Why Cloudflare Being Down Again Today Matters for Your Business
In the early hours of November 18, 2025, the internet reminded us how fragile it can be.
Cloudflare, one of the world’s largest web-infrastructure providers, suffered a significant outage, disrupting access to major platforms and services-including X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, Spotify, Canva and many more.
Cloudflare itself noted “internal service degradation” and widespread 500 errors across its global network. For any business that depends on the web for visibility, lead-generation, or sales, this outage raises important questions: Are you prepared? And are you too dependent on a single layer of the internet infrastructure?
What happened
- Around 6:20 a.m. ET, Cloudflare detected a spike in unusual traffic to one of its services.
- By 6:48 a.m. ET, Cloudflare had confirmed a global network issue affecting many of its customers.
- The impact was widespread: numerous websites and services that rely on Cloudflare’s content-delivery, DNS or security services displayed errors or failed to load.
- As of mid-morning, Cloudflare said services were recovering but warned “customers may continue to observe higher-than-normal error rates”.
Why this matters to your brand
- Dependency on shared infrastructure
Cloudflare powers a large percentage of websites and internet services. Its outage shows how a problem in one provider can ripple across many unrelated businesses. If your site uses Cloudflare (for DNS, CDN, DDoS protection, etc.), your visibility can drop through no fault of your own. - Impact on credibility and conversions
When visitors land on your site and see errors, slowness or complete failure, their trust declines. That means lost leads, lost opportunities and harder recovery even after things are back up. - Highlights need for resilience
This kind of outage is a reminder that contingency planning matters. Relying entirely on one infrastructure layer (DNS/CDN/hosting) introduces risk. Considering backup routes, diversified services or alternative providers can reduce exposure. - SEO and visibility risk
Search engines and AI-driven tools notice downtime, especially if it lasts or repeats. Even though your site may resume, the temporary unavailability can affect rankings or visibility in a competitive environment. - Reputation and client perception
If your clients or users rely on your site for service-especially in times of urgency-they’ll notice when you’re down. That can raise questions about reliability, even if the cause was external.
What you should do now
- Check your own services: If you use Cloudflare (or rely on third-party tools that do), verify that everything is operating normally on your site, apps, APIs, and dashboards.
- Monitor user feedback: Look for spikes in error reports, support tickets, or drops in traffic/conversions.
- Communicate with stakeholders: If you serve clients, let them know what you are aware of and how you’re monitoring. Transparency builds trust.
- Review your infrastructure map: Identify which parts of your stack depend on a single provider (DNS, CDN, WAF, etc.). Explore options for redundancy or fail-over.
- Update your response plan: Use this event as a trigger to refine your incident response process: who gets notified, what channels you use, how you communicate to users or clients.
The takeaway
Today’s outage isn’t just about Cloudflare-it’s about how interconnected and dependent the web has become. For your brand, it’s a signal to treat infrastructure resilience as part of your brand strategy, not just an IT topic. Websites and digital experiences are now central to how brands are perceived-and when they go dark, the damage goes beyond missed pageviews.
At ACS Creative (based in the Metro DC area), we help businesses audit their digital infrastructure as part of the brand experience. If you’d like help assessing your exposure, building contingency plans, or ensuring your web presence remains strong-even when infrastructure layers falter-let’s talk.
