Performance Reference
A CDN buys back distance, and nothing else
Somebody told you to put a CDN in front of the site, and nobody told you what it would actually change.
The short answer
A CDN keeps copies of your content on servers spread around the world, so a visitor collects them from a nearby edge instead of making the full round trip to your origin.
That is a latency purchase and nothing more. It does not make your PHP faster, your database lighter or your queries fewer. If your origin takes 800 ms to build a page, a CDN delivers that same 800 ms of thinking from somewhere closer, and the person waiting still waits.
By the HostingFast team · Reviewed 12 August 2026
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Our origin is in London, and the honest way to decide is to look at what distance actually costs from where your visitors are. Indicative round trips to that origin run 5 to 15 ms across the UK and Ireland, 10 to 35 ms across Western and Northern Europe, 130 to 150 ms from the US West Coast, and 250 to 290 ms from Australia and New Zealand.
Read those figures against your own analytics and the decision usually makes itself. A British audience has almost nothing left to buy. A readership spread across Asia-Pacific has a great deal. Nobody should be adding an edge network on general principle when a two-minute look at their traffic split answers the question properly.
What actually gets served from the edge
Images, CSS, JavaScript and fonts, always. Cached HTML too, which covers most of what a logged-out visitor opens. And traffic spikes, because a response served from an edge never reaches your origin at all — that alone is a decent argument for one on a site that occasionally goes viral.
Those three categories are where the entire benefit lives. Everything below is what stays exactly as slow as it was before you signed up.
What never leaves the origin
The WordPress dashboard, because logged-in traffic is never cached. Checkout and account pages, uncacheable for the same reason. Every database query and every dynamic request that misses the cache, all of which run the full distance to London. File manager, SSH and FTP sessions, which speak to the origin by definition.
So an author in Sydney working in wp-admin gets no relief from a CDN whatsoever. That is not a criticism of edge networks; it is the difference between delivery and computation, and knowing which one you are buying prevents an expensive disappointment.
Decide with your own analytics
Pull the country breakdown for the last ninety days and weight it by revenue rather than by sessions. Then set it against the round-trip figures above. If most of your value comes from within a few tens of milliseconds of London, the edge network is solving a problem you do not have.
If it does not, measure before and after with the same tool from the same location, cold, on the same page. A CDN is one of the easier changes to prove, and one of the more common to adopt without ever proving anything.
Origin first, edge second
Fix the server-side cache before you put anything in front of it. An edge network multiplies whatever your origin hands it, so the order origin-then-edge compounds and the order edge-then-origin mostly hides the problem. Once page caching is right, the CDN inherits a fast response to distribute.
Neighbouring entries: Cache, TTFB, Bandwidth and DDoS Attack. Edge filtering is already standard on every plan here, so the security half of a typical CDN pitch is not something you need to go shopping for.
Figures we will stand behind
The round-trip numbers on this page are indicative for a well-connected consumer network, not guarantees, and they are published so a buyer far from London knows what they are getting before they pay.
Edge filtering, NVMe storage and LiteSpeed caching are standard on every tier, so the origin you would be putting a CDN in front of is already quick.
- Latency figures published by region
- What a CDN cannot fix, listed
- Decide from your own analytics
- Written by the engineers on support
Why HostingFast
Standard on every plan
One purchase: distance
It removes round trips. It does not remove computation, queries or page weight.
Regional figures published
Indicative round trips to the London origin, by region, so the decision is arithmetic rather than instinct.
The uncacheable list
Dashboard, checkout, account pages, database queries, SSH and FTP all run the full distance regardless.
Weighted by revenue
Country split weighted by value, not by sessions, is the number that should drive the decision.
Order of operations
Origin cache first. An edge network multiplies what the origin gives it, including the slow parts.
Filtering already included
Edge filtering ships on every plan here, so the security argument for a CDN is largely already answered.
Quick Start
From order to online
- 1
Pull your country split
Ninety days of traffic weighted by revenue, not sessions. Then read it against the round-trip figures for those regions.
- 2
Fix the origin cache first
Get page caching right before adding an edge. A CDN distributes what the origin produces, slowness included.
- 3
Measure cold, same page, same tool
Before and after from the same distant location on an uncached first visit. Anything less proves nothing you can act on.
Built In
Loaded onto every plan
- SSH, Git and Composer on the developer-focused plans
- NVMe SSD storage on every tier, not just the expensive ones
- DDoS filtering absorbed out at the network edge
- Human support on duty every hour of every day
- In-place account upgrades — no migration when you change plan
- Your existing site moved over by our engineers, free of charge
- Browser webmail plus IMAP, POP and SMTP for any mail app
- A renewal price identical to the price you signed up at
- Zero setup charges — there is no joining fee, ever
- Year one of your domain free when you order annually
Frequently Asked
What people ask us most often
How do I work out whether distance is my problem at all?
Weight your last ninety days of traffic by revenue, then look up the indicative round trip from those regions to London: 5 to 15 ms across the UK and Ireland, 130 to 150 ms from the US West Coast, 250 to 290 ms from Australia and New Zealand. If your value is concentrated near the origin, distance is not your bottleneck and a CDN will not read as an improvement to anyone.
Will a CDN make wp-admin faster for a remote team?
No. Logged-in traffic is never cached, so every dashboard click, every save and every query runs the full distance to the origin. Editors working from the other side of the world will feel every mile of it whatever you put in front of the site. If that is your actual problem, the answer is a closer origin or a different workflow, not an edge network.
Where does the origin sit, and does that change with the plan?
London, on every plan, with redundant power and cooling and multiple upstream carriers. It does not change as you move up the range. For most sites the engineering matters more than the geography — NVMe storage, LiteSpeed caching and restrained account density do more for a visitor's experience than a few thousand miles usually does.
Does an edge network replace the cache on the server?
It does not. The edge holds copies of what the origin produced; if the origin is rebuilding the page from scratch each time, that is what gets copied. Server-side page caching is the change with the larger payoff and it comes first. The two compound nicely once both are in place.
Keep reading
Cache
Five layers between database and visitor, and the header that says which one answered.
Bandwidth
The monthly data ceiling, what actually consumes it, and how caching changes the figure.
Streamers & Content Creators — Hosting Guide
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