I’ve encountered a persistent issue where my site’s content, which should ideally be served from a European CDN to ensure optimal load times for local visitors, is consistently being delivered from the United States. This was not always the case, as there was a period when content delivery from Europe was functioning correctly.
Has anyone experienced similar challenges with the Webflow CDN? More importantly, are there any known solutions or workarounds to ensure that European users are served content from a European server?
Understanding that Webflow uses Amazon Web Services and Fastly, it seems reasonable to expect regional CDN delivery to work as intended. Any insights or shared experiences would be greatly appreciated as I navigate this issue.
Thank you in advance for your support and suggestions.
Hey Carl, for performance I prefer to reverse-proxy Webflow sites using Cloudflare, which has a range of caching layer including edge caching.
I’m currently based in Asia-Pac but have seen a huge performance boost pretty much everywhere, in part due to the edge caching of automatically optimized WEBPs.
It’s a bit of work to setup the config but there are good resources online.
Drop me a message if you want something setup quickly and easily.
Thank you for your answer. However, we have not only the website in our domain, but also some other topics such as mail server and so on. To use Cloudflare, you have to move the entire domain usage and handling there or buy a relatively expensive plan that allows service workers. Therefore, Cloudflare is out of the question for us for the time being. To be honest, it is also incomprehensible to me why I should have to book an additional service for Webflow, where I want to have a completely hosted website that is already provided on my own CDNs and should generally be able to do so. This not only costs money, but is also administered, reduces security (as it is another service that can also be attacked) and drives up costs even further. I would rather cancel Webflow than put even more complexity and effort into a service that should already be able to do this
Nothing changes there. Your DNS moves to cloudflare, but your domain name stays wherever you’ve registered it. Your website stays on Webflow. Your email stays wherever your email is. All of the DNS entries remain the same.
Not the domain, only the DNS. I use the free plan for 47 clients, which includes workers and image optimization. Only 3 clients use the CF pro plan $20/mo, because they want even more advanced caching options, reporting, and some advanced optimization techniques.
Agreed, but that’s not the hosting service Webflow provides. You either have to proxy their service or export and host your site somewhere else.
I solve these types of issues every day for Webflow users who want Webflow’s hosting & CMS conveniences, but can’t work with its limitations. Just trying to point you to practical solutions here. Webflow doesn’t engage much here so it’s likely no one would see your concern.
The Wishlist I think has some GDPR-hosting related items you should probably add your vote to.
Again free. You admin it yourself, it’s your account.
I’d argue that it increases your security, which is actually why I began proxying sites originally. It adds DDoS protection, as well as a much more secure SSL certificate (2048 bit, instead of 256 bit. If anything goes down at Webflow ( it happens ), CF will still edge cache your site if you want it to until Webflow is back up. Slick stuff. Remember, this is why Cloudflare exists. It’s what they do.
You might have to. But the reality is, you can buy a nice house… but you still need to buy smoke alarms, home insurance, contents insurance, a security system, maybe a perimeter fence. The house doesn’t provide all of that automatically.
After doing some research and contacting Webflow support, Webflow has determined that it is obviously a bug in the CDN. It seems that only in my city and surroundings (Bavaria) the website is delivered from America. As soon as you are in another state in Europe or in Germany, the site is delivered from a CDN in Europe. I hope it will be fixed soon
It will likely depend on the specific network provider you’re using as well.
For my New Zealand-based clients I often see large traffic volumes from the US, typically Delaware or Virginia. It’s all mobile traffic. Apparently some of the NZ-based mobile provider networks route through data centers there.
You’ll see similar variations everywhere, depending on where the network provider’s datacenters are located, who the have partnership contracts with, etc.
Could you please share those links with me too? I want to step up my Webflow game in various instances, and will much appreciate it! I’ve used Cloudflare a few times — one time as a hosting, and another one as a DNS provider (because my client’s registrar didn’t want to give them for free which is bonkers).
I understand Cloudflare is very powerful, and want to learn as much as I can!
Hey Georgy, each configuration is different because every client’s needs are different.
But I can share my development service pages which give some details of the types of things I build with them.
