Ultrasignup Site - Massive Drop in Performance When Registration Opens

I had a race open registration at 12pm this past Friday. We generally hit capacity within a few minutes with about 250 runners registering as soon as registration opens at noon. Ultrasignup has gotten increasingly laggy and unresponsive over the past few years when registration opens. Pages not loading, users receiving errors, etc. This has only been an issue the past 4-5 years and has gotten progressively worse each year. It is very surprising to me that the ultrasignup servers cannot handle that small spike in traffic. It creates problems with people having add-ons drop off when they reload, duplicate registrations and general registration errors that I then have to fix. Those are just inconveniences though. More concerning is that it acts to erode the trust in the platform, in the process and people’s excitement to sign up when registration opens.

It would be really beneficial to users at all levels to see ultrasignup’s servers be improved at least to the point that they don’t crash out at the slightest uptick in traffic.