Faster access for China users
When we access podio there are two main delays to load the page when accessing from China.
One of them is from cloudfront.net servers (that's probably because you host on amazon) if there's any way to hide this to cloudfront.podio.com it would skip the Chinese firewall. DNS redirect or something... Your site would be faster. That's probably something hard to do....
The second point where Podio really gets stucked recently is with the fonts.GoogleApis.com. It's holding the page load. If the requested IP is coming from China then don't use it this font server or use standard fonts.
Hope it helps.....
Best regards.
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Official comment
Hi all,
Our operations team are painfully aware of the challenges with especially China's firewall but a lot of the issues causing the performance delays here are unfortunately out of our hands. We are however monitoring this closely and will apply changes as possible along the way. One consideration would be potentially having data centers in APAC / Hong Kong or Singapore in the future to be closer to delivery.
Thanks for adding to the discussion here.
//Sara - Podio
Comment actions -
Hey Guys
Yes, Podio does work in China and will work going forward (we even have Podio in Chinese). To answer your question Paulo we have and will work to improve the speed/connection - we have done what we could to optimize this already.
Feel free to let us know directly via a ticket and one of our developers will probably be able to give you better and more technical feedback. I am not that technical myself :)
//Sara - Podio
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Ok, on further investigation it appears that this may have been my fault as I was entering the domain name on it's own without any protocol. Now when I enter http://www.podio.com both the hostname and URL are accessible. More importantly, https://podio.com/homeis accessible too which means teams can access it. So, my bad and my apologies to all.
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Hey guys. Good morning.
Podio is a great tool. It's sooo great we're moving everything we do to podio. Client, suppliers, invoice etc.
BUT Podio stills very slow in China. Yesterday everybody in our company had to leave earlier back home because we couldn't use it.Something is holding Podio. Probably it's the Google Fonts on the "new" podio interface. We're using VPN to access Podio. But this is ilegal in China. We can't have the company running all in VPN. That's not the correct way to run Podio in China. Even using John's suggestion of "https" is not working.
Is that only happening to me? How many Chinese companies are REALLY using it?
Thanks.
Paulo. -
So here is the final position from Podio.....
If you're in China or you're a big company with people in China stay away from Podio.
And there are no plans from Podio to improve this.
By the way.... amazon has servers in China. If access is coming from China the app/browser could point to them not to europe.
Florian Munz (Podio Support)
Jun 03 18:51
Hi Paulo,
thanks for the support. I now have a clearer picture what's going on.
Unfortunately I don't think there is much we can do. Your internet provider is terrible, I'm not sure if that's because of the Chinese Wall or just general problems reaching anything else than Chinese websites. There is packet loss to pretty much anything I measured. We are constantly improving how Podio performs but we can't make Podio work with such an unstable connection.
I'm sorry, but I can't really help you with this.Cheers,
Florian -
Podio Powers That Be,
I've just received this complaint from a client who uses Podio in the UK to organise Chinese summer schools:
"Worth mentioning it to podio team. They are so slow in China. No one wants to use it. Really annoying"
Looking at the thread below it seems nothing has changed in the last 2 years - is that right? -
Hi Pete Cuff,
Our operations team are painfully aware of the challenges with especially China's firewall but a lot of the issues causing the performance delays here are unfortunately out of our hands. We are however monitoring this closely and will apply changes as possible along the way. One consideration would be potentially having data centers in APAC in the future to be closer to delivery.
Thanks for adding to the discussion here.
//Sara - Podio
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Podio Team,
Let me start by saying that I only recently found Podio and absolutely love it. The opportunities with your product are truly endless. Well done!
However, it would be a mistake to take the sentiment on this thread lightly. The China market for Podio is HUGE.
I too am trying to introduce Podio-based services in China and running up against the speed issue. There are steps you can take to help, and it would be well worth your investment in time and resources to do so.
As a research exercise, I encourage you to take 5 minutes and run a simple speed test here (https://www.webpagetest.org) using a standard Podio new user invite URL and select Beijing as the location. You will see many calls out to services from Google, Facebook, Twitter, DoubleClick, Adroll and others...many of which are blocked in China and slow down the page load. The necessity of those items on that page and inside the app should be thoughtfully questioned.
And as noted earlier, efforts to locate data assets in the region would pay off. Hong Kong would be a good start since it is easier for foreign companies to set up shop there rather than mainland China.
Looking forward to good news from Podio in the near future regarding improvements in China.
Thanks!
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