The Breaking Point
It wasn’t just you. When Cloudflare went down on the 18th of November 2025, half the internet might as well have gone with it. Sites went dark. Carts were abandoned mid-checkout. Pages froze mid-login like digital tumbleweeds on a serverless plain. Support teams were left staring at dashboards that couldn’t load, just as angry customers flooded inboxes asking, “What’s going on?”
And that went on for over three hours on one of the busiest mornings of the week.
If you’re running an online business, those hours matter. Every latency spike costs you trust. Every outage chips away at reputation. And when a service like Cloudflare hiccups, it’s not just your site that stumbles. It’s your revenue, your support pipeline, your lead gen forms, your live chat, your marketing automations. Entire operations grind to a standstill. For many sites, no Cloudflare means no internet presence at all.
We’re talking about a single provider with its hands in your DNS, CDN, security, and more. When it goes dark, it doesn’t just dim the lights. It takes out your whole floor.
You deserve better than this
This isn’t just a technical inconvenience. It’s a business liability. Whether you’re a solopreneur running a WooCommerce shop or a growing agency managing a portfolio of client sites, hitching all your web infrastructure to one provider is starting to look less like convenience and more like a gamble.
When Cloudflare interrupts service like this, users don’t care why it happened. They care that your site isn’t working. Internal team calls get rescheduled. Customers lose patience. Demos get postponed. Some of them never come back.
This latest outage was a wake-up call—not just about Cloudflare, but about how fragile it can be to pin your whole online existence to a single point of failure. Businesses need stability, not surprises. Clients need confidence, not caveats. Reliability can’t be a nice-to-have. It’s the foundation of everything digital you’re building.
If you felt the pain, you’re not alone (and you’re not crazy for rethinking your stack).
Let’s talk next about what actually happened behind the scenes—and what it means for your infrastructure going forward.
Understanding What Happened: Why Cloudflare’s Outage Rippled Across the Internet
To understand how one outage managed to knock down an enormous slice of the internet, you have to picture how Cloudflare fits into the web’s architecture. Think of it like this: Cloudflare acts as a multilane expressway for internet traffic. It routes requests from users to websites, shielding them from attacks, speeding up content delivery, and resolving domain names. It’s a backbone—but not the skeletal kind. More like a main artery, with half the internet’s heartbeat pulsing through it.
So when that artery clogs up, everything downstream feels the pressure. Websites slow to a crawl. Some stop loading entirely. Services you wouldn’t expect to be connected suddenly fail—not because they’re broken, but because they were depending on Cloudflare’s infrastructure to operate smoothly. Your site might not have been directly hosted on Cloudflare, but if your DNS was, or your CDN ran through their network, then the outage hit you anyway.
This is what’s known as a shared dependency. It’s when a massive number of businesses rely on the same third-party service to handle critical operations. From a distance, it looks efficient. One provider, one bill, everything plays nice together. But under the surface, it creates a single point of failure that can shut down tens of thousands of unrelated sites all at once.
Let’s be crystal clear: this isn’t about one service crashing. It’s about how tightly the web’s plumbing is bundled around a handful of mega-providers. Cloudflare is just one of them. But when they hit a glitch—whether it’s a config error, network outage, or overload—the ripple effect doesn’t care what type of site you run. It just shuts the door.
This is why website owners from all backgrounds felt the sting. Big business, small agency, solo developer—it didn’t matter. Traffic stopped. Forms failed. Calls to action vanished into the void. And the kicker? There wasn’t much anyone could do in the moment, except wait.
One GillyTech client who hadn’t already fully switched over to our HyperPress managed hosting plan yet was caught in the outage, but we managed to get them up and running in no time by switching CDNs on-the-fly.
You can plan around hardware failures. You can even prepare for spikes in traffic. But planning for the failure of a shared dependency means rethinking the architecture you’re leaning on. The more generic infrastructure you offload to a single provider, the more vulnerable your site becomes when something goes wrong outside your control.
Up next: let’s talk about how over-centralization got us into this mess, and why diversifying your web stack may be the smartest move you make this year.
The Risks of Over-Centralization in Online Infrastructure
Let’s put it plainly: when you put all your critical services in one provider’s basket, you’re trusting them to never trip. Ever. That’s not a strategy. It’s wishful thinking dressed up as convenience.
