Is anyone else experiencing a slowdown on their website's initial page retrieval in Webflow? It seems that the slowness occurs before the assets are downloaded, with a minimum hang time of 5 seconds. The issue seems to happen even if the page has been previously visited, occurring every 4th to 6th page load. Could this be related to the speed of the Webflow CDN in fetching fresh copies of web pages?

Yes, this type of issue—slowness before asset downloads begin—can be related to Webflow's CDN layer or how your page is cached. Here’s how to evaluate the potential causes and what you can do.

1. Understand Where the Delay Occurs

• If the browser’s DevTools “Waterfall” shows a delay before receiving the initial HTML response (i.e., Time To First Byte or TTFB is high), that points directly to server-side or CDN-level latency.
• A TTFB of over 1–2 seconds on a cached page is unusually high and suggests problems beyond asset loading or JavaScript execution.

2. How Webflow’s CDN and Caching Work

• Webflow uses Fastly and Amazon CloudFront as its content delivery network partners.
• Pages are cached at Webflow's edge nodes. However, the cache can be invalidated periodically, especially if:
• Recently republished projects
• Form submissions or dynamic content updates are present
• Custom domain settings are recently changed
• Webflow may also rotate CDN edges or purge cached content at intervals, which can lead to intermittently slower loads.

3. Possible Causes for Intermittent Delay

• CDN Cache Misses: When the HTML page isn’t cached or gets evicted from CDN, the request goes to Webflow origin, causing a slower initial load.
• High Latency from Specific Edge Nodes: Some users experience delays only on certain edge locations depending on where they're geographically located.
• Browser DNScache Flush: Although rare, DNS resolution time could cause variability if the domain is not actively cached in your system.
• Project Size and Complexity: Large projects with complex interactions can slightly affect initial compute/rendering, but usually not before asset download begins.

4. How to Confirm It’s Webflow’s CDN

• Use DevTools → Network tab and refresh your page with cache disabled (Ctrl+Shift+R).
• Observe the TTFB time and check the response headers:
• Look for X-Cache: HIT vs X-Cache: MISS to diagnose CDN behavior.
• Use tools like WebPageTest.org or Google PageSpeed Insights, and run multiple tests from different locations to check consistency.

5. Mitigation Tips

• Minimize HTML document size: Even if assets are cached, a large initial HTML page slows TTFB.
• Avoid overly frequent site updates if possible—republishing flushes caches globally.
• Contact Webflow support if delays exceed 3–5s regularly on cached pages; they can trace CDN or server logs.

Summary

The 5-second delay you're seeing every few page loads is likely due to CDN cache misses or inconsistent edge performance in Webflow's hosting stack. Check your TTFB, monitor response headers, and use third-party tools to validate whether it’s tied to the CDN. If so, Webflow Support can further investigate backend caching behavior specific to your project.