Stuart Ashworth · 31 Aug 2026
When deploying websites for South African labour law 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?
Ashleigh Moorcroft · 31 Aug 2026
@stuart_ashworth 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.
Lauren Hofmeyr · 31 Aug 2026
Agree with @ashleigh_moorcroft. Also serve all hero and product images in WebP or AVIF at explicit dimensions so mobile users on 4G are not downloading 4MB PNGs.
Gemma Whittaker · 31 Aug 2026
Spot on @ashleigh_moorcroft and @lauren_hofmeyr. 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.
Samantha Berman · 31 Aug 2026
@ashleigh_moorcroft and @stuart_ashworth we implemented this exact setup in Stellenbosch last quarter and it cut our monthly admin and reconciliation time in half.
Stuart Ashworth · 31 Aug 2026
Great breakdown @ashleigh_moorcroft and @lauren_hofmeyr, keeping the origin and DB local in SA has already cut our TTFB by more than 140ms.