Cloudflare Outage Sends Shockwaves Across the Web: What It Means for Your Business Today
- Alex Hughes
- Nov 18
- 3 min read
If your website, app, or internal systems are feeling sluggish today — you're not imagining it.
Cloudflare, the backbone for millions of sites and services, is currently experiencing a global network outage.
This isn’t a minor blip: at 11:48 UTC on November 18, 2025, Cloudflare confirmed it's “investigating an issue which potentially impacts multiple customers” across its global network.
🌐 Who's Affected – And How
1. Public websites & apps
If your landing pages, blogs, customer portals, or online tools sit behind Cloudflare, they may be loading slowly or failing to appear completely. The outage spans multiple regions — so affected visitors could be spread worldwide.
2. SaaS platforms and portals
Services that rely on Cloudflare for DNS, SSL termination, or API routing may be experiencing partial or total service interruptions. That includes back-office dashboards, payment gateways, interactive dashboards — even internal tools.
3. Enterprises & SMEs alike
SMEs using Cloudflare for basic CDN and security — your e-commerce site or informational page could be offline or logging Customers seeing “site unreachable.”
Big enterprises leveraging Cloudflare Workers, spectrum, firewall, or even 1.1.1.1 resolver — core integrations (CI/CD workflows, bots, internal tools) may be failing or timing out.
4. Email hints & internal comms
Systems using Cloudflare’s email routing or internal APIs could suffer delays or errors. Even internal dashboards might display “connection error” alerts or blank pages.
Why This Matters for Businesses
Lost revenues & customer trust
If online shops or booking tools are down — that’s immediate revenue lost and bouncing customers who might not return.
Brand damage
Visitors seeing blank pages, 502/503 errors, or timeout messages won’t wait. They’ll quickly conclude the site is broken — and brand reputation takes a hit.
Team productivity takes a hit
Workflows that rely on internal tools (like CRMs, analytics, dashboards) stop cold. Projects stall, support delays, payments freeze, and chaos creeps in.
Security exposure
Some businesses may be redirecting traffic away from Cloudflare during this outage, bypassing web application firewalls or DDoS protections — significantly increasing risk.
What You Can Do Right Now
Check Cloudflare’s status page for updates. This is the source of truth.
Notify impacted stakeholders inside and outside your business. Share brief status updates so your team isn’t in the dark.
Have backup access strategies ready — can you point DNS at alternative endpoints or host a static fallback?
Track customer complaints and traffic drops — keep an eye on engagement, tickets, and sales.
The Bigger Picture: Are We Too Dependent?
Cloudflare handles 78 million HTTP requests per second, protecting and serving traffic globally. Today’s outage highlights a key lesson:
Outsourcing critical infrastructure is efficient — until it isn’t. When a service like Cloudflare goes down, the ripple effect touches everything built on top.
Redundancy matters: multiple CDN layers, failover DNS, alternate traffic paths.
Monitoring matters: early detection across services before customers do.
Communication matters: transparent updates build trust even during failures.
In Summary
What’s happening: Cloudflare is experiencing a global connectivity issue affecting sites, apps, APIs, and security services since 11:48 UTC today.
Who’s hit: Anyone using Cloudflare — from blogs and ecommerce sites to enterprise apps and internal tools.
Why it matters: Disruptions cost revenue, drop productivity, damage brand perception, and expose security holes.
What to do: Monitor status, communicate with stakeholders, implement fallback strategies, and consider reviewing dependency risk.
⚠️ Today’s outage is a flash reminder: even the most robust platforms can falter. How prepared is your business when core infrastructure stumbles?
