Dotloop provides details about outage

A surprise outage that left dotloop clients without access to their files on the paperless transaction management platform for parts of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday was initially caused by a “database performance issue” that led the firm to shut down the cloud-based platform for unscheduled maintenance, the company said.

In a message to dotloop users today, dotloop CEO Austin Allison said the database performance issue caused a brief outage on Tuesday.

The company then “took the proactive measure of taking dotloop offline” on Wednesday, after identifying “suspicious activity” that may have been related to the performance issue, Allison said. The system was back up today at 3 a.m. Pacific time, he said.

The way dotloop worded its initial explanation of the outage on its home page — and because the California Association of Realtors has cited security and privacy concerns as reasons for not licensing its forms to the company — some users wondered if dotloop had shut down because of a security breach.

“Since their servers were running and functioning and they weren’t allowing traffic into their server, it made me wonder if there were security concerns on their system,” said Josh Bellew, marketing director at The DeLois Smith All Star Team, Realtors in Hattiesburg, Miss. Other dotloop users voiced similar concerns on social media channels.

Allison told Inman News that a security breach was not the cause of the interruption.

“Although we stand behind our decision to put security first, I’ll be the first to acknowledge that 20 hours of unscheduled maintenance is unacceptable,” Allison said. “Our users have every right to be frustrated and we own up to the disruption. Sometimes things don’t always go as planned, but it’s our intent to ensure that extensive updates of this nature are prescheduled in the future.”

Allison’s note to dotloop users:

Dotloop CEO Austin Allison sent the above note to users today explaining why dotloop’s system went offline unexpectedly.

Cary Sylvester, executive director of technology at Keller Williams Realty, the large U.S. franchisor that integrated dotloop into its eEdge agent technology platform in 2011, told Inman News that, despite the challenges the outage presented, the firm’s faith in dotloop’s security remains.

“We, as well as our associates, continue on with the confidence that all our user data is secure,” Sylvester told Inman News on Wednesday evening, before dotloop made further details about the outage available.