The AWS outage was reported on Monday, October 20, 2025. More than 2000 organizations braced its impact. An AWS bug impacted Amazon, Canva, ChatGPT, Snapchat, Roblox, Perplexity, Duolingo, Signal, Coinbase, Epic Games, and Fortnite.
October 20, 2025, was the day when a bug within the AWS system caused massive downtime of Amazon cloud-computing services. By the Monday evening, AWS engineers had resolved the issue. The cloud-computing outage disrupted services of popular internet applications.
The recent AWS outage raised questions about the dependency on cloud computing and AI services. While it was for a short time, it has affected businesses, entertainment, and healthcare sectors.
United Airlines was unable to offer online services due to the AWS cloud-computing outage.
Here is why the AWS outage happened, its impact, and Amazon’s response.
AWS Outage:
An AWS outage was reported on October 20, 2025. It took Amazon hours to fix the bug.
It has impacted entertainment platforms like Netflix, food services like Starbucks, and aviation services like United Airlines.
Amazon released an apology statement.
What Caused the AWS Outage?
The cause of the October 20, 2025, AWS outage was a bug that caused two programs to update themselves at the same time. The bug was available within Amazon’s automation software.
DynamoDB was down, and it disrupted online services.
Amazon explained that an empty DNS record was in their Virginia-based US-East-1 data center. It was unable to fix itself automatically. It took hours of outage before AWS fixed the issue manually.
More than 8.1 million users reported the outage worldwide.
How did Amazon fix the AWS cloud-computing outage?
- First, AWS has disabled the DynamoDB DNS planner.
- It also disabled DNS enactor automation worldwide.
The issue was resolved on October 20, 2025.
Why Does the AWS Outage Have a Massive Impact?
There are multiple reasons why the AWS cloud-computing outage caused massive disruptions.
Largest Cloud Computing Service:
AWS is the largest cloud-computing service provider. It has 30% market share, while its competitors Microsoft Azure has 20% and Google Cloud has only 13% of market share.
AWS has 4.9 million customers.
The large number of customers dependent on AWS cloud services has raised the number of reports when the outage happened.
Oldest Data Center:
The AWS Virginia-based US-East-1 data center is the oldest. It is also the biggest data center. The maximum cloud services are running on its servers.
Any bug in the Virginia data center is enough to disrupt the worldwide services.
Dependency:
Millions of online businesses are using AWS services to run their operations. The dependency on one server or cloud computing service always triggers the risks.
AWS Alternatives:
AWS is the biggest cloud service provider. Too many users relying on one platform easily get impacted when a bug causes downtime.
The reason for too many users on AWS is the lack of multiple alternatives.
There are two major alternatives to AWS cloud computing:
Microsoft’s Azure:
Microsoft’s Azure is a cloud computing alternative to AWS. It is an AI-powered service. You can use it to build, deploy, and manage online applications.
Azure offers services like storage, AI, analytics, computing, networking, and databases.
Google Cloud:
Google Cloud has 13% market share in the cloud computing industry. It is an easy-to-use platform to build, deploy, and test applications on cloud servers. Google offers $300 free credit to use cloud services.
AWS Outage Impacted Services of the Following Brands:
- Amazon
- ChatGPT
- Canva
- Coinbase
- Duolingo
- Epic Games
- Fortnite
- Perplexity
- Roblox
- Snapchat
- Signal
AWS Outage Impact on Blogging and Digital Marketing:
The AWS outage impacted services relying on its Virginia-based datacenter. Websites, applications, and marketplaces using Virginia servers faced downtime.
The downtime is not too long to leave a massive impact on bloggers or digital marketers.
The reason is that blogging and digital marketing need time to take effect. They are not easily impacted by server downtime for a few hours. But yes, the audience and customers can face the issues while accessing the platforms.
To ease the user’s headache during an outage, it is best to send notifications using WhatsApp Business or smartphone text messages. Let the customer know about the outage and when the services will be back online.
A proactive approach will always help to retain the customer during internet outages.
Conclusion:
The AWS outage reveals the impact of downtime and dependency on a single platform. It is best to host your services on more than one platform.
You can also use the alternative when one service is down.
The AWS cloud-computing outage also revealed the need for multiple cloud-computing services.
Right now, there are only 3 major service providers in the cloud-computing industry.
The rise of more cloud-computing platforms will help the customers and decrease the burden on a single cloud-computing system.
AWS Cloud-Computing Outage FAQs:
What are AWS outages?
AWS outages, or Amazon Web Services outages, are the temporary downtime caused by an error or bug in Amazon servers. It affects healthcare, aviation, entertainment, and banking industries.
Who was affected by the AWS outage?
Major social media platforms, banks, online games, and businesses experienced massive downtime.
Reddit, Snapchat, Halifax, Lloyds, Roblox, and Fortnite are the most popular services on AWS servers.
Why did AWS shut down?
Full automation caused the AWS shutdown. Two applications started updating themselves at the same time. It happened due to an empty DNS record.
How Did Amazon Fix the AWS Outage?
Amazon disabled the DynamoDB DNS planner and DNS enactor automation.
Is Netflix running on AWS?
Yes. Netflix is serving online content using AWS services.
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