I have a private community with DO 2GB droplet. The speed is fine in the US (my base is SFO) but it is really bad in Asia. Takes 10+ second to load the community.
I am using WordPress as the SSO partner and all my content is behind the registration wall.
In the meaning when edge server is close enough AND locally is fast enough internet connections. Yes, in most of cases is better to use CDN when there is global audience (CDN can be geographically targeted too, though), but speed is not guaranteed.
Sure, maybe Iām poking the meaningless point, but it is thing that must be considered. Asia is much bigger place than USA and CDN not helps all the time even US-wide ā what to do or not to do is always tradeoff between costs and amount (plus benedit/profit) of users that get some improvements.
CDN is not automatically better or even good choise.