Critical incident

PressReader: Platform disruption — payments, sign-in & content loading

Affected: Apps, Web sites, Apps, PressReader.com

Current status of PressReader: Operational — live PressReader status

Timeline

1. Apr 9, 2026, 17:46 UTC
   investigating
   We are investigating a disruption affecting our platform. Some users may be unable to sign in, complete payments, or load content across PressReader apps, PressReader.com, and Editions+ apps and websites. We are working on it as a high priority and will provide updates as they become available.
2. Apr 9, 2026, 17:47 UTC
   identified
   The issue has been identified as a database connectivity problem affecting multiple services, and a fix is being implemented.
3. Apr 9, 2026, 18:50 UTC
   resolved
   This incident is resolved — all systems are back to normal. A database connectivity issue under high load intermittently affected sign-in, payments, and content loading across PressReader apps, PressReader.com, and Editions+ apps and websites for approximately one hour. The issue was addressed and services restored, with no data lost. A full post-mortem is available on the Postmortem tab. We apologise for the disruption.
4. Jun 15, 2026, 23:47 UTC
   postmortem
   Summary ‌ On 9 April 2026, between approximately 10:46 and 11:50 PDT, our platform experienced a service disruption lasting about one hour. A database connectivity issue under high load caused intermittent failures across sign-in, payment processing, and content loading on PressReader apps, [PressReader.com](http://PressReader.com), and Editions\+ apps and websites. The issue was identified and resolved, and all systems returned to normal. No data was lost. ‌ Impact ‌ During the incident window, some users may have experienced difficulty signing in or accessing account features, failed or delayed payments, and errors loading content or publications. Impact was intermittent and varied by region and service path; users on unaffected paths or cached content were not impacted. ‌ Timeline \(PDT\) ‌ 10:46 — We began investigating a platform-wide disruption. 10:47 — The cause was identified and a fix was being implemented. 11:50 — All systems confirmed back to normal; incident resolved. ‌ Root Cause ‌ Under high-throughput conditions, a database connectivity pattern generated excessive load on a shared database, exhausting its connection capacity and causing timeouts that cascaded to dependent services including sign-in, payments, and content delivery. ‌ What We Are Doing ‌ We are introducing caching to sharply reduce database round-trips on the affected paths, placing the affected component under formal change review, tightening database connection-pool monitoring and alerting for earlier detection, and adding high-load testing before related changes are released. ‌ Closing ‌ We apologise for the disruption. For any questions, please contact your account manager or our IT Operations team.

Updates as published by PressReader (original).