AOL and Yahoo mail appear to be down for US users – get updates live

It looks like both AOL and Yahoo are suffering from an outage affecting their email services, as users have flocked online to report to Downdetector that they can't send, receive or indeed access their emails.

"We understand some users are currently experiencing difficulties accessing their accounts. We are actively investigating this issue and will provide updates as soon as more information becomes available. We appreciate your patience and apologize for any inconvenience this may," AOL's customer service has posted on X.

Let's dig into this as it develops...

2025-07-24T18:26:51.281Z

With AOL some users are suggesting a restart of the app, and that's something I'd recommend after an outage, so consider it a good tip.

2025-07-24T18:24:41.075Z

"The outage today ate some emails. I have a gap of about 3-4 hours of emails that I never received that I know were sent. Yikes." said a Downdetector user on the Yahoo page.

2025-07-24T18:23:21.055Z

So it looks like all is slowly getting well with Yahoo and AOL's email services. Expect a few hiccups or perhaps some lost emails or ones stuck in drafts.

2025-07-24T18:22:02.013Z

We got an email from a reader called Barbara Callahan who said the following: "I have been following you about AOL outage. Thank you for ALL the updates am on Long Island NY and mine seems to be up and working now."

2025-07-24T18:17:59.438Z

Looks like AOL email could be back up in South Florida, New York City, Langhorne, Washington, Los Angeles and North Carolina, according to a clutch of Downdetector users.

2025-07-24T18:13:06.031Z

This message still remains at the top of AOL's Help page: "We are aware some users are experiencing issues accessing their AOL Mail, or displaying their mailbox. We are working to resolve this as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience as our engineers work to remedy this concern."

2025-07-24T18:11:34.468Z

"Mine just came back," said Downdetector user Pamela. So things are looking up.

2025-07-24T18:10:41.644Z

On the Yahoo Downdetector page it looks like some of the service is coming back with one RL Ross noting: "It seems to be coming back up - just got my emails from this morning, finally."

2025-07-24T18:05:13.543Z

A scathing comment about AOL by one Stephen Jackson on Downdetector: "AOL too busy bombarding us with their ever switching non-stop spam, instead of focusing on making sure their email works."

2025-07-24T18:01:54.189Z

Certainly doesn't look look like the email issue is fixed, but sporadic returns of service may be an indicator that AOL is trying out fixes.

2025-07-24T18:00:47.735Z

Hmmm I'm seeing some murmurings that AOL email could slowly be coming back with Downdetector user MelissaW noting "It looks like it works, but will not delete email or let you look in folders. Gives an error message."

2025-07-24T17:57:56.883Z

AOL's main website, including its search and news functions are all operating fine, so this does appear to be an outage exclusively linked to email services.

2025-07-24T17:54:33.940Z

I'm a Microsoft and Gmail email user so tend to have backups for certain important authentication services. But it's not a fool proof method, especially if you can't use a backup or secondary email.

If I couldn't get a bank code due to an email outage, I'd be rather upset... I'm not the most patient of people.

2025-07-24T17:51:34.358Z

Totally get this could be a big ol' issue for Yahoo email users too:

2025-07-24T17:48:21.783Z

But oddly it seems like AOL email is working on iPhone for some users.

2025-07-24T17:47:36.775Z

AOL is being equally quiet...

2025-07-24T17:46:09.504Z

No hint of when a fix will be made for Yahoo. And I feel this X user's frustration...

2025-07-24T17:39:54.080Z

It's understandably a similar situation for Yahoo on Downdetector, as you can see below...

2025-07-24T17:31:04.399Z

So if you look at this image, you can see it's not a good look for AOL's email in Downdetector, but perhaps the number of outage reports have peaked...

2025-07-24T17:26:23.457Z

I kind of feel sorry for small businesses when these forms of email outages occur, as they probably lack the resources and backup systems to mitigate for such outages.

2025-07-24T17:23:40.494Z

Interestingly, the sign-up page for AOL email still appears to be active...

2025-07-24T17:21:59.487Z

I can't see any outages for cloud platform providers that could be affecting email service servers and supporting infrastructure, so I'm a little limited on how much I can speculate as to the cause of this email outage.

2025-07-24T17:19:16.106Z

Still nothing new from Yahoo or AOL on how long this outage will last or what's caused it.

2025-07-24T17:17:59.335Z

With so many email clients and services one might think an AOL/Yahoo outage could be glossed over a little but as one Downdetector poster notes: "RIP. Can't retrieve MFA codes."

So if you're using such an email service to handle multi-factor authentication then you might be a little stuck.

2025-07-24T17:15:04.398Z

So why are AOL and Yahoo both suffering an outage? Well they merged into one company so are almost certainly sharing infrastructure, meaning an outage for one brand is likely to affect the other.

2025-07-24T17:10:31.449Z

This user isn't happy...

2025-07-24T17:09:48.798Z

Things aren't exactly rosy for AOL either, with responses to the company's X account noting the outage is somewhat widespread in the States and affecting different devices.

2025-07-24T17:06:33.771Z

There's a little bit of inconsistency in how the outage seems to be affecting Yahoo Mail users, with some saying they can log into their email but aren't getting any messages, while others are noting they can't aces any of their emails, with error messages being thrown up.

2025-07-24T17:04:09.864Z

Equally, and a little like me, some people have expressed wry bemusement that people are still using Yahoo email...

2025-07-24T17:02:58.335Z

As one might expect, there's not a lot of friendly sentiment for Yahoo on X, with one user noting: "Yahoo email is so unreliable. Time to find something better, and that shouldn't be too hard."

2025-07-24T17:00:25.066Z

The same could be said for Yahoo Mail in the UK, though it seems to me that on the Downdetector page, reports of problems could be abating.

2025-07-24T16:58:01.732Z

In the UK there was a spike of AOL outage reports, again pertaining to emails but the outage seems a lot smaller; that could be down to fewer UK users than in the US.

2025-07-24T16:56:20.896Z

It seems to me that this outage has been going on for AOL from around 10am ET.

And there have been growing reports on Downdetector, which would indicate this issue is becoming widespread in the US.

2025-07-24T16:53:51.484Z

Looking at the Downdetector report for AOL, it seems to be specifically affecting the email side of its services.

"I'm in Alabama. I can log in and it show's I have email but the messages says there was an error fetching the items in the list. I used MS Outlook and am getting a sync error for my AOL account. This SUCKS! I sell Real Estate and this is one of the WORST things that could happen!!!" said one user on Donwdetector.

2025-07-24T16:51:17.586Z

It's seems to be a day for outages as over in the UK, network provider EE is also suffering an outage, which also appears to be ongoing.

2025-07-24T16:48:24.330Z

Yahoo has basically said the same as AOL on X: "We understand some users are currently experiencing difficulties accessing their accounts. We are actively investigating this issue and will provide updates as soon as more information becomes available. We appreciate your patience and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause."

2025-07-24T16:47:01.556Z

AOL took to X to post that it's experiencing outage problems with it email service.