First, confirm it is actually Cloudflare and not your store. Then contain the damage and communicate. Here is exactly how to do that during a Cloudflare outage, plus what usually breaks and how long incidents tend to last.
How do I confirm Cloudflare is actually down?
Check two independent sources before changing anything in your store. First, StatusBird's live Cloudflare status page, which is based on independent checks every 2 minutes. Second, Cloudflare's own status page at www.cloudflarestatus.com. If the official page still shows green, do not assume you are wrong: vendors often acknowledge incidents well after they start. If both look clean, the problem is more likely your store's configuration or a specific integration.
What does a Cloudflare outage look like?
- Visitors see Cloudflare error pages like 502 Bad Gateway, 522 Connection Timed Out, or 500 with Cloudflare branding
- Your domain fails to resolve or resolves intermittently
- Traffic in your analytics drops to near zero across all pages at once
- The Cloudflare dashboard and API are unreachable or erroring
- Several unrelated services you use are down simultaneously
What breaks in your store
When Cloudflare has problems, your storefront can become unreachable even though your origin server is perfectly healthy, because customer requests never make it past the edge. Visitors typically see Cloudflare-branded 5xx error pages such as 502 or 522, or DNS lookups fail entirely if the outage hits Cloudflare DNS. Checkout, product pages, and any subdomain proxied through Cloudflare all fail together, and third-party services you rely on may be down at the same time since many of them also run behind Cloudflare.
For context, StatusBird's independent monitoring recorded 2 major Cloudflare incidents in the last 90 days, with an average duration of 7 hours 35 minutes. Details are on the Cloudflare reliability page.
What to do during the outage
- Check cloudflarestatus.com to see which data centers or services are affected.
- If only the proxy is affected, temporarily switch your DNS records from proxied (orange cloud) to DNS only (grey cloud) so traffic goes straight to your origin.
- Post a notice on your social channels and Google Business profile so customers know the store is temporarily unreachable.
- Avoid making DNS or configuration changes mid-incident that you will have to unwind later, unless bypassing the proxy is your deliberate fix.
- After recovery, re-enable the proxy and confirm SSL, firewall rules, and caching behave normally again.
Frequently asked questions
My store shows a Cloudflare 502 or 522 error. Is my hosting down or is Cloudflare down?
A Cloudflare-branded error page means the request reached Cloudflare, so start by checking cloudflarestatus.com. If Cloudflare reports an incident, your origin is likely fine; if Cloudflare is healthy, a 522 usually means Cloudflare cannot reach your origin server and the problem is on your hosting side.
Can I bypass Cloudflare to get my store back online during their outage?
Often yes, by setting the affected DNS records to DNS only mode so traffic skips the Cloudflare proxy. Be aware you lose Cloudflare's caching, bot protection, and possibly SSL termination while bypassed, and if the outage affects Cloudflare DNS itself, changes may be slow to take effect.
After the outage
Once Cloudflare recovers, verify the affected workflows end to end rather than trusting the status page. Note the start and end times while they are fresh: if you are on a paid Cloudflare plan with an SLA, documented downtime is what a service credit claim is built on. See how to claim SLA credits for the process.
How this data is measured
StatusBird checks Cloudflare's status every 2 minutes, around the clock, independently of the vendor. The availability figure counts major and critical outages only; minor degradation is excluded so numbers are not skewed by vendors that report small blips near-continuously. Grades run from A+ to F. See the live numbers on the Cloudflare reliability page and current status on the Cloudflare status page, or browse all 84 service grades.
Know before your customers do
StatusBird monitors Cloudflare and 83 other services online stores depend on, plus your own storefront, every 2 minutes. When something goes down you get an SMS, email, or Slack alert with plain-English context, usually before the official status page catches up. Start monitoring free, no card required for the free plan.