What the Cloudflare Outage Means for Denver Businesses
On Tuesday, November 18, 2025, a major Cloudflare outage caused widespread disruption across the internet. Many popular platforms experienced downtime or slow performance, including social media sites, streaming services, and AI tools. For businesses in Denver, the impact was immediate and a reminder that global infrastructure outages can affect local operations without warning.
What happened
Cloudflare provides content delivery, DNS, network security, and other core internet services. When Cloudflare experiences a service failure, large sections of the internet feel the effects. During the November outage, an unexpected surge in unusual traffic triggered system failures that caused common server errors and connection problems. As a result, websites and applications that depend on Cloudflare became slow, unreliable, or temporarily unavailable.
Why it matters for Denver businesses
1. Impact on websites and online sales
If your website uses Cloudflare or depends on a service that does, a failure can result in temporary downtime. Customers may not be able to load your site or complete transactions. For retailers, hospitality groups, local service providers, and restaurants, even a short outage can affect revenue and customer trust.
This outage is especially concerning because it arrives during the early Black Friday shopping period. Many Denver businesses launch their online promotions a week or more before Thanksgiving. When websites slow down or fail to load during this window, shoppers quickly abandon carts and move on to competitors. Early holiday traffic is often the highest converting traffic of the entire year, and even a few hours of downtime can reduce sales, limit lead generation, or interfere with pre-holiday marketing momentum. For local Denver stores that rely on both e-commerce and foot traffic, online outages can also weaken in-store interest and reduce campaign effectiveness.
2. Disruption to cloud apps and productivity
Many Denver organizations rely on cloud tools for communication, accounting, project management, and customer service. If any of those platforms rely on Cloudflare, your team may have experienced interruptions or delays in their work.
3. Interruptions in marketing and communication channels
Social platforms and AI tools used for content creation and ads were among the services affected. If you schedule live posts, promote events, or rely on timing for campaigns, these outages can quickly throw off your strategy.
4. Increased risk and compliance concerns
Businesses in regulated sectors such as legal, healthcare, finance, and nonprofit services must maintain uptime, protect sensitive data, and follow industry standards. Even if the outage is not your fault, it can reveal weaknesses in your disaster recovery plan or raise questions during audits.
5. Customer experience and local reputation
Denver customers expect fast service and reliable digital experiences. When systems fail, even for a short period, customers may question your reliability. How you respond in the moment often matters more than the outage itself.
What Denver organizations should do next
Audit your technology dependencies
Identify every service that relies on Cloudflare or other major providers. This includes DNS, hosting, web security tools, and third party apps.
Build redundancy into your systems
Consider adding backup DNS, alternative routing, or multi vendor services. Reducing reliance on a single provider improves resilience.
Update your business continuity plan
Make sure your incident response procedures include scenarios where third party cloud services fail. Practice tabletop exercises with your team so they understand their responsibilities during an outage.
Strengthen communication plans
Have clear customer messaging ready to go when service interruptions occur. Communicating early and clearly can protect your brand and your relationships.
Reevaluate cloud vendor agreements
Review your contracts, uptime guarantees, and service level expectations. Make sure the realities of modern cloud infrastructure are reflected in your policies.
Educate your team and leadership
Use events like this to help employees and executives understand the importance of resilience planning. Cloud outages are rare, but they are disruptive enough to require attention.
Questions Answered About The Cloudflare Outage
Why did the Cloudflare outage affect so many websites at once?
Cloudflare sits between websites and the public internet. When its network has issues, anything running through it becomes slow or unreachable. Many major platforms use Cloudflare behind the scenes, so one event can ripple across the internet.
How do I know if my Denver business was directly affected by the outage?
If your website slowed down, your online store failed to load, or your team could not access certain apps, you were likely affected. Your IT partner or MSP can confirm whether your systems rely on Cloudflare.
Should I switch providers if Cloudflare had an outage?
Not necessarily. Cloudflare is still one of the most reliable providers on the internet. The better solution is to add layers of redundancy so your business is not dependent on one vendor.
What can my business do to prevent downtime during future outages?
You can use backup DNS providers, add alternative routing options, maintain updated disaster recovery plans, and partner with an MSP that monitors these services proactively.
Do outages like this create security risks?
Temporary outages do not automatically create security holes, but they do increase risk by disrupting monitoring and alerting systems. Businesses should review logs and verify that security tools remained active during the event.
Do Denver businesses need a disaster recovery plan for cloud outages?
Yes. Even if your internal systems are strong, many of your tools depend on external cloud services. Planning for third party outages protects your operations and your customer experience.
How can I explain this outage to my customers or clients?
You can share that a major internet infrastructure provider experienced a temporary failure, and that your systems were affected as a result. The key is transparency and reassurance that your business is strengthening resilience.
