I upload static assets to IPFS and add those static links to my project instead of having an "assets" folder.
IPFS is fast enough, I had these concerns too so I use a gateway for links as some of them cache files on their own CDN, for free.
Yes, I use a pinning service, I was extremely hesitant as many of them are just SaaS hosting like Pinata is and charge by bandwidth used, but there are free ones like https://web3.storage which for some reason is combining Filecoin and IPFS together for each upload and liveness/pinning.
Ironically, Pinata also acts as a gateway and can then be used for free if you want. But there are other gateways. Cloudfront has one but what it decides to cache is strange.
IPFS is fast enough, I had these concerns too so I use a gateway for links as some of them cache files on their own CDN, for free.
Yes, I use a pinning service, I was extremely hesitant as many of them are just SaaS hosting like Pinata is and charge by bandwidth used, but there are free ones like https://web3.storage which for some reason is combining Filecoin and IPFS together for each upload and liveness/pinning.
Ironically, Pinata also acts as a gateway and can then be used for free if you want. But there are other gateways. Cloudfront has one but what it decides to cache is strange.