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You don't need a CDN for sites under 100k monthly

Web Hosting by wilmaethqn44 5 replies 210 views
wilmaethqn44

Member OP

5 #1

I've been running my shop on Contabo VPS for two years now. 80k monthly visits, product images are heavy, but I just optimized the origin and called it a day. Added lazy loading, compressed everything, tweaked the cache headers. Pages load in under a second for me.

Every "expert" says I NEED a CDN or I'm leaving money on the table. But the setup looks scary — DNS changes, SSL certs to manage, another bill, another thing that can break. Sorry for the silly question but is this just vendor hype??

My TTFB from home (US east coast) is 180ms. I ran it through some free tool and it said "good." That's enough right?

frames, tables, still valid HTML
AL

Member

#2

Wey I feel you but 180ms from YOUR house is not the world wey.

My cousin in mexico city hitting your site is probably crying right now? Like 800ms or worse wey.

Cdn is not that hard just cname and go wey!

cpanelliw780

Member

shared hosting survivor

#3

Its never just cname and go haha edge certs origin pull cache rules vary headers one wrong click and your css is stale for 48 hours

I've seen wilma's type of site before haha origin opt can carry you pretty far actually but "under 100k" is a weird line to draw its about geography not headcount haha

garykwh

Member

Inference on a Budget

#4

Ngl this is giving me flashbacks to LLM inference optimization. You can squeeze so much out of the origin before you need to shard across nodes. Same principle — memory (cache headers) vs compute (edge POPs).

But for real, TTFB from one location is basically VRAM usage at batch size 1. Tells you almost nothing about real world load.

What does your 95th percentile look like globally? That's the metric that matters.

CUDA cores are my love language
uma

Member

99.99% or bust

#5

The graphs don't lie. I monitor 40+ endpoints across six providers. Without a CDN, you're at the mercy of transatlantic routing and last-mile congestion.

That said, origin optimization is underrated. Most people skip:

  • Brotli compression
  • Proper cache-control with immutable
  • HTTP/2 server push (where supported)
  • Connection coalescing

Do those first. Then measure for 30 days. The data decides, not the hot take.

436 days. reboot is surrender.
PetraSuper

Member

network boot believer

#6

Hej, I run malý server in bratislava for friends. No cdn, but I put nginx into config with proxy cache. On server is 32gb ram, hej, very cheap.

My friend in tokyo say site is "okay, no" (well, acceptable). No cdn because I am lazy admin, hej. But for shop with money? Maybe different.

No I dont know about 100k number. Is very arbitrary, no?

boot anything, anywhere, anytime

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