Cloudflare Reviews

We used the solution mostly as a DNS registry. I was the director of IT, and we had dozens of web assets, websites, and domain names. Instead of hosting the domain names with our content host, I would redirect pretty much all of them through Cloudflare to mitigate DDoS attacks and provide some resiliency. Our content host was largely WordPress based and backed by AWS. It was my go-to DNS registry for domain name verification or email security because we didn't run one on-premise. So Cloudflare was my DNS registry in effect.

DNS proxy was very valuable to me. The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation. In my previous organization, our main website experienced up to two million visits in a year. 

There was a four-month curling tournament from the fall to the spring season. It became important to distinguish legitimate viewers and fan traffic where they would want to go and visit our website for information on tournaments to buy tickets and merchandise and to view scores of our major national tournaments. It was important to protect legitimate traffic from illegitimate group-force traffic. 

Though Canada was not a major target for the DDoS attack, it was important that we protect our website through Cloudflare. If we saw a lot of traffic that we wouldn’t usually get, like from Russia, China, or any bot-like behavior, the product would filter it out. We did not have to think about a cyber strategy because the product did it for us. Cloudflare is one of the pioneers of cybersecurity software.

I think the solution is for users at the level of enterprise hosting. It is not meant for small or medium business users or sysadmins. The solution could be more user-friendly.

I would like to see Cloudflare take on more of the advocacy and lobbying role for internet security because they're the leaders in it.

I used the solution in October 2022 in my previous organization.

I have never had a website go down while using the product.

The solution is scalable. The sky is the limit.

The initial setup was pretty easy.

The deployment process is just as simple as knowing your A records. Other than adding or updating new records, I never really had to maintain the product.

A free version of the solution is available. I have never needed anything more than free DNS.

We explored and spoke to a sales representative about one of our flagship CRMs. We were thinking about taking advantage of more of the product's features. We did not go with it because it was a cost reckoning at that point. If we had more scale, it would start to look a little bit more lucrative.

As the geopolitical situation develops, we have to be mindful of cyber threats, even in the small and medium business spheres. People should be more mindful and aware of the tools available. The tool needs to be holistic. It must help users to protect and strengthen their passwords through multifactor authentication. The tool must also protect online businesses.

Entrepreneurs need to be sure that their whole web ecosystem is projected end to end. Cloudflare offers APIs for event logging and analysis. Even if you're using an assembly of tools in your cyber protection toolkit, you can monitor what Cloudflare is detecting and mitigating and report on it holistically. The solution providers are very rigorous about their documentation and learning resources. They're invested in raising general awareness.

A lot of people don't understand DNS security, the routes that web traffic takes around the world, as being very important, but it is important. Data sovereignty is important, and the more that you secure your exchange points within your country and are mindful of the hops that your data takes and how it might be intercepted, the better everyone's awareness will be because people don't think about that stuff.

Sometimes even our websites and web applications were hosted across multiple different providers. A redundant and distributed DNS provider on the cloud, independent of our host, became almost necessary. A lot of people think that it is over-complicating and over-distributing for the web ecosystem. However, I see the security merit of a ubiquitous third-party DNS record host like Cloudflare. If one hosting service goes down, we will still have that redundancy through Cloudflare.

CIRA and .ca domain providers are the only ones advocating for data sovereignty, internet affordability, and accessibility, starting with offering free Canadian Shield DNS registration and partnering with various exchange providers. No one else is advocating for domain name security. Canada does not have any homegrown DNS providers. Everyone defaults to whoever their host is, which may or may not be inside the country.

The only hiccups we've ever had had less to do with Cloudflare and more with one of our other service providers messing around with our domain records. If you were in a situation where you had to adhere to domestic sovereignty and compliance laws, be mindful of where most of your users and traffic are coming from, and then make your decision to buy the product.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

When I was in Singapore, I used Cloudflare for DNS management, but when I started at Yoma Bank, I started using the application gateway routing and firewall features. 

I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection. 

I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us.

I have used Cloudflare DNS management for around seven years, but I have only used the firewall features for four years. 

I rate Cloudflare eight out of 10 for stability.

