ASP.NET WebForms + UpdatePanels = Slow + Overhead

Everyone knows this but at the same time, everything I have found on the topic involves a lot of hunting.

AVOID UpdatePanels and just go straight into ajax with JSON payloads – if you even must use WebForms.

I knew they had an overhead when I first started using them, but I had no idea how massive that overhead was and how slow it would make things.

We’ve spent quite a bit of time re-engineering parts of our code just to remove the ill-fated UpdatePanels. Don’t make the same mistake.