ReadMe outage: ReadMe Refactored Outage

Affected components

• Admin Dashboard
• ReadMe Hubs
• ReadMe Knowledge Base

1. postmortemJun 3, 2026, 15:28 UTC

   ### What Happened Beginning Tuesday, May 26, 2026, customers were experiencing slow loading and 503 errors across ReadMe-hosted docs and the admin dashboard. The outage was intermittent but recurring, with the worst periods hitting during business hours when traffic spiked. ### Root Cause An internal data backup process was generating excessive I/O on our storage layer. Under normal traffic conditions, this additional load was manageable. But when it coincided with peak customer traffic and elevated bot activity, total I/O demand exceeded system capacity, causing cascading request timeouts. The maintenance process ran on a recurring schedule, which is why the degradation followed a predictable pattern of spikes throughout each day. Separately, a surge in bot traffic to non-existent pages \(404s\) amplified the problem because those requests were not being served from cache. ### Resolution **Immediate fix:** We identified and disabled the maintenance process causing the excess I/O

2. resolvedMay 27, 2026, 22:37 UTC

   This incident has been resolved.

3. monitoringMay 27, 2026, 20:54 UTC

   Performance and loading is still being affected, and we're in the process of rolling out fixes

4. monitoringMay 27, 2026, 18:02 UTC

   Performance has improved, but we're still investigating the issue.

5. investigatingMay 27, 2026, 17:47 UTC

   We are continuing to investigate this issue.

6. investigatingMay 27, 2026, 17:43 UTC

   We are seeing some slow performance, possibly 500 errors. investigating

7. monitoringMay 27, 2026, 17:17 UTC

   Updated 6/3: A routine configuration update coincided with the downtime window, which led us to initially identify it as the cause. Further investigation confirmed the two were unrelated. See the postmortem for full details.

8. monitoringMay 27, 2026, 17:08 UTC

   We are monitoring the issue.

9. monitoringMay 27, 2026, 15:57 UTC

   We're slowly recovering and monitoring the situation.

10. identifiedMay 27, 2026, 14:52 UTC

    The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.

11. investigatingMay 27, 2026, 13:51 UTC

    We are currently investigating this issue.

What APIStatus.watch saw

Our 5-minute checks didn't record a change in ReadMe's overall status around this incident. Smaller or regional incidents often leave a provider's overall status green.

Other services with incidents at the same time

Overlapping incidents aren't necessarily related.

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• Akamai: Reporting Issues affecting URL Traffic and URL Responses reportsMinor · May 19, 2026, 10:13 UTC
• ClickHouse Cloud: ClickHouse Agents Login IssuesMinor · May 27, 2026, 17:48 UTC
• Smartsheet: Sheets Not Loading/Opening – "Trouble Reaching Smartsheet" ErrorMinor · May 27, 2026, 17:50 UTC

How often does ReadMe have incidents?

ReadMe reported 4 incidents in the last 90 days, 1 of them major or critical. A typical incident lasted 1h 30m. See ReadMe's uptime and incident history