I rate Cloudflare eight out of 10 for scalability. 

I rate Cloudflare support seven out of 10. The technical support is mostly fine, but the response times could be better, and we'd like a dedicated account manager. 

Neutral

Before Cloudflare, we relied on on-prem hardware and software solutions.

I rate Cloudflare eight out of 10. The basic setup is straightforward, but you may need to configure some advanced settings in some cases. We finished the setup in under an hour. However, we need to do some regular maintenance. 

I rate Cloudflare eight out of 10 for overall value. It's cost-effective, but I think they should have a custom pricing model for enterprise customers based on the features you use. That's why I think it would be helpful to have a dedicated account manager to periodically review and address our usage. 

I rate Cloudflare seven out of 10. It isn't bad overall, but it's difficult to use in this country. 

I had one design that I did, and it was related to Cloudflare API Gateway. Anything that comes in the front-end URL was basically something to deal with Cloudflare API gateway. Based on separations required in Cloudflare DNS, I set the traffic manager and then manage areas, like configuration, DDoS, and all such related areas. The aforementioned area helps manage the traffic that comes in, the load of the application, how you want to secure access and authentication, and then have the authorization.

In Cloudflare DNS, I use all the service modules the tool offers. The use cases attached to the solution can be related to areas like performance checks, protection, security modules, scalability, and allocation frequency of checking DNS.

The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security.

Cloudflare DNS is still a new tool in the market. I haven't come across any issues with the product. I did two designs with the help of Apigee and Cloudflare. I had done one design with the help of Apigee, while the other one was done with Cloudflare. In a lot of organizations, when it comes to the area of design, companies don't understand the broader perspective of what I try to do, how I try to do it or try to understand the right configuration needed. Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements. The improvements to be made in the tool can be based on your thought process instead of trying to bring up something that is over-prescribed or over-allocated by others, which won't make sense. Based on the functional requirements of every user of the tool, improvements need to be made to the product.

I have experience with Cloudflare DNS.

Initially, I used to use Apigee. Cloudflare DNS was chosen since management made a business decision to deal with the security requirements. Cloudflare DNS has a lot of different compliances and regulations, and related areas, like authentication and authorization, are introduced in the tool. Things change constantly in the product.

When it comes to the product's initial setup phase, I have dealt with a lot of complexity when it comes to different applications, especially with the ones where I had to deal with AWS. Users need to bundle their applications, especially when there are critical applications, which may range from platinum, gold, silver, or bronze applications. Users need a landing zone, and they need to put everything in one particular landing zone, making it one of the Year's good use cases of the product to which a lot of people don't pay much attention; because of this, I feel it is my vision related to the product. I feel the companies need to see what the product can offer rather than just using the tool straight out of the box.

In every organization, there is a security component involved, and as long as the tool meets the requirements of the security layers in an environment, the product's setup phase is somewhat straightforward, but I am sure you could do a lot of different stuff with the tool. I don't think the setup process is complex, considering just a single source when it comes to the product, which revolves around the area of security. Based on the workload, users can make the setup process complex. I don't like straightforward processes, especially when dealing with critical applications that need to be designed in a particular way and could be totally different from the other applications in an environment. I am the type of person who likes to make the setup process more complicated and unique. When it comes to the setup process, users can choose different avenues to ensure that the resource separation is consistent in the setup phase.

Cloudflare is designed to offer API Gateway, Traffic Acceleration, and DNS. Based on your pages and URL performance, Apigee is a solution you can use, and you could tie that in either AWS, Google, or Azure, or if you are making a SaaS application going through a front-end web component and have a pass-through gateway.

Cloudflare DNS is a pretty solid product as it is not tied to any cloud environment.

I rate the overall tool around seven or eight out of ten.

Cloudflare serves as both a Content Delivery Network and a security system. When integrated into the software, it optimizes content loading speeds, ensuring users access content swiftly. Additionally, Cloudflare safeguards websites from various cyber threats, providing security. 

DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately.

In Cloudflare, numerous features cater to web security needs. Conducting thorough research on your company's operations is crucial for configuring VAS. This involves determining which requests to whitelist, challenge, or block. Additionally, Cloudflare offers rate-limiting capabilities for endpoints. You can set limits to the number of requests, preventing overload situations. Another valuable feature is the ability to implement geoblocking using IDS rules.

When a user accesses the website, Cloudflare's CDN system checks for static content such as JavaScript files, CSS, and HTML. It then caches this static content on its CDN servers across approximately 140 data centers worldwide. When subsequent users request the same content, Cloudflare serves it from the nearest data center, improving performance.

Cloudflare's impact on SEO rankings and website visibility is notable. Collaborating with the business team to optimize website loading speed can benefit SEO.

We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.

I have been using the product for five years. 

I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten. 

I rate the product's scalability an eight out of ten. 

The tool's support takes at least one hour to respond. 

Neutral

I rate the tool's ease of deployment a ten out of ten. It's very quick. Deployment time largely depends on how we configure it, whether done through coding or the UI. For a single-user setup, it's straightforward. However, for more complex configurations with multiple use cases, it can vary. However, setting up a single zone for production load typically takes less than an hour.

The product's pricing is cheap. 

Our clients include larger companies such as one that sells automobile parts globally, another that deals with banks and financial institutions, etc. It is mostly recommended for enterprises. 

I highly recommend Cloudflare as a superior solution compared to others in the market. It offers coverage for various use cases, including SaaS products, web application security, and Content Delivery Network systems. Additionally, Cloudflare provides features like the Magic Transit system, which helps control internal traffic.

I rate it a ten out of ten. 

The first use case was to administer the main domain of the organization where I worked.

We have the entire registration process for the main domain and its subdomains, and we create web application firewall (WAF) and load balancer rules.

We did a major MX migration from Google to Microsoft, and doing that with Cloudflare has given us immense security.

This domain also started to visualize improper accesses from other countries and monitor where the main accesses came from.

We made some blocks of administrator sites that only be accessed by a specific IP.

Cloudflare's solution brought us more agility, security, and confidence in managing the environment.

We have seen that there are very few failures or almost none that occur on the Cloudflare servers, and if they occur, the accesses are distributed to another region.

We like that we have a view of where the main accesses came from, such as the main countries, and also what was being blocked by the web application firewall (WAF)

Creating a rule to limit some admin access also improved the security and integrity of our environment.

The features we used the most were the web application firewall and the load balancer. These two services were essential for our structure.

The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs.

As for the load balancer, it did its job perfectly. Our scenario consisted of two web servers in different allocations to control access demands, and the load balancer did the job as expected, bringing security and stability to access points.

Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client.

For example, it could be possible to create dashboards and reports of the main accesses allowed or blocked by the web application firewall. It would also be nice to bring information on the client's screen about the status of the services according to the hosted region.

Of the services that I use, this is the part that I miss. Other services are in agreement and serving me perfectly as they should be.

I've been using Cloudflare for about three or four years.

Previously, when we published new websites or new services on our domain, we had to wait for the changes to be reflected on the internet before they took effect.

We have the same features with Cloudflare, but they are duplicated across the internet in minutes due to how quickly Cloudflare's technology works.

I find it simple to register your domains or create a new domain on Cloudflare. 

Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick.

Another advantage of Cloudflare's DNS hosting is the protection it provides. If you have the domain and DNS records on Cloudflare, you may also hide it behind its proxy so that it does not display its real IP address on the internet.

At the moment, they are all mostly positive. There will most likely be enhancements in the future.

I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API.

I have all of the features I need here. The one feature that is paid is the custom nameservers instead of using the default ones, I want to use a custom one. Otherwise, I'm already pleased with most of the features.

I have been working with Cloudflare DNS for three years.

Cloudflare provides a cloud service for hosting DNS servers or DNS records.

Cloudflare DNS is definitely stable.

They have services all around the world, and they are always up and running.

I never had a DNS issue. 

They also provide information on how many individuals visit your website.

I am the only one that manages the DNS Service so far.

Clients are often pleased since they no longer have to wait so long to launch new services when they are required.

I have never had to contact technical support or open a ticket because the servers are so reliable.

Very user-friendly. It is relatively simple to set up and operate due to its user interface.

It took less than a day to deploy, perhaps a few hours. It didn't even take an hour.

That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free. 

They provide more advanced services for a fee. I haven't even spent a single cent on it. 

To use the service, any user must first register with Cloudflare.

We are partners with Cloudflare. Our organization supplies DDoS solutions, but exclusively at Layer 4. Because of our partnership with Cloudflare, we can now provide DDoS protection to our clients on both Layer 4 and Layer 7.

If you don't want to spend too much time hosting your own DNS server or managing the domain, Cloudflare is a great way to rapidly get websites and services online. 

The free solution includes protection, and email security, and is very simple to use. 

It makes managing websites and publishing them on the internet much easier.

I would rate Cloudflare DNS a ten out of ten.

So primarily, we use Cloudflare DNS for DDoS protection.

We can patch other requests to a particular page to a certain extent. Performance-wise, there isn't a big issue with using it. So it has excellent feedback, and it's used in our public meetings. Also, we're able to manage all SIP platforms with Cloudflare DNS.

For me, the valuable feature is DDoS protection.

Some people want more checkboxes as a feature when using Cloudflare. So, it can dictate your price.

The price is not customized for a user but depends on your usage.

The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it. They need to launch or see something better. So, it's on the relative side.

I have been using Cloudflare DNS for eight months.

It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. Almost 30 people are using the solution. I rate the scalability a ten out of ten.

Based on our usage and experience, the support is good, but we do not know about the client's experience.

The initial setup is easy. It takes a couple of hours.

The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month.

I definitely recommend others to use the solution. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

We primarily use Cloudflare DNS as a content delivery network (CDN) and for its free DNS service. Additionally, it provides us with web application firewall (WAF) control, caching control, and security measures against bot attacks. These features are readily available, and that's why we use Cloudflare.

The best feature, in my opinion, is the caching capability. Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website. Additionally, Cloudflare only forwards requests to our servers when new information is needed, which helps offload the server's workload. That's what I find most valuable about Cloudflare.

We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue. 

Another drawback we've experienced is with IP masking. When our website is accessed through a VPN, the access logs record Cloudflare IPs, which makes it difficult to determine which IPs are impacting the website's load. These are the major challenges we face.

In future releases, one thing that would be great is if Cloudflare could provide basic WAF rules and security recommendations based on website scanning. You could submit your website, and it would generate a list of security measures that should be implemented for your website and other web applications. That would be highly valuable.

We have been using it for the past year. The domains and servers are hosted on AWS cloud.

In my experience, Cloudflare has proven to be quite reliable.

We haven't fully explored the scalability aspect yet. Currently, we are using the free version and still exploring its features and functionalities. Once we've gone through everything and if we feel the need, we might consider upgrading to the pro plan or the enterprise-level functionalities.

We haven't needed to contact them so far. Managing DNS on multiple other platforms was relatively easy for me, so I didn't require support from Cloudflare. However, I did reach out to them once regarding SSL and Cloudflare certificate-related concerns, but I'm still unsure about that aspect. 

Before using Cloudflare DNS, our domains were with GoDaddy, and we were managing our DNS there. 

It was my decision to move our website to a CDN, and I chose Cloudflare because it is an open-source tool that could provide the solution we needed.

The DNS setup itself was relatively easy, but exploring and understanding the other options and features of Cloudflare was a bit challenging initially. However, after reading the documentation and doing some research, I was able to grasp how everything works, and it became much smoother to navigate and utilize those functionalities.

In my organization, I'm the one responsible for all DNS management, and most of the DNS is managed through Cloudflare.

We are using the free version.

I would definitely recommend them to use Cloudflare. If someone has basic knowledge of DNS, they would be able to use Cloudflare. However, if they want to utilize advanced functionalities like caching, bot controls, and website security, they can leverage their existing knowledge and delve into those areas. It's relatively easier, but some basic research and exploration would be beneficial.

I would give it an eight because there are a few features with unclear documentation, which makes it difficult to understand them. However, overall, the majority of features are easy to grasp and navigate, so I would give Cloudflare an eight.