Zoom, the world’s leading video conferencing platform, suffered a major outage on April 16, 2025, leaving millions of users unable to access meetings and critical services for nearly two hours.
The disruption was ultimately traced to a server block imposed by GoDaddy Registry, the manager of the .us domain namespace, following a communication error with Zoom’s domain registrar, Markmonitor.
Timeline and Impact
The incident began at approximately 11:25 AM PDT (2:25 PM ET), when users in the United States and internationally started reporting issues accessing Zoom services.
Attempts to join or start meetings, schedule calls, or even reach the Zoom website were met with error messages such as “This site can’t be reached” and 502 Bad Gateway responses.
The outage also took down Zoom’s status page, compounding confusion among customers and IT departments .
At the height of the disruption, Downdetector logged over 60,000 complaints in the US alone, with reports surging to 70,000 as businesses, schools, and organizations scrambled for alternatives.
Users who were already in active Zoom meetings or phone calls remained connected, but any new attempts to access Zoom’s services failed due to the domain name resolution issue.
Root Cause: DNS Registry Error
Zoom’s investigation, corroborated by Cisco’s ThousandEyes monitoring platform, revealed that the root of the outage was not a security breach, product failure, or network attack.
Instead, the problem lay in the Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure.
GoDaddy Registry, which manages the .us top-level domain, mistakenly placed a server block on the zoom.us domain due to a miscommunication with Markmonitor, Zoom’s domain registrar.
This server block removed the necessary DNS records from the .us namespace, making it impossible for users’ devices and internet service providers to resolve the zoom.us domain to its underlying IP addresses.
As a result, all services relying on the domain, including subdomains and customer-specific vanity URLs, became inaccessible.
Resolution and Recovery
Zoom, Markmonitor, and GoDaddy worked rapidly to identify and remove the erroneous server block. Service restoration began at 1:12 PM PDT (4:12 PM ET), but due to the nature of DNS caching across global internet infrastructure, it took additional time for all users to regain access.
Zoom advised users experiencing lingering issues to flush their DNS cache—a process that required some technical know-how, especially for those less familiar with command-line instructions.
Prevention and Next Steps
In the wake of the incident, Zoom, GoDaddy Registry, and Markmonitor have implemented new technical safeguards.
Notably, a registry lock has been placed on the zoom.us domain, restricting the ability to issue server block commands without additional verification.
Both GoDaddy and Markmonitor have committed to reviewing and strengthening their processes to prevent similar incidents in the future.
Broader Implications
While the outage was not the result of a cyberattack, it highlights the fragility of critical internet infrastructure and the risks posed by third-party dependencies, even for major technology providers.
As remote work and virtual collaboration remain central to business operations worldwide, the incident underscores the need for robust oversight and redundancy in digital service delivery.
Zoom has apologized for the disruption, reaffirming its commitment to reliability and customer trust.
The company stated, “We take this very seriously, and our goal is to do everything possible to make sure this type of incident cannot happen again”.
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