What are the benefits and drawbacks of using a CDN for web performance?

Additional benefits of CDNs include off-loading heavy asset processing away from your work servers. This allows the CDN to handle things such as dynamic image and video resizing which can be resource intensive. Therefore, your main server won't have to do that extra work and can focus on processing user data. CDNs help with SEO rankings because algorithms look at website speed as one of the factors in what makes a 'quality' website. As such, a good website is a speedy one. CDNs help your websites load faster by hosting your assets and files physically closer to your users, and therefore providing a faster website experience. Which in terms means better performance stores and the potential for better rankings in search engine listings.

Die beschleunigte Bereitstellung von Inhalten durch die Reduzierung der Latenz führt nicht nur zu einer verbesserten Benutzererfahrung, sondern hat auch direkte positive Auswirkungen auf die SEO-Rankings. Besonders in einer Zeit, in der Website-Geschwindigkeit ein entscheidender Faktor für das Suchmaschinenranking und die Conversionrate ist, kann ein CDN einen erheblichen Wettbewerbsvorteil bieten.

The biggest drawback is that CDNs, by design, cache assets and data very aggressively which is great for speed, but not so good when you need to get live or fresh data. When things are not setup properly, the CDNs can handle data access requests for data that should result in fresh results being provided, and yet in the interest of speed they instead return old saved data that may not be relevant. One benefit of CDNs is that you offload your asset workload to their services, but that can also be a drawback because if the CDN service goes down for any reason ... so will your website. And rarely are things setup properly to be able to handle the CDN failing. Thus, while rare, CDNs can go down and take your website with them.

I disagree with this statement and would encourage everyone to have a CDN for their site. We all know speed is key when it comes to getting served in search and keeping users on our websites. Even if you are a local business, like a restaurant with local customers, and your hosting server is across the country or globe, a CDN will help serve your content to your local area faster. Most good WordPress hosting companies include this with your service, so there is no reason not to take advantage of using a CDN.

Not every website or platform needs a CDN due to the additional costs and complexity. If you have a tiny website with very few users or are just starting out or don't have the technical knowledge to handle CDN issues (or simply don't have the time): it would be a good idea to start out with a CDN. Once you have either the time to learn and figure it out, or the ability to hire on a expert (or team) to help you with technical things: then yes you can get one. Though, if you're in business or just starting one but already have a lot of traction: a CDN can be very beneficial immediately to increase performance and therefore improve the user experience.