Question

On my current project I am using a font which is currently hosted on googleapis.com. The font is “free” so I can get a copy and put it on my server.

My question is; is there any benefit to hosting it on Google vs having it on my own server? I’ve already got two other paid fonts hosted on my own server (using @font-face with fallbacks). So I was thinking of bringing the other font across, having it all in one place.

But I wasnt sure if there is anything I’m not considering? Is google fonts significantly faster/better performance etc?

Answer 1

Google could be faster than your server depending on your server’s bandwidth and load. However some negatives to hosting on google are:

• The Item could be removed leading to problems with your site
• googleapis.com could be an extra DNS lookup adding time to your site’s load process
• I personally hate hotlinking

Positives:

• If dns entry is caches potentially faster proformance
• Less data use to your server