Aside from low hashrate, you probably better use solo mining pool (such as ckpool or kano) which supposed to offer better block propagation speed.
I know, alledgedly pools are supposed to have lower latency.
TBH I'm not so sure given I have a low latency GBit fibre connection to the internet I cant see why it'd be any less effective than a server in a data centre somewhere that only has a 400Mbit capped link tied to it. Unless the other bitcoin nodes are located in the same data centre, the latency between nodes would be similar.
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Never the less with that said, I guess it's easier to rely on someone else's technical expertise in setting up the bitcoind and maintaining the back-end of things.
Aside from latency, i also hear claim that node run by mining pool connected to other node which belong to different mining pool and node run by major company. Anyway, i agree the biggest reason to use them is we don't have to setup and maintain stuff.