Changelog May 2021

Welcome to Render's May 2021 changelog! Going forward we will keep you updated on all the features, bug fixes, and improvements we're working on by publishing this document once a month. We hope it's useful as you grow your applications and businesses on Render; do send us suggestions for things you'd like us to include here going forward.
Feature Spotlight
Autoscaling
You can now automatically scale your services up and down based on target CPU and memory utilization. 
Many services handle variable load: you might see regular increases in usage during the day, or a surge after launching a new feature. Autoscaling makes it possible to keep your services scaled to your needs without manual configuration. Check out the docs to get started.
Read Replicas
You can now add read replicas to your Render PostgreSQL databases.
Read replicas reduce load on your primary database and make one-off queries safer. They are also a great option for data analysis tools that do not need to write to your primary database, or for running computationally expensive data analysis without impacting the performance of you primary instance. Read replicas are available on Standard database plans and above. Check out the docs to get started.
New
You can now view additional database metrics for storage, active connections, and replication lag (if read replicas are enabled). For Standard database plans and above, you can select a time range to view database metrics.
You can now trigger a database backup manually, and view backups in progress (docs).
Trial users can now use Render disks up to 1 GB without adding a credit card.
All environments now include magic-wormhole to transfer files to and from Render Disks using the web shell.
We are rolling out dashboard notifications in the form of toasts. New users will see them first after email confirmation.
You can now skip an auto-deploy by including a skip phrase in the commit message.
You can now zoom into CPU and memory graphs on the dashboard.
You can now manage your custom domains with Render's REST API. This functionality is stable, but is in early access while we build out other API endpoints; please email support@render.com to get access.
Fixes and Improvements
We've improved the reliability, security, and performance for our Frankfurt infrastructure by increasing capacity, upgrading infrastructure components, and implementing encryption-at-rest for control plane data.
We also published a detailed root cause analysis document for the May 6th incident affecting Frankfurt services. You can view it on the May 6th incident status page.
We've hardened our SSL certificate renewal infrastructure to prevent certificates from expiring in a few specific cases.
Docker image builds now use buildkit v0.8.2 (previously v0.7.2).
Manually clearing the cache for static sites will now reliably remove all cached artifacts.
We've improved error messages related to GitHub connection issues.
We've added more compute capacity to power our (early access) REST API endpoints. This will make API calls faster and more reliable.
We've made it easier to fix errors during service creation by automatically scrolling to the invalid field(s) in the dashboard.
We've made it easier to read the the billing table when using screen readers.
Fixed an issue where databases in an error state displayed an internal server error in the dashboard. These databases are now displayed with an unknown status.
Fixed an issue where some database backups on Starter plans were failing.
Fixed an issue where we displayed the incorrect due date on invoices.
Fixed an issue where we incorrectly displayed services when an error occurred.
Fixed an issue where we failed to resume suspended services in Frankfurt after users updated their payment information.
Removed
We have disabled Render Addons. We used Manifold to provision Addons behind the scenes. Unfortunately, Manifold shut down operations in May 2021. All existing users should have already migrated their Render Addons using our migration docs.