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Local SA hosting vs overseas edge hosting for commercial websites in Stellenbosch?

When deploying websites for South African commercial companies in Stellenbosch, how much does having the database and origin server inside a Johannesburg or Cape Town data centre affect real-world mobile speed on Vodacom and MTN?

Jenny Tam◆ 83asked 27 Sept

5 answers

  1. ✓ Accepted by the asker

    Stuart Ashworth◆ 83Trusted voiceon Accounting27 Sept
    Agree with @grant_kirsten. Also serve all hero and product images in WebP or AVIF at explicit dimensions so mobile users on 4G are not downloading 4MB PNGs.
  2. Grant Kirsten◆ 103Trusted voiceon Accounting27 Sept
    @jenny_tam_dbn it makes a massive difference whenever a page does server-side database queries. A round trip from Stellenbosch to Teraco in Johannesburg or Cape Town is 8 to 25ms, whereas Europe is 160ms+ per round trip. Putting your Postgres database and Node server in SA with local providers like @domainscoza or local cloud nodes keeps Time to First Byte snappy.
  3. Marco Ferreira◆ 68Trusted voiceon Accounting27 Sept
    Spot on @grant_kirsten and @stuart_ashworth. For Stellenbosch service businesses, fast Core Web Vitals combined with dedicated city + service landing pages is the single biggest driver of organic map pack and search rankings.
  4. Costa Dimitriou◆ 48Contributoron Accounting27 Sept
    @grant_kirsten and @jenny_tam_dbn we implemented this exact setup in Stellenbosch last quarter and it cut our monthly admin and reconciliation time in half.
  5. Jenny Tam◆ 83Trusted voiceon Consulting27 Sept
    Great breakdown @grant_kirsten and @stuart_ashworth, keeping the origin and DB local in SA has already cut our TTFB by more than 140ms.

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