Amazon Web Services East Outage 2025: What Really Happened and How It Affected Shared Hosting Sites

[johny899]

Have you ever had one of those days when your internet goes out and you think "is it just me?" Well, October 21, 2025 was not just you. Amazon Web Services (AWS), the worlds largest cloud provider, had a huge US-East region outage and it broke about half the internet for a few hours. Lets talk about what went on and what you should think about if your shared-hosting site went down due to it.

What Went On?​

AWS US-East (that is the Virginia data center) suddenly had a big problem to their DNS system, basically the Phonebook of the internet. It takes the name as a website to an actual IP address to allow the browser to find it.

But on that day, there was a problem with one of its internal databases, DynamoDB. That small problem caused a chain reaction, services started to fail, websites wouldn't load, apps started crashing.

Here is what took place:

• The issue began on or around October 20, late one night (US time).
• The first indication was the failure of DNS requests that impacted millions of users.
• Well-known applications including Snapchat, Venmo, and Fortnite suffered functionality loss.
• In fact, portions of numerous systems from Amazon's own back-end also lost functionality.
• There was a lack of new data flow for a significant period of time, which delayed or halted that situation for those long periods.

Sounds wild, right? But it also reveals the reliance of a significant portion of the internet on a single AWS region.

Why it Matters to Users of Shared Hosting​

If your website is hosted by an organization utilizing AWS — specifically the US-East availability zone — your site may have experienced slowdowns, displayed "server error" pages, or stopped completely.

It is even possible that your hosting provider did not create the problem as a host, but their data and their operational systems failed because they rely on AWS.

This serves to remind us that the largest, most capable names in tech can crash — and when they do, you feel it.

What Should You Do at This Point?​

Let's keep it real. Here are some actionable next steps you should be taking (as a shared-hosting client, like me):

1. Ask your host about where your site lives

Send your host a quick message:

• Specific data center or region?
• Do you solely depend on AWS East or do you use any backups?
• What is your plan if AWS goes down again?

If they only use one region without any backups, that's a risk.

2. Always have a backup

Don't rely on your hosting provider 100% of the time.

• Keep a regular backup of your site.
• Store backups in another cloud (e.g., Google Drive or another AWS region).
• Use a DNS provider that provides you with the quick switch opportunity, if needed.

3. Understand your uptime limits

Make sure that you read your host’s Service Level Agreement (SLA)—the rules around downtime. Many will not include outages caused by AWS. Therefore, if your site is important to your (or someone else’s) business, it might make sense to have backup hosting or a failover site.

4. Be vigilant and be communicative

There are free services, like UptimeRobot or Ken's Favorite, Pingdom to monitor your site.
When it goes down, let your users know what is going on—being honest about the situation calms people down.

Final thoughts​

The AWS East outage was a good reminder for all of us that no company is too big to fail – even Amazon. If your site has been affected and is on shared-hosting, don’t panic. Learn from it instead.

The best advice? Make sure you know where your site is hosted, have backups and be prepared. The next outage is going to happen (and it will) and you will be the one saying "don't worry I'm on it."