Hi there, my site load is quite slow, I’m curious as to what performance gains I’d get, with respect to site loading, by upgrading to the Pro tier? I realize that build times are probably not affected from this post, however I was curious about site load times.
I’m on the fence about upgrading, as honestly all the features of the free tier are sufficient for me aside from site load performance. Thanks!
hi there andrew,
can you share the site name with us? also, please capture a HAR file so we can take a look at those load times. A lot of factors can go into this - it is probably something that can be improved if we have more detail 
Hi Perry, thanks for reaching out. I took 3 profiles here, all in one zipped folder: Dropbox - andrew-schorr-har.zip - Simplify your life
None of them were particularly egregious load times as I’ve seen in the past, I assume there’s some CDN cache for when the assets aren’t cold - Will try and take a profile when I visit for the first time after awhile next time. However almost 4 seconds for a completely static page with zero just a couple DOM elements feels like quite a lot. Let me know if any more information is needed from my end. Thanks!
Hi there, was able to get one request that took a total of 16 seconds(!) for initial load, HAR file here Dropbox - www.rateyourrecruiter.dev-longest.har - Simplify your life
Hey there, @andrewfschorr 
My apologies for the delay here. I’ve taken a look at all of the HAR files that you have shared and I am not seeing a load that takes 16 seconds. I am seeing the four second load time that you referenced, however.
It does appear that you are proxying by a function, and that function is cached at us-east-1 by default. If you have heavy traffic from other regions this could be causing your slower load time here. We can change the functions region for Pro customers, if this is something that you are interested in.
Let us know!
If this discussion is still open, I would like to ask if someone can comment on a similar issue we are having. I am the client/end-user. My wife created the site several years ago. Her partner at the time used Go Daddy. That didn’t suffice. My wife learned Wordpress and did reasonably with that, but pages loaded very slowly. It was suggested that she switch to GitHub and Netlify. We had a pro build the architecture for the pages, but my wife has done the content. The site was doing fine but the pages load slowly now. I was not involved with the group until a month ago when I was asked to run the non-profit. I am overhauling/organizing everything and as part of that process, we have been fixing/updating various aspects of the website. I wanted to give the background partly to point out where we are and that we are novices. I have GitHub desktop and use branches to work in Visual Studio Code. I can do basic things, but can’t get too far into code.
The site pages load reasonably but there is a delay/flicker. It was unclear whether it was something that I “broke” in the last month. I just went back to the Netlify build previews and it appears that Jan 2021 previews (apparently the initial launch), the pages load the same. We did not notice this issue until recently. I didn’t visit the site a lot previously, but now that I am involved, I am analyzing things. It seems that the site was quicker on Netlify in the past. Having seen the post here suggesting that the free Netlify tier may be the problem, I would like feedback on our site. Did Netlify change their tier structure/speed at which they allow sites to load such that our site was faster/fluid previously but in order to get it to function properly we need to pay for a higher/paid tier? Being a grassroots non-profit with a shoestring budget, we were trying to keep costs low. We checked, Netlify does not have discounts for non-profits/charities. Hopefully there is a coding issue that can be adjusted in the build to allow it run better rather than requiring us to pay for a higher service tier. The site is https://www.cc4es.org/. I can provide more details from the build end but may need guidance on how to post that. The site is on the GitHub free tier, so it is public if that helps. I have a pro that I use through UpWork, I am just trying to see if I can get some info to provide to him before he gets started trying to fix the site. If it is definitely Netlify’s free tier, then we don’t want to waste the developer’s time/our money trying to fix the build when it is not broken.
Thanks
HI, @dsgorelick. There has been no change to our service. In addition, all plans (with one exception listed below) use the same CDN. There is no performance difference between Starter, Pro, and Business. They will all have identical website performance.
There is a High-Performance Edge Network add-on for Enterprise plans which does offer additional performance. However, the site mentioned has never used that plan type or add-on so, again, there has been no change at Netlify.
By the way, www.netlify.com itself uses the same CDN that the sites on the Starter, Pro, and Business plans sites are on. Our own site does not use the High-Performance Edge Network and is hosted on the Standard Edge Network.
If there are other questions about this, please let us know.
For what it’s worth @dsgorelick, I see the site loading quickly:
If you run an audit via something like web.dev/measure it will help identify potential issue that impact load times, accessibility, etc.
I appreciate your time in helping me with this. I am comfortable moving forward to have the developer that I hooked up with on Upwork analyze the project and identify what is needed to get the pages to load faster/smoother. I was told that our static site is not too complex, I am very pleased to hear that the free tier may continue to serve our needs. Thank you.
Wow, I just went to the web developer link you provided and saw the analysis and guidance that it provides. I can handle some of the suggestions, such as the size and format of the images. I’ll read on and work on whatever is outlined that is within the scope of my novice capability and leave the more advanced points to the pro. That is, if my adjustments don’t adequately solve the problem. Great advice, thanks again