Over-centralization happens when your DNS, CDN, security, edge compute, email proxying, and even analytics all live under one vendor. On paper, it sounds efficient. Fewer vendors. One dashboard. Maybe a few bundled discounts. But under pressure, that setup can collapse like a house of cards in a wind tunnel.
Imagine storing all your valuables in one vault. Not just your jewelry, but your passport, your savings, your backup drives, your car keys. Handy? Sure. But if the vault jams, nothing gets out. Doesn’t matter if only one lock failed. You’re locked out of everything at once—and no customer wants to hear, “Well, our vault vendor is working on it.”
Centralization creates a single point of failure. When a provider like Cloudflare goes offline, it takes everything it touches with it. And if that’s your whole stack, you’re not just dealing with one service being unavailable. You’re effectively off the grid.
This isn’t just a technical problem. It’s a business one. Uptime isn’t an engineering stat—it’s part of your brand. If your site’s down during a product launch, a campaign, or even just a normal Tuesday afternoon rush, users don’t care where the problem started. They only see that it’s not working.
Resilience has to be the priority. Not as an IT checkmark, but as a strategic thread in how you design your digital presence. Any business that uses the internet (which is all of them) needs to reduce risk exposure. Dependencies happen, but over-dependency is a choice. And one that’s easier to avoid than it might seem.
If this latest Cloudflare meltdown taught us anything, it’s that we’ve been building on platforms that were sold as infallible. Turns out, they’re not. Which means diversification isn’t some niche concern for tech purists—it’s a must-have for any company that cares about stability and control.
Your infrastructure should feel like a seatbelt. Always working. Never in the way until you need it. And when you do need it, you better hope it’s not all pulling on a single thread.
Diversifying Your Web Stack: What It Means and Why It Matters
If putting everything behind one provider is the modern version of hiding the keys under the doormat, then diversification is upgrading the whole neighborhood to smart locks. Spreading your digital infrastructure across multiple specialized providers isn’t just about uptime—it’s about control, flexibility, and breathing room when things inevitably go sideways.
Let’s break it down.
When we talk about diversification in your web stack, we’re looking at splitting key services—CDN, DNS, hosting, security, email, edge computing—across vendors who focus on doing one thing well, not everything passably. Instead of one provider doing six jobs, each component gets its own seat at the table. Think of it as outsourcing to specialists instead of relying on one “guy who does it all” and hopes nothing overlaps.
Why does this matter?
- Reduced downtime risk: If one service goes down, it doesn’t wallop your entire online presence. Your DNS can failover. Your CDN has backups. Your emails still go out. You’re not bricked.
- More control: You get to handpick vendors based on how they fit your needs, not how they fit inside someone else’s ecosystem.
- Better performance: Geo-optimized CDNs, lean DNS providers, and purpose-built edge compute platforms can move faster and respond better on their own turf.
- Tighter security: Spreading risk also spreads attack surfaces. One compromised account isn’t a golden key to your entire infrastructure.
What about the complexity?
That’s the natural objection. And it’s fair. More vendors can mean more dashboards, more billing, and more moving parts. But that doesn’t mean chaos. It means designing with intention.
- Start with a dependency audit: Identify which services are single-threaded today. That’s your exposure checklist.
- Prioritize resilience targets: Don’t spread everything all at once. Start with DNS and CDN. Those hit hardest during outages.
- Use monitoring tools that centralize visibility: You don’t need six tabs open to track six services. Use platforms that report holistically.
- Review your cost assumptions: Specialized doesn’t always mean pricier. Many best-in-class vendors offer usage-based pricing that scales sanely.
The idea isn’t to juggle a dozen unstable plates. The goal is to create failover options and operational slack. A diversified web stack is calmer under stress. When something breaks (something always breaks), you don’t hit the panic button. You reroute, respond, and keep serving your customers.
Nobody builds a house with one exit door and calls that safe. It’s the same with your infrastructure. You don’t need to go full bunker-mode, but you do need an exit plan when your provider trips over its own cables.
Practical Steps to Reduce Dependency on Cloudflare and Similar Giants
So you’ve seen what can happen when a mega-provider hiccups, and now you’re thinking, “Okay, how do I not let one company take my whole site offline ever again?” Good. Let’s get into the how.
This isn’t about tearing everything down and rebuilding from scratch. It’s about identifying your bottlenecks, creating redundancy where it matters most, and gaining back the control you gave up for so-called convenience.
1. Start with a Dependency Audit
Before you can fix your infrastructure, you need to know what it’s made of. Map out every third-party service tied to your domain and figure out how tightly each one is coupled with your operations. Look at:
- DNS providers
- CDN and edge services
- Web hosting and backend servers
- Email delivery and security layers
- WAF, DDoS protection, and analytics
If even one of those fails and it takes your site offline, that’s a red flag. Mark it for separation. That’s your action list.
2. Use Multiple DNS Providers
One of the smartest moves you can make is to adopt a multi-DNS configuration. When your sole DNS provider is down, your domain is effectively gone off the map. Redundant DNS setups keep your site resolvable even if one provider goes dark.
Plenty of modern DNS services support dual-provider failover setups. Get familiar with terms like ‘secondary DNS’ and ‘DNS zone transfers’. They sound technical, but the concepts are simple and the benefit is massive: your domain stays reachable.
If you’re tired of registrar-default DNS or the big hyperscalers, here are four rock-solid mid-tier authoritative nameserver hosts that consistently outperform the big domain registrar defaults in speed, uptime, and features:
Bunny DNS – Pay-per-query (20 million free/month) Super-fast Anycast, tight integration if you ever want Bunny CDN later.
ClouDNS – Often #1 or #2 globally on DNSPerf right now Large Anycast network (60+ PoPs), DDoS-protected, full DNSSEC, generous free tier.
Hurricane Electric Free DNS – Truly unlimited & free, no query caps Excellent IPv6 support, reliable Anycast, used in production by thousands.
DNS Made Easy – Enterprise-grade with 100% uptime SLA Failover, analytics, global Anycast – starts cheap and scales cleanly.
QUIC.cloud DNS – Convenient if you’re already on their CDN Global Anycast network (70–80+ PoPs tied to CDN), free unlimited use, one-click setup from LiteSpeed Cache plugin, GeoDNS support.
3. Stop Hosting with Cloudflare-Dependent Platforms
If your hosting platform routes key traffic through Cloudflare (even if you didn’t ask for it), you’re still exposed. Switch to infrastructure that doesn’t require a single CDN to function. Look for independent hosts where you can choose how DNS, CDN, and WAF services get layered in.
GillyTech’s HyperPress™ Managed WordPress Hosting product makes use of QUIC.cloud CDN with rapid failover support for emergencies in case the service is disrupted. We have multiple monitors on each of our client’s websites to ensure all the alarm bells are sounded if there is a hiccup.
4. Pick Alternative CDN and Security Vendors
Don’t bundle your CDN and security under the same provider unless you can afford the risk. Do your homework on who handles caching, traffic acceleration, TLS, bot protection, and firewall rules. Then mix and match. For example:
- Use one vendor for CDN delivery
- Use another for WAF and DDoS protection
- Route traffic through a performance monitor that alerts outside the shared stack
Think of them as modular pieces, not a single add-on package.
Here are a few services we can recommend:
Bunny CDN – Insanely cheap, global PoPs, excellent image optimization & volume pricing
QUIC.cloud – Best WordPress-specific edge caching + built-in WAF/bot protection for LiteSpeed users
Fastly – Enterprise-grade edge compute & WAF if you outgrow the cheap options (starts reasonable)
Sucuri Firewall – Pure cloud WAF + malware cleanup, works great layered over any CDN
SafeLine (self-hosted WAF) – Free/open-source CrowdSec-based WAF you run on your own server or VPS
5. Implement Fallback Mechanisms Now, Not Later
This is where resilience gets real. Build in auto-failover logic: redundant servers, DNS providers with failover patterns, traffic routing rules that handle primary outages without you clicking a button. If your form handler breaks, have a secondary endpoint. If your edge function fails, let servers take over temporarily.
The golden rule? Don’t wait for something to go down before figuring out how to stay up.
Keep the Changes Manageable
You don’t need to flip your whole stack overnight. Pick one layer at a time. Start with DNS, then look at CDN, then your hosting setup. Prioritize services that directly affect visibility and public access. That’s your uptime attack surface.
This isn’t overkill. It’s risk management. And it’s the kind that saves you from lost revenue, panicked Slack threads, or waking up to “something’s broken” DMs when all you wanted was one weekend off.
Incremental improvements add up. Wait-and-hope rarely does.
Pros and Cons of a Distributed Infrastructure Approach
Decentralizing your online infrastructure sounds great in theory—and for many, it’s the smartest move they’ve made. But let’s call it what it is: a trade-off. You’re swapping blind dependency for strategic complexity. That can be a good deal, but only if you go in with eyes open.
Here’s how the balance shakes out.
What You Gain
- Resilience by design: When services are spread across multiple providers, no single outage can knock you flat. Your DNS lives here, your CDN operates there, your WAF is independent. The dominoes don’t fall as fast—or at all.
- Flexibility in your tech stack: You’re not locked into upgrades (or downgrades) dictated by one vendor’s roadmap. If a service lags, you can swap it. No hostage negotiations with support.
- Performance optimization: Specialized services tend to focus on doing one job well. You can pick faster DNS, sharper security, or leaner CDN delivery based on your actual traffic and users—not some generalized average.
- Security segmentation: A breach in one app doesn’t give attackers keys to your full kingdom. Separation limits blast radius. Think of it as building firewalls with actual walls, not just promises in a PDF.
Where It Gets Real
- More operational overhead: Multiple providers means more interfaces, more logins, more coordination. Not chaos, but it can feel heavier than a single-vendor solution.
- Potential cost layering: You might pay more for three best-in-class services than one bundled platform. That’s not always the case, but budget it out before you restructure.
- Ongoing monitoring needs: Distributed infrastructure means you take responsibility for making sure everything functions together. Logs, uptime, latency reporting—it’s on you to stay alert.
How to Decide If It’s Worth It
Start with what you can afford to lose. If your revenue, customer trust, or brand depends on reliable online presence, then reducing risk is table stakes. The added complexity becomes a byproduct of taking your infrastructure seriously.
But if you’re a one-site operation where a short outage doesn’t sink sales or shake users? You might accept certain risks in exchange for simplicity. That’s valid—as long as it’s intentional.
Here’s a simple framework to guide the call:
- Assess risk tolerance: Can downtime cost you clients, money, or credibility? If so, centralization is a liability.
- Evaluate resource capacity: Do you have the in-house skills or agency support to manage a distributed setup responsibly?
- Define your priorities: Is your focus on uptime reliability or reducing admin load? One will influence the other.
Deploying a distributed approach is less about paranoia and more about preparation. If one gear in your system jams, can the rest keep spinning? That’s the question. Spoiler alert: your answer shouldn’t rely on a single logo in the corner of your dashboard.
Better uptime isn’t luck, it’s built.
Turning Resilience Into a Competitive Advantage
It’s tempting to frame infrastructure resilience as a back-end win for the IT team, something that keeps alerts quiet and dashboards green. But that lens is too narrow. When done right, resilience becomes a business asset—something your clients experience, your customers notice, and your competitors wish they’d prioritized sooner.
Fewer outages means more than uptime. It means your product launches land on time. Your checkout page doesn’t vanish during peak hours. Your support team isn’t flooded with anger they didn’t cause. That kind of consistency isn’t just technical. It builds trust.
In a digital market where trust is currency, being the brand that “just works” is worth more than another feature. And here’s where it gets interesting: most of your competitors are still riding the giant-platform rollercoaster, white-knuckling it every time an upstream provider burps. You don’t have to ride that ride with them.
Agencies, this is your moment. If you’re managing client websites, your stack choices are part of their success or failure. Owning that responsibility—and baking in resilience before disaster hits—positions you as the partner who actually prepared, not the one sending apology emails after the fact.
This isn’t about selling fear. It’s about delivering outcomes. Fewer outages means fewer bug reports, fewer lost sales, fewer reputation hits. But it also means smoother campaigns, happier clients, and referrals that come from confidence, not desperation.
Web resilience pays off in both directions. Internally, your ops team spends less time firefighting and more time improving things. Externally, your clients get better performance and stability without even knowing they should’ve been worried. That’s influence. That’s value.
Here’s the shift: stop viewing infrastructure as a cost center. Start treating it like brand infrastructure. Because when the next big outage hits the internet (and it will), the brands that stay up? They earn more than traffic. They earn loyalty.
This is your chance to lead.
Not with fear tactics or jargon, but by showing that you’ve got a smarter, calmer plan. One that keeps your business humming when others fade to error screens. Clients remember that kind of reliability. Customers reward it. And ultimately, your bottom line reflects it.
Resilience isn’t just a tech metric. It’s a competitive edge. Use it.
