantly increased error rates" impacting functionality across its platform during cloud provider incidents.
Financial Services
Coinbase β The cryptocurrency exchange platform reported that many users were unable to access services due to AWS infrastructure problems, affecting trading and account management capabilities.
PayPal β The payment processing giant has been checked frequently on downtime monitoring sites, indicating user concerns about service availability during recent cloud disruptions.
NatWest Bank β The UK-based bank experienced service disruptions during the Microsoft Azure outage, affecting customer access to online banking services.
Airlines & Transportation
Delta Airlines β The major US carrier reported system issues linked to AWS outages, potentially affecting flight bookings, check-ins, and operational systems.
United Airlines β Similarly, United experienced disruptions tied to cloud service dependencies, impacting customer-facing digital services.
Alaska Airlines β The airline confirmed that the Microsoft Azure outage disrupted critical systems, including its website and online check-in services.
Hawaiian Airlines β Also affected by Azure infrastructure problems, experiencing similar disruptions to booking and check-in systems.
Retail & Consumer Services
Starbucks β The coffee chain giant experienced point-of-sale and mobile ordering disruptions during both Azure and AWS outages, affecting stores across multiple regions.
Costco β The warehouse retailer faced service issues impacting its e-commerce platform and inventory management systems.
Kroger β One of America's largest grocery chains experienced technical difficulties affecting online ordering and digital services.
M&S (Marks & Spencer) β The UK retailer reported disruptions to its online shopping platform during the Azure outage.
Asda β Another major UK retailer affected by cloud service failures, experiencing e-commerce platform issues.
Airports & Travel Infrastructure
Heathrow Airport β London's busiest airport experienced system failures during the Microsoft Azure outage, potentially affecting flight information displays and operational systems.
Technology & AI Services
OpenAI/ChatGPT β The AI platform experienced disruptions during the Google Cloud outage in June 2025, affecting user access to ChatGPT and API services.
Perplexity AI β The generative AI search tool was impacted by AWS issues, with CEO Aravind Srinivas confirming "The root cause is an AWS issue. We're working on resolving it."
Mobile Carriers
T-Mobile β While not experiencing direct outages, T-Mobile customers reported issues accessing various sites and services due to the cascading effects of AWS disruptions.
O2 (UK) β The British mobile network operator experienced service problems during the Azure outage.
Smart Home & IoT Devices
Amazon Alexa β Voice assistant services were disrupted during AWS outages, affecting smart home control and voice commands.
Google Nest β Smart home devices experienced connectivity issues during Google Cloud service disruptions.
Smart Plugs & IoT Devices β Numerous users reported their cloud-connected smart home devices becoming unresponsive during infrastructure outages, highlighting the vulnerability of IoT ecosystems.
Other Notable Services
Xbox Live β Microsoft's gaming network faced disruptions tied to Azure infrastructure problems, affecting online gaming and digital purchases.
YouTube β Google's video platform experienced intermittent issues during Google Cloud outages, affecting video playback and content uploads.
Instagram β The Meta-owned platform has been monitored for potential disruptions during major cloud service incidents.
Facebook β Meta's flagship social network experienced connectivity problems during various cloud infrastructure outages.
TikTok β Users have reported slow video loading times and connection issues during periods of cloud service instability.
The Broader Context: Recent Cloud Infrastructure Failures
Today's Cloudflare outage is the latest in a concerning series of major cloud service disruptions that have affected global internet infrastructure in recent months:
October 2025: AWS Global Outage
Amazon Web Services experienced a catastrophic failure beginning at 3:11 AM ET on October 20, 2025, affecting the US-East-1 region in northern Virginia. The outage, caused by DNS problems with DynamoDB, lasted nearly 15 hours before all services were fully restored at 6:00 PM ET. The financial impact was estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
November 2025: Microsoft Azure Failure
Microsoft's cloud platform suffered an eight-hour outage in early November 2025, triggered by a configuration fault in Azure Front Door, its content delivery network service. The incident affected not just Microsoft 365 services but also major corporate customers including Starbucks, Kroger, and multiple airlines.
November 2025: Slack Collapse
On November 10, 2025, Slack experienced a severe failure that left thousands of users unable to access the workplace messaging platform, disrupting business communications globally.
June 2025: Google Cloud Disruption
Google's cloud services went down for an extended period in June 2025, disrupting major service providers like OpenAI and Shopify. The company attributed the outage to "multiple layers of flawed recent updates."
The Concentration Risk Problem
These repeated failures have reignited debate about the concentration of internet infrastructure in the hands of a few major providers. The cloud services market is dominated by:
- Amazon Web Services (AWS): ~30% market share
- Microsoft Azure: ~20% market share
- Google Cloud Platform: ~13% market share
When one of these providers experiences an outage, the impact ripples across the global digital economy. As cybersecurity expert Rob Jardin noted regarding the AWS outage: "The internet was originally designed to be decentralized and resilient, yet today so much of our online ecosystem is concentrated in a small number of cloud regions. When one of those regions experiences a fault, the impact is immediate and widespread."
Expert Perspectives
Cornell University's Gregory Falco explained the complexity: "Cloud setups, like Azure or AWS, are like puzzles with tons of parts. If one piece goes bonkers, it messes with others, sometimes in odd ways."
Tech analyst Lance Ulanoff expressed frustration with the lack of redundancy: "I continue to be confused about why there is not instant redundancy when you can have something that is seemingly so small, or so localized, have such a cascading and global impact."
What This Means for Users and Businesses
The cascading nature of these outages demonstrates the interconnected vulnerability of modern internet infrastructure. When a major CDN like Cloudflare or cloud provider like AWS experiences problems, the effects multiply exponentially:
-
Service Dependencies: Many services rely on multiple cloud providers, meaning an outage in one can affect services hosted on another through indirect dependencies.
-
Single Points of Failure: Despite redundancy efforts, certain critical infrastructure components remain vulnerable to configuration errors and system bugs.
-
Global Impact: Cloud regions serve customers worldwide, meaning a problem in one geographic area can have international consequences.
-
Financial Costs: These outages cost businesses hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue, productivity, and customer trust.
Moving Forward
Industry experts are calling for greater diversification and improved failover systems. While the cloud services market offers eight main providers (six US-based, two China-based), concentration among the top three creates systemic risk.
Microsoft and Amazon have both committed to improving monitoring and implementing additional safeguards to prevent similar incidents. However, as today's Cloudflare outage demonstrates, the challenge of maintaining 100% uptime for critical internet infrastructure remains unsolved.
Recommendations for Businesses
Organizations dependent on cloud infrastructure should consider:
- Multi-cloud strategies: Distributing critical services across multiple providers
- Robust failover systems: Implementing automatic switches to backup services
- Status monitoring: Subscribing to real-time status updates from cloud providers
- Communication plans: Establishing alternative communication channels for when primary systems fail
- Customer transparency: Promptly informing customers about service disruptions and recovery timelines
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available about the ongoing Cloudflare outage and its impact on global internet services.
Status Check Your Website: Use our free website monitoring tool to verify if your site is affected by current outages.
Last Updated: November 18, 2025, 1:15 PM ET
