Feedly Says Bug Caused Weeklong Slowdown As Frustrated Subscribers Demand Answers

Feedly users report a sluggish web app for more than a week, and some paying customers say support requests went unanswered as the company works to patch the issue and reassures users it hasn’t abandoned its RSS roots.

Longtime Feedly customers woke up to sluggish performance across the service last week, with many saying the web interface became all but unusable. The company, which bills itself as the largest standalone RSS reader with about 15 million accounts, acknowledged the degradation and traced it to a software defect that emerged after a recent change. Feedly says engineers have been testing a fix and expect a broader rollout soon; the company also updated its public status page to flag the incident.

Subscribers and casual users alike reported delays loading feeds, slow navigation and, in some cases, mobile apps that failed to open. A small group of longtime users lost access when Feedly retired an older “classic” mobile client without advance notice, a move the company says was necessary because the app no longer met modern iOS and Android requirements. Those who relied on that version—only a few hundred people, Feedly says—were not alerted before the shutdown, prompting complaints from that cohort.

Feedly’s founder and chief executive, Edwin Khodabakchian, told reporters the business remains committed to preserving core RSS reading features even as it expands offerings for corporate customers who want intelligence on cyber threats. He said the slowdown appears to have been tied to how items were being resorted after a user action in accounts with many folders, and that a targeted patch addressing the “mark as read” flow was pushed last Friday. The company later said additional investigation pointed to a separate change in resorting logic made about 12 days earlier, and engineers expected a full fix to propagate within about a day of the announcement.

Industry observers say the episode highlights the tension companies face when they try to broaden their product mix while still supporting a loyal user base. “When you chase new revenue streams, you can’t let the basic product degrade,” said a hypothetical product management consultant reached for comment. “Even small regressions can erode trust among paying customers, and communication matters as much as the code fix.” Several customers told reporters they were more annoyed by the lack of timely responses from support than by the outage itself.

Feedly has been steering more marketing toward its paid intelligence services, pitching tools that help organizations monitor emerging threats and tailor alerts. But company executives maintain that the news-reader remains a priority for individual and enterprise users who depend on timely updates. For now, the firm says it will continue to roll out fixes, monitor performance, and investigate lingering iOS issues that some users described as preventing the app from loading.

Subscribers watching the situation will be weighing how quickly normal performance returns and whether Feedly improves user outreach during problems. The status page and recent statements provide a clearer timeline than was available early in the incident, but for many customers the bottom line is simple: they want their feeds to load fast again.