Cloudflare Outage: How MSPs Keep You Online
Yesterday’s Cloudflare outage was a stark reminder of how fragile the internet can be. For businesses that rely on uptime to serve customers, even a short disruption can mean lost revenue, frustrated clients, and damaged trust. Unfortunately, outages like this are becoming the norm—not the exception.
So, how do you protect your business when the web giants stumble? The answer lies in proactive IT support and managed services.
The digital world is more interconnected than ever. Services like Cloudflare handle massive amounts of traffic, acting as a backbone for countless websites. When they go down, the ripple effect is huge. Businesses that depend on a single point of failure—like one DNS provider—are most at risk.
On November 18, 2025, Cloudflare experienced a major service outage that affected many websites and applications worldwide. The problem started when a routine update to their systems caused unexpected issues, leading to disruptions in how data was routed across the internet. This meant that many businesses and users couldn’t access websites or online services for several hours.
Cloudflare quickly identified the problem, rolled back the changes, and restored services. They’ve explained that the outage wasn’t caused by a cyberattack but by an internal configuration error. The company is now reviewing its processes to prevent similar incidents in the future.
When we rely on third-party platforms for critical services, we often face a challenge: we have no direct control over their systems and no guaranteed timescales for fixes when things go wrong. In these situations, businesses sometimes need to step in and make changes to keep operations running.
Cloudflare is an excellent platform for performance and security, but as the recent global outage showed, it can become a single point of failure. When that happens, the impact is widespread and immediate.
One practical question many businesses are asking now is: Should we point the primary name server to Cloudflare and the secondary back to our DNS provider’s records?
This approach can provide an extra layer of resilience. By maintaining a fallback DNS path, you reduce the risk of complete service disruption if Cloudflare experiences an outage. It’s not a perfect solution as failover would only kick when nameserver go offline, but it’s a proactive step toward minimising downtime and maintaining business continuity.
This approach can provide an extra layer of resilience. By maintaining a fallback DNS path, you reduce the risk of complete service disruption if Cloudflare experiences an outage. It’s not a perfect solution as failover would only kick when nameserver go offline, but it’s a proactive step toward minimising downtime and maintaining business continuity.
Every minute of downtime costs money and reputation. By partnering with an MSP, you’re not just outsourcing IT—you’re investing in peace of mind. When the next outage hits (and it will), your systems remain online, your customers stay happy, and your brand stays strong.
Don’t wait for the next outage to expose vulnerabilities. Contact IT LifeRaft today to discuss how we can make your business resilient.
👉 Book a Consultation
👉 Book a Consultation
Thanks for your time and as always, stay safe online. Mark