When the Cloud Went Down: How One AWS Outage Shook the Digital World 

When Amazon Web Services went down, the internet went with it. Bea Widdup explores how one outage rippled through the digital world – from global platforms to Satsuma’s own workflow – and what it taught us about resilience in the cloud era. 

The Day the Internet Stopped Working 

Yesterday, the internet collectively sighed. On October 20, 2025, AWS suffered a major outage, knocking out its cloud-services backbone and sending shockwaves across the digital world. The root causes? A mix of DNS problems and internal network-monitoring failures in AWS’s US-EAST-1 region.  

The scale of disruption was eye-opening. Major apps, websites, payment systems, games, even smart-home devices, all went dark or limped along. The message was clear, our dependence on always online infrastructure is not just high – it’s historic. 

The Ripple Effect on Major Platforms 

Let’s pull back the curtain on who got hit. 

Apps like Snapchat went silent. Gaming services such as Fortnite and Roblox suffered log-in and connectivity failures. Payment and finance platforms were impacted. Smart-home systems like ‘Ring’ were also affected.  

From London to Tokyo, everyday users found they couldn’t pay for things, connect to co-workers, or entertain themselves the usual way. The offline moment served to remind all of us that much of our always connected life rides on infrastructure we rarely think about. 

How It Affected Businesses – Our Experience at Satsuma 

Over here at Satsuma, we caught the wave (and got soaked). 

Suddenly our internal tools stumbled. The design software we use didn’t load, project management via Asana went on holiday, Google-driven workflows lagged. Communication threads fell silent. Productivity? Let’s just say a few of us had time to walk to the coffee machine twice. 

We realised in real time, when your tech stack depends heavily on one provider, and that provider sneezes – you end up catching a cold. Workflow disruption wasn’t just annoying. It cost hours, morale, and made clear how fragile the internet really is. 

Lessons Learned from the Outage 

Yesterday taught us quite a lot about the fragility of our digital world.  

The cloud may be an incredible innovation, but it’s far from foolproof. Even industry giants like AWS can be tripped up by the occasional infrastructure gremlin.  

The outage reminded us that single points of failure aren’t just theoretical risks, they’re very real.  

When one provider is responsible for your logging, databases, and notifications, a single hiccup can send your entire day sideways. It also underscored that contingency planning isn’t optional anymore – having a Plan B, C, and D for your tools and workflows is essential. 

Ultimately, our digital operations are only as resilient as their weakest link, and when a major backbone falters, the ripple reaches everyone – from tech teams and marketers to designers and clients alike. 

Preparing for the Next One – Building Digital Resilience 

Okay, so how do you gear up for that next time? Here are practical steps we’re embedding at Satsuma – and you might want to, too: 

• Backup tools & offline alternatives: Identify core operations (design, comms, project tracking) and maintain secondary tools that can run independently. 

• Clear internal communication plans: If email or chat tools go down, how do we signal? Who leads the workaround? What’s the chain of command? 

• Regular data backups and multiple platforms: Don’t rely on just one cloud region, one provider, one app. 

And on that positive note, the outage was a wake-up call, not a knockout punch. 

It exposed weaknesses, but also gives us the chance to build stronger digital muscles. As a digital business, we’re not just learning to survive outages – we’re learning to thrive despite them.

Because when the cloud crashes, resilient systems don’t crumble – they adapt.