Cloudflare Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

Principal Web Developer, Managing Director at a tech company with 51-200 employees

Feb 23, 2017

Cache management for pages on a high traffic Drupal site due to seasonal performance spikes.

What is most valuable?

Easy cache management for pages on a high traffic Drupal site, due to seasonal performance spikes. This service is helpful for our small technical team.

How has it helped my organization?

We have specific high-visibility "campaigns" that are scheduled about every six weeks, and the rest of the time our site is quieter. We've used Cloudflare to handle the ability to post dynamic, timebound content as well as more static content delivery.

What needs improvement?

I think it would be more helpful to have either user-submitted or Cloudflare-produced documentation, samples, or examples of situations. We had to do a lot of digging and back-and-forth with technical support for specific use cases, and it might be helpful to have more screencasts or screenshots for common situations.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used the solution for two years.

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

January 2025

Free Report: Cloudflare Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Cloudflare. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

831,071 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have not encountered any stability issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have not encountered any scalability issues in the paid version.

How are customer service and support?

Answers to all our questions were available when needed.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is extremely easy but will require access to your Domain Name Servers.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution is a good choice for sites that require multiple types of users and multiple types of content (e.g. Drupal sites) with thousands, or tens of thousands of users or more.

What other advice do I have?

They have a few introductory screencasts for people just getting started, which is helpful. I've now implemented CloudFlare on three new projects, so for most common cases it is solid and straightforward.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user92823

Online Marketing & Development Manager at a engineering company with 501-1,000 employees

Jan 15, 2017

Download

It offers single-point DNS management for all of the company’s domains that might be registered with different registrars.

What is most valuable?

DNS Management is the most valuable feature of the product on the free plan, and the CDN options are robust on the business plan.

How has it helped my organization?

It offers single-point DNS management for all of the company’s domains that might be registered with different registrars.

Refreshing the site cache is very fast and easy, and the developers mode is also a great feature.

What needs improvement?

With CDN loads, sometimes we get an error that the host server is unavailable when the connection between CloudFlare and the server timed out. But now, we get the always online page, so the customer hardly notices a problem.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using it for at least four years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

no issues, very fast to deploy. a simple change of the domain's NS records.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

on the free plan we used to receive from time to time "website not available" but since we switched to the business plan, we encounter no problems.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No problems with scalability; we moved from free to pro to business with no problem.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is 10/10 – very good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We are simultaneously using Akamai, which is sometimes too robust for us, much harder to configure and costs a lot more. CloudFlare is very user friendly, UX-wise and price-wise.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup is very straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented through an in-house implementer.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

If you are mid-size company, go straight to the business plan. great ROI.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We are also using AKAMAI, see my previous comment on that.

What other advice do I have?

CloudFlare provides an answer to a variety of issues, so it gives you very high value for your money.

If you are not sure, take it for a test run; it’s free.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

January 2025

Free Report: Cloudflare Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Cloudflare. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

831,071 professionals have used our research since 2012.

it_user298149

Linux/Cisco/Microsoft Infraestructure Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Aug 31, 2016

Download

Even if it can’t handle very large-scale attacks, DDoS protection is easier with CloudFlare as a primary shield.

What is most valuable?

DDoS protection is this product’s most valuable feature. Even if it can’t handle very large-scale attacks, protection is easier having