What happened during the global Cloudflare outage and why were thousands of websites down?

The minutes of dropped connections, pages not opening and errors that greeted users in Lithuania and other countries today were a reminder that even the biggest players in the internet infrastructure sometimes stall.
The Cloudflare outage affected a huge part of the internet: businesses, e-shops, media, government systems and even small individual projects.

This is a great opportunity to explain calmly and clearly why these events happen, how they affect your websites and what you should do to minimise future disruptions.

What is Cloudflare and why does so much depend on it?

Cloudflare is not just hosting or a simple additional tool. It is a global infrastructure that:

• Protects against DDoS and other attacks
• acts as a proxy server (CDN), speeding up the loading of your website
• optimises content delivery worldwide
• helps prevent abuse by filtering bots
• supports reliable operation of HTTPS certificates

If a website uses Cloudflare, all of its traffic travels through this infrastructure. As a result, during a crash, your website may be completely unavailable, even if your hosting is running smoothly.

Why did the Cloudflare outage affect Lithuanian websites?

There are many websites in Lithuania, both WordPress projects and e-shops, that rely on Cloudflare for speed, security and easy integration with tools such as:

• Hostinger
• GoDaddy
• WP Rocket
• LiteSpeed Cache
• various CDN or firewall solutions

When a global service error occurs at production or network level, consumers in Lithuania see:

• Errors 522, 523, 524
• long website loading times
• unopenable links
• broken administration systems
• problems with Google indexing (because robots get errors)

Such disruptions can also have a direct impact on business processes, such as missed enquiries, interrupted transactions and slowed orders.

How dangerous are such disruptions to your business?

The crash itself is not a problem for your website. It's not a programming error, a design inaccuracy or a hosting error. But the consequences can be felt:

• reduced visitor traffic on that day
• small short-term drop in Google positions
• uncollected enquiries or sales
• risk of unreliable impression for new visitors

It's important to understand that Google looks at the overall trend, so overnight disruptions don't usually have a lasting SEO impact.
You can read more about visibility in the article:
Local SEO: how to be visible in your city

What can you do to minimise the impact of such disorders in the future?

1. Have site health monitoring

If you know that a website has stopped working within minutes, you can inform your customers faster and avoid stress.

Useful tools:

• UptimeRobot
• BetterStack
• Jetpack Monitor (WordPress)

2. Consider a fallback DNS solution

The Cloudflare Outage mainly affects traffic at DNS and CDN level.
For some businesses, it may be rational to have a backup DNS provider, especially if the project is mission critical.

3. Avoid shadow errors on the website

If your website is already slow to load, has structural errors or SEO deficiencies, these problems will only exacerbate the existing problems.
You can read about the most common problems:
What are the most common mistakes in website design?

4. Ensuring ongoing supervision

Continuous monitoring allows you to quickly spot not only global, but also local disorders.

5. Have clear communication with visitors

If you feel that your website is down, it's worth it:

• write a short message on social media
• leave an automatic reply in emails
• informing customers if e-commerce is taking place

This builds credibility and reduces dissatisfaction.

Will this Cloudflare disruption make a difference in the future?

Such global incidents are rare, but very valuable in two respects:

1. They remind us how much of the internet depends on an infrastructure that usually works perfectly.
2. They show how important website speed, stability and ongoing maintenance are, especially in the face of fast-growing online competition in Lithuania.

If you run a business website, the smartest strategy is to prepare in advance to make the experience as smooth as possible during disruptions.

Finally,

Today's Cloudflare outage was a reminder of the simple truth that even the best infrastructure sometimes stalls.
It's all about how you prepare for it.

If you want your website to be fast, secure and stable, start with a clear structure, good content and regular maintenance.

If you're interested in a consultation or website optimisation, feel free to get in touch anytime.