Turbulence Overview

Turbulence is PicPerf’s full-site optimization product. It sits between your site and your visitors as a reverse proxy, fetching your HTML on every request, transforming it on the fly, and serving the result from the edge. Images, fonts, scripts, resource hints — all of it gets optimized automatically. You change a couple of DNS records. Your visitors see a faster site.

How It’s Different From Regular PicPerf

If you’re already familiar with hosting images with PicPerf or proxying images through PicPerf, the difference is the scope:

• Regular PicPerf optimizes individual image assets. You upload an image, or you prefix an existing URL with https://picperf.io/, and that specific image gets faster.
• Turbulence optimizes your entire site on every request. You don’t touch your images, your code, or your build pipeline. You point a domain at Turbulence, and the HTML that visitors actually receive is rewritten to route images through PicPerf, self-host fonts, load scripts asynchronously, and a handful of other things — all without a single change to your server.

If you want the per-image approach with more control, stick with regular PicPerf. If you want a single, drop-in performance win across every page on your site, Turbulence is the easier path.

What It Does

Turbulence runs each fetched HTML response through a transformation pipeline at the edge. A few examples of what gets rewritten:

• Every <img src> (and srcset, and CSS url(...)) on your page gets routed through PicPerf’s image optimization. Visitors get modern formats, on-the-fly resizing, and edge caching — automatically.
• Google Fonts and Typekit (Adobe Fonts) stylesheets are downloaded, the font files are stored at the edge, and the HTML is rewritten to load them from there. No more waiting on a third-party connection.
• Known-safe third-party scripts (Google Tag Manager, analytics, ad pixels) get an async attribute added so they stop blocking page render.
• Resource hints (<link rel="preconnect"> and dns-prefetch) get injected for every external origin your page references, so the browser starts opening connections earlier.
• Same-origin CSS and JavaScript files are minified, fingerprinted, and cached at the edge.

For the full list, see What Gets Optimized.

What It Doesn’t Do

A few things Turbulence intentionally doesn’t do, so you know what to expect:

• It doesn’t change your server or your code. Your origin stays exactly as it is. If you turn Turbulence off, your visitors see the same site you have today.
• It doesn’t help with non-HTML responses. APIs, JSON endpoints, server-rendered file downloads, video files — these pass straight through without modification. Turbulence optimizes HTML responses, then anything referenced from inside that HTML.
• It doesn’t route images referenced only inside external stylesheets. Turbulence rewrites <img> tags, srcset, and url(...) in inline <style> blocks and style attributes. Same-origin .css files are minified and self-hosted at the edge (static-prep), but url(...) references inside those files are absolutized to your origin — they aren’t routed through PicPerf’s image optimization. Cross-origin CSS and JS pass through unchanged.
• It doesn’t help with already-fully-optimized assets. If your images are already being served from a major CDN like Cloudinary, Imgix, or Shopify, Turbulence leaves them alone. They’re already fast.

How to Get Started

Turbulence is managed from the PicPerf dashboard at go.picperf.io. You need an active Turbulence subscription (or admin access) to add and manage domains. Sign up at go.picperf.io/signup/turbulence — new plans include a 14-day free trial. If you’re not subscribed yet, the Turbulence section shows plan options instead of the domain list.

1. Set up your domain and DNS records. Most of the work is one CNAME record and a TXT record for verification.
2. Check what’s getting optimized on your first few requests. Response headers will tell you everything.
3. If something looks off, the troubleshooting guide covers the most common issues.

Not ready to change DNS yet? Request a free performance analysis instead. Enter any public URL on the marketing site, and PicPerf will run a one-time simulation, measure before/after PageSpeed scores, and email you a report link at picperf.io/analyze/turbulence/{domain}/{key}.