Recently, the Walmart website and app encountered issues that led to thousands of American online shoppers being unable to complete purchases or browse products. While the outage was short, even small amounts of downtime can lead to a variety of negative consequences for companies.
Walmart Experiences Ecommerce Outage
On December 30th, 2025, Walmart experienced an outage on both the company’s website and mobile app that prevented many shoppers in the USA from completing orders and browsing products. According to data from Downdetector, thousands of customers reported issues with the company’s app and website in the early morning, around 7 a.m. EST.
Most of the complaints were in regard to the mobile app (around 70%), while plenty of others (about 25%) highlighted their issues with the website. Many frustrated customers also took to X to voice their concerns and share their issues.
However, the downtime was thankfully short-lived as the reports of problems decreased significantly around an hour later.
While no specific reason for the downtime was provided, Microsoft’s Azure, a cloud computing service used by Walmart and many other businesses, also experienced some outages around the same time, and the two could certainly be related.
Even Short Downtime Can Cause Major Issues
But while this downtime was short and likely only impacted a few thousand people, even short outages can have horrible consequences for businesses. In fact, 98% of organizations report that just an hour of downtime costs more than $100,000.
The costs may be even higher for larger companies, as 33% of enterprises report that an hour of downtime can cost anywhere from $1 million to $5 million.
In addition to financial loss from being unable to make sales for the entire duration of the outage, these outages also cause lost productivity, reputational damage, potential fines and lawsuits, brand damage, and may lead to potentially high recovery and repair costs to get systems back up and running.
Ways to Reduce the Chances of Downtime
As a result, companies both large and small should do all they can to reduce the chances of dealing with downtime and outages. Some ways to help decrease the likelihood of dealing with them include:
- Choosing a reliable hosting provider that has a track record of solid uptime.
- Monitoring your systems continuously to ensure you can identify issues while they’re smaller, and stop them before they grow large enough to actively impact customers.
- Ensuring you keep all software and tools you use updated, and schedule updates and maintenance during times when traffic is lowest. Also, communicate these planned maintenance outages ahead of time.
- Performing regular tests of your site or store to ensure it can handle traffic and to confirm that everything is working as expected.
- Having strong security measures in place to prevent attacks or hacks, which can lead to downtime, outages, and other issues.
However, keep in mind that there’s no foolproof way to guarantee you never experience downtime. As this recent Walmart outage shows, even the largest companies that make the most money can still fall victim to outages.
That being said, you should still ensure you’re doing all you can to make sure your online store or website has as little downtime as possible. While some customers may stick with you through these issues, many others may jump ship after only a single problem or negative experience.
