This Tuesday, November 18, significant parts of the web went offline due to technical issues at Cloudflare. Popular platforms like X (old Twitter), OpenAI, and even online games were affected by sporadic interruptions that began around 6 a.m. (BRT).
Users attempting to access websites saw error messages indicating problems with the Cloudflare infrastructure. The irony is that even Downdetector, a site used to monitor outages, temporarily went offline because it relies on Cloudflare’s services.
Cloudflare confirmed it was investigating an internal service degradation that intermittently impacted multiple clients. The company worked for hours to restore services, leaving millions of users without access to essential daily tools.
How much does it cost to be offline?
When a service goes down, the loss starts counting immediately. And the numbers are staggering.
Recent research shows that the cost of downtime now exceeds $300,000 per hour for 91% of mid-to-large-sized companies. 44% of these organizations report that a single hour of inactivity can cost the business over a million dollars.
For e-commerce, the bill is even heavier. Imagine a Black Friday where your site crashes during peak sales. With 1,000 visitors per minute, an average ticket of R$ 100, and a conversion rate of 5%, every hour offline represents R$ 300,000 in lost sales. This is without counting the impact on reputation, recovery costs, and customers who migrate to competitors.
Studies indicate that the average cost of downtime has grown from $5,600 per minute in 2014 to approximately $9,000 per minute currently. And this is just the average: high-risk industries such as finance, healthcare, and manufacturing can face losses exceeding $5 million per hour.
You cannot control whether Cloudflare will go down. Nor if AWS will have an issue tomorrow. What you control is the quality and resilience of your own system.
Better safe than sorry
Most companies discover that something is broken when complaints start rolling in. Or worse: when monthly revenue inexplicably plummets.
The problem is simple: you are behind the error. By the time you discover the failure, customers have already left, contracts have been lost, and reputation has been damaged.
The right question is not “what to do when something breaks?”, but rather “how to ensure nothing breaks?”. The secret is prevention.
AI for test automation
Artificial intelligence is radically changing how companies ensure software quality. It is a technology available now, running in production, preventing real losses.
AI-powered automated tests run continuously. They validate your critical flows non-stop. They identify problems before your users see them. Before the losses start counting.
The difference between testing manually and using intelligent automation is the same difference between having a guard working 8 hours a day and having security cameras running 24/7 with automatic intruder detection.
Modern systems don’t just execute tests. They understand the goal behind the flows, adapt to interface changes, and validate that the final objective is being met, regardless of small technical changes.
Don’t wait for the next downtime
Cloudflare went down today. Last month, it was AWS that caused widespread issues. Tomorrow, it might be another critical infrastructure provider.
The inconvenient truth is that downtime is inevitable on some level. You cannot control whether third-party services will fail. What you can (and should) control is the quality of your own system.
Companies that suffer frequent downtimes incur costs up to 16 times higher than those that maintain high availability. The difference between prevention and remediation is not just financial, it is strategic.
AI-driven automated tests are not an additional cost. They are an investment that pays for itself quickly when you avoid the first serious outage. When you prevent customers from migrating to competitors. When you protect your reputation and keep revenue flowing.
Ready to protect your business from unexpected outages? Get to know TestBooster.ai and see how an AI-powered automated testing platform can be your best ally in keeping your systems running 24/7. Talk to our experts.
