What Happened in the AWS Outage and How to Protect Your Website from Future Disruptions

On 20 October 2025, a major Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage disrupted thousands of websites and apps worldwide. The incident began in the US-EAST-1 region and quickly affected users across Europe and the UK due to widespread dependency on AWS infrastructure.

Although Fly High Web does not host client websites on AWS, incidents like this highlight how reliant many businesses are on large cloud platforms. Even if your website wasn’t directly affected, this serves as a reminder of the importance of uptime monitoring, backup systems, and robust hosting support.

TL;DR for Business Owners

  • What happened: AWS experienced a large-scale outage in its US-EAST-1 region, causing slowdowns and downtime for major sites.
  • Who was affected: Platforms such as Snapchat, Fortnite, Ring, and even UK banking services experienced disruption.
  • How to protect your website: Conduct uptime monitoring, ensure your hosting provider has redundancy measures in place, and keep communication clear with your audience during outages.
  • Need help? Fly High Web offers website hosting and maintenance services with high-availability infrastructure, ensuring maximum uptime and peace of mind.

What Happened During the AWS Outage

Timeline (UK Time Approximate)

  • 08:00 BST: Users began reporting increased error rates and website timeouts.
  • 08:30–09:00 BST: AWS confirmed that its US-EAST-1 region was experiencing high error rates and latency.
  • 10:30–11:00 BST: AWS announced “significant signs of recovery” as services began returning to normal.

The Likely Cause

Early indications suggest that a DNS resolution issue with DynamoDB endpoints in US-EAST-1 triggered the outage. This caused a chain reaction, impacting a wide range of websites and applications that rely on AWS’s global network.

Why UK Websites Were Affected

Even if a website is hosted in the UK, many digital services depend on AWS for background processes such as login systems, analytics, or payment gateways. When those dependencies fail, websites outside the affected region can experience performance issues or temporary downtime.

Was Your Website Affected?

You might have noticed:

  • Pages timing out or failing to load.
  • Checkout or login pages not working.
  • Admin dashboards freezing.
  • Integrations with external services (like CRMs or analytics) failing.

Quick Checks to Perform

  • Visit your website and test key functions such as contact forms or e-commerce checkouts.
  • Review your hosting provider’s status page.
  • Check your website analytics for spikes in failed requests or traffic drops.
  • If you use third-party integrations, confirm they’re now fully operational.

Immediate Steps to Take

  1. Check site health – Load key pages, test form submissions, and confirm your CMS is stable.
  2. Communicate – If your customers experienced downtime, post a short update reassuring them the issue has been resolved.
  3. Review performance – Check your analytics for traffic dips or order failures during the outage window.
  4. Document everything – Keep an internal record of incident start times, impacts, and recovery actions.

How Fly High Web Responded

At Fly High Web, our hosting infrastructure operates independently of AWS, so none of our client websites were affected during the incident.

However, we closely monitored the outage to assess any indirect effects on third-party tools that our clients use. Our clients benefit from dedicated UK-based hosting, daily backups, and proactive maintenance — ensuring maximum uptime even when major global providers experience issues.

If your website relies on AWS or another large-scale provider, we can migrate you to a more stable, managed environment as part of our Website Hosting and Maintenance services.

Lessons from the AWS Outage

  • Single-region dependency is risky: Even “redundant” systems in one region can fail simultaneously.
  • Hidden dependencies matter: Many plugins, APIs, and tools rely on cloud services you don’t control.
  • Communication is key: Users appreciate transparency during outages — silence erodes trust.
  • Preparation pays off: Regular backups, uptime monitoring, and having a clear recovery plan are invaluable.

Building Resilience for the Future

Technical Safeguards

  • Use multiple hosting regions or providers for redundancy.
  • Implement caching for key pages and assets to reduce reliance on live servers.
  • Monitor uptime with automated alerts every few minutes.
  • Set up backup DNS and database replication for critical operations.

Operational Best Practices

  • Create a simple incident response plan with defined roles.
  • Keep contact lists for developers, hosting providers, and key vendors.
  • Conduct quarterly recovery tests to simulate real-world outages.
  • Review your Service Level Agreement (SLA) — know what uptime your provider guarantees.

FAQ

Was any data lost during the AWS outage?
No. Reports confirm it was an availability issue, not a data breach.

Why did a US-based issue affect UK users?
Because many websites, even those hosted in Europe, depend on AWS’s US-EAST-1 region for global APIs and DNS lookups.

Should I switch hosting providers?
Not necessarily — but it’s wise to evaluate your hosting setup. If your business requires guaranteed uptime, Fly High Web offers managed UK hosting with real-time monitoring and 24/7 technical support.

How do I know if everything is back to normal?
Visit the AWS Health Dashboard or check your own website’s performance metrics. If your site is still slow, contact your host.

What To Do If You’re Still Having Problems

  • Collect evidence: time, page URL, error message, screenshot.
  • Contact your hosting provider or developer.
  • If you rely on AWS, check for region-specific degradation.
  • Apply short-term fixes such as caching static pages or switching to a backup DNS service.

Our Support for Businesses

Fly High Web provides:

  • High-availability UK hosting not reliant on AWS.
  • Proactive maintenance and uptime monitoring.
  • Performance audits to identify weak points in your infrastructure.
  • Resilience planning to help you prepare for future cloud incidents.

If you want to make your website more resilient, get in touch for a free consultation today.

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Written by

Picture of Matt Pyke

Matt Pyke