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cloudflare-pros-cons.md

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CloudFlare logo


CloudFlare

CloudFlare is a service which makes your website faster and more secure.

Why?

  • Faster page loads simply because the responding server is closer to you physically
  • If your server dies in the background CDN could still serve cached pages
  • To survive DDoS attacks

CloudFlare Pros

  • They have proved themselves in production, e.g. reddit.com and stackoverflow.com are customers

    According to them, >2M websites are routed through CloudFlare

  • A good set of features: CDN, Analytics, DDoS protection

    But be sure to check what plan you need. They have a bit different set of features.

  • It's very cheap

    Used bandwidth doesn't matter, it is a fixed price per month.

  • They provide an API

CloudFlare Cons

  • They limit the file size of uploads if you are uploading through CloudFlare.

    See "Client maximum upload size" here: https://www.cloudflare.com/plans/#plans-table

  • Their business model seems strange

    On the other hand they have gotten a lot of funding: 2M in 2009, 22M in 2011, 30M in 2013, 110M in 2015.

    Update: CloudFlare's CEO Matthew Prince tweeted they've been profitable since the beginning of 2014. He also stated

    if you can connect directly to ISPs then the variable cost (bandwidth) approaches zero.

  • A few reported strange incidents

    I would be careful if the origin server would be very expensive with a lot of traffic. So be careful if you are making your S3 bill cheaper by adding a free CloudFlare in front. In one incident, after a huge amount of traffic(100TB/month) CloudFlare routed all traffic without a warning to the origin server and it ended up costing a lot.

    Also see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4535544

Other notes / restrictions:

  • You have to setup your domain's DNS configuration to point to CloudFlares servers

  • Check that the CDN edge servers are actually near the location you would need them to be

    https://www.cloudflare.com/network-map/

My conclusion

It's a great service with very reasonable price. They offer a rich set of features compared to other players.

I would be careful when using the small plans if the backing origin server costs could be potentially really high. For example if I have traffic 100TB/month and the origin server in S3, I wouldn't use the smaller plans(less than "Business $200/month") to make the S3 bill cheaper. There might be nasty surprises if CloudFlare decides to suddenly route all that traffic to S3. See the above mentioned "incidents".

Alternatives