Running a large CloudFront distribution can be costly if the assets aren’t optimized. Additional users might see blank placeholders everywhere while images are loading and increased data usage. In the developing market having most users on mobile devices using mobile data, this can be a deal-breaker.
There are several ways this problem can be approached.
- Convert images to needed sizes immediately after they are uploaded.
- Convert images as they are requested on the fly thanks to Lambda@Edge.
Option 2 seems more efficient and more convenient as there are no changes required on your application back-end and no need to worry about scaling problems.