The popular graphic design platform Canva experienced significant service disruptions on Monday, impacting users worldwide. This widespread outage appears to be a direct consequence of a larger disruption affecting Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers, which in turn caused issues for many other major online services and applications globally.
Users reported a range of problems when trying to access Canva’s website and application, from difficulties logging in to failures in saving or publishing designs. These issues were noted by outage tracker Downdetector, highlighting the scale of the problem.
Canva officially acknowledged the situation via a statement on X (formerly Twitter), stating, “Not the ideal situation right now, but we’re working on it. You can check canvastatus.com for updates. We’ll keep you posted!”
Amazon confirmed the AWS incident, noting “increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS services in the US-EAST-1 region.” This particular region is critical infrastructure for numerous global tech companies, including Canva.
The AWS outage had a far-reaching impact, affecting well-known services like Snapchat, Robinhood, Perplexity AI, Coinbase, Venmo, and even Amazon’s own platforms such as Amazon.com, Prime Video, and Alexa. AI startup Perplexity and cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase also confirmed they were affected by the AWS disruption, with Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas commenting on X that their platform was down due to an AWS issue.
The widespread nature of these disruptions serves as a stark reminder of the global reliance on cloud infrastructure providers like AWS. A single outage in such a fundamental service can ripple across countless digital tools, entertainment services, and essential business operations worldwide.