On November 18, a massive outage occurred at Cloudflare — a company that provides network security and optimization for millions of websites worldwide. The incident led to the unavailability of numerous popular services, including ChatGPT, Spotify, X (Twitter), League of Legends, Roblox, Epic Games Store, PayPal, and Canva.
What Happened?
Cloudflare acts as an intermediary between a website and its visitors, providing:
- Faster page loading through a global network of servers (CDN)
- Protection against DDoS attacks and malicious traffic
- DNS management
- Encryption of connections via HTTPS
When traffic cannot pass through Cloudflare's servers, it does not reach the user. According to Downdetector, the outage affected a vast number of websites worldwide, including in Ukraine.
“Cloudflare is aware of the issue that may potentially impact many customers and is investigating it,” — the company reported, not yet naming a specific cause for the outage.
Users were mass receiving “500” errors and also observed failures in the operation of the Cloudflare dashboard and API. Additional problems arose with the availability of the company's support portal.
The Problem of Centralization
The outage demonstrated the risks of excessive dependence of the internet on a single company. Most web resources have chosen Cloudflare for their needs, leading to a certain level of centralization. When the company's resources fail, a large part of the internet simply “goes down” as a result.
Alternatives to Cloudflare
For website owners looking to diversify risks, there are alternatives to Cloudflare:
Akamai Technologies — one of the oldest and largest CDN providers in the world, serving large corporate websites and ensuring high reliability.
Amazon CloudFront — a CDN from Amazon Web Services with integration into the AWS ecosystem, suitable for businesses already using Amazon's infrastructure.
Fastly — a fast CDN focused on real-time content and edge computing capabilities, popular among media companies.
Google Cloud CDN — a solution from Google with integration with other Google Cloud Platform services.
BunnyCDN — an affordable alternative with a simple interface and competitive pricing, aimed at small and medium-sized businesses.
StackPath — a comprehensive solution with CDN, DDoS protection, and edge computing.
KeyCDN — a fast and inexpensive CDN with pay-as-you-go pricing, without minimum commitments.
Sucuri — specializes in website security with built-in CDN and attack protection.
What to Consider When Choosing an Alternative
When selecting an alternative to Cloudflare, it is important to consider:
- Geographic coverage of servers
- Cost of services
- Level of DDoS attack protection
- Integration with existing infrastructure
- Quality of technical support
Experts recommend considering the possibility of using multiple providers simultaneously (multi-CDN strategy) to enhance reliability and avoid dependence on a single supplier.
In Brief: The Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025, paralyzed half of the internet. There are alternatives — from Akamai and Amazon CloudFront to BunnyCDN and Fastly, which can provide risk diversification for web resources.
