June 23, 2025
Smart Lighting Cloud Failure Leaves Users in the Dark
Lightbulbs stop responding for days. Reddit and Twitter users vent while Sengled offers no guidance.
For several days last week, Sengled smart lighting consumers found themselves literally and figuratively in the dark.
Beginning around Wednesday June 18, customers reported that Sengled’s Wi-Fi-enabled smart bulbs stopped responding across Alexa, Google Home, and the Sengled app. The problem wasn’t user error or bad firmware — it was a full-blown outage affecting Sengled’s cloud service, without any public explanation from the company.
The lights themselves weren’t dead — users could still flip a switch like it was 2009. But for customers sold on seamless automation, it wasn’t the power that failed. It was the promise.
Amazon acknowledged the disruption in a June 21 email to affected customers, warning that routines, app access, and even basic light control may be compromised. And they were.
By Sunday, however, multiple users began reporting that their systems were functioning again. Lights turned on. Routines triggered. Apps connected. But the return to normal came just as quietly as the failure itself — without a single public-facing update from Sengled.
Inside Lighting found no public statement from Sengled about the outage on its website or social media feeds. A contact form request submitted Sunday seeking explanation and future plans went unanswered.
User sentiment across Reddit and Twitter ranged from confused to frustrated. For some, the service interruption prompted a reevaluation of their loyalty to cloud-reliant platforms. Others simply started shopping for replacements.
Hello! We're sorry for the issues that you encountered with your Sengled device. Sengled is having an outage which impacts their services and their Wi-Fi devices, including how they interact with Alexa. We're tracking this issue closely and pushing for a quick resolution from…
— Amazon Help (@AmazonHelp) June 22, 2025
Sengled servers are down again like last year & Sengled once again is quiet about it. No press release, no customer service reachout. Nothing works now since all Sengled smart devices need to be linked to their servers & for us to be logged in in their app. Lousy company.
— George W. V. Angel (@gnoangel) June 21, 2025
Introducing the revolutionary Sengled Smart Paperweight by @SengledUSA! Internet down? No worries! With cutting-edge local control for discerning smart home enthusiasts, it’s the bulb that keeps on… sitting there. Grab yours today before they mysteriously vanish! pic.twitter.com/5T0flKrtad
— TJ Fruichantie (@TJFruichantie) June 21, 2025
This isn’t the first time smart lighting buyers have watched an entire product ecosystem go dark. Inside Lighting reported in April 2022 on the abrupt disappearance of Insteon, a smart lighting firm whose 1 million+ cloud-dependent installations became instantly obsolete when the company shut down servers without warning. Many customers never received a single message. Some are still locked out of their devices.
The Sengled episode wasn’t as final — but the silence was just as deafening.
The lights may be back on. But for many Sengled customers, the trust is not.
