The news: The internet went dark Tuesday for users across services like X, ChatGPT, Spotify, Uber, Shopify, DoorDash, Dropbox, and Canva—disabling social media, customer engagement, and creative production. Content delivery network (CDN) Cloudflare restored service after the hourslong global outage that began at 6:20am EST.
Cloudflare attributed the outage to an internal error. A threat-traffic configuration file ballooned beyond its expected size and crashed key systems. The company said it was not a cyber attack, per Reuters.
The latest flare-up: Cloudflare handles roughly 20% of global internet traffic and powers one-third of the top 10,000 websites, apps, and services, per CNBC. When it fails, digital advertising systems sputter, loyalty engines stall, and transactions fail mid-click.
The outage froze major store and payment platforms, APIs, and commerce flows, raising the alarm as brands gear up for the profitable Black Friday period and underscoring how fragile digital infrastructure has become.
Despite services being restored, it could take retailers hours or even days to recover lost sales.
Early Black Friday complications: Nearly all of Shopify’s storefronts—approximately 99.3%—run on Cloudflare’s network, which equates to over 6 million Shopify store domains globally, per Store Leads.
With holiday shopping already underway, Tuesday’s outage shows how vulnerable retailers are to infrastructure failures beyond their control. Even a brief outage can disrupt buying cycles, raise customer frustration, and force brands to rebuild momentum at the worst possible time.
Takeaway for brands: Marketers should push for business continuity expansion plans. Redundant CDNs, multi-cloud strategies, and cross-cloud failovers protect them from being at the mercy of a single CDN provider.
Building for resilience keeps customers confident during outages and keeps online sales moving.
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