Why We Self-Host Every Font on Our Websites

Typography carries a surprising amount of a brand's personality. The fonts on this website, a warm serif for headings and a clean sans-serif for body text, were chosen to feel both thoughtful and modern. How those fonts reach a visitor's browser was a decision too, and our answer is simple: we host them ourselves.

The common approach and its costs

Many websites load fonts from a public font service by adding a line to their page that points at the service's servers. It is convenient: no files to manage, and a huge catalog to choose from. But that convenience has costs that are easy to overlook.

Privacy. Every time a visitor loads the page, their browser contacts the font service, sharing details such as their address on the internet and the page they are viewing. Visitors never agreed to that.

Reliability. If the service changes its terms, its address, its access rules or simply has an outage, the website's typography changes with it. A kit that requires a domain allowlist can stop working when the site moves to a new domain.

Speed. Connecting to an extra server adds time before text can render, especially on slow mobile connections.

What self-hosting looks like

Self-hosting means the font files live on the same servers as the website and are referenced with a font declaration in the site's own stylesheet. For this site we use modern compressed font files, limited to the character sets we actually need, which keeps them small.

We also tell browsers how to behave while a font loads. Text is shown immediately in a fallback font and swapped to the brand font once it arrives, so visitors never stare at invisible text.

Licenses come with the files

Self-hosting is only appropriate when a font's license allows it. The fonts on this site are released under an open font license that permits embedding on websites, and we keep a copy of each license alongside the font files. For any font, we check the license before hosting it, the same way we would check the license of any other code.

Importers follow the same rule

When we move a customer's website into our platform, the same principle applies. If their old site loaded fonts from a hosted kit or a public service, our importer downloads the actual font files into the customer's own storage and rewrites the stylesheets to use them. Otherwise the fonts would break the day the old account closed or the kit's domain rules changed. You can read more in why our importers never hotlink.

A few practical tips if you want to do the same

• Check the license first. Make sure the font may be embedded on websites and keep the license file with the fonts.
• Use a modern compressed format. It is widely supported and much smaller than older formats.
• Subset when you can. If your site is in English, you may not need every alphabet.
• Limit the weights. Each weight and style is another file. Variable fonts can cover many weights in one file.
• Show text while fonts load. Use a display setting that swaps in the font when it arrives.

Part of a broader habit

Self-hosting fonts is one example of a habit that runs through our work: depend on as few outside services as possible for the things that make a page work. Every outside dependency is something that can change without warning. When we do rely on a service, such as a payment processor, it is because it provides something we should not build ourselves, and we design for its failure. You can see the result across our Technology & Impact work.

Frequently asked questions

Is it legal to host Google Fonts or other open fonts yourself?

Many open fonts are licensed in a way that permits self-hosting, but you should always read the specific license for each font and keep it with the files.

Do self-hosted fonts load faster?

Often, yes, because the browser does not need to connect to an extra server. Using compressed files and only the weights you need helps even more.

Does using a public font service share visitor data?

Loading fonts from a third-party server means visitors' browsers contact that server, which can share technical details such as their internet address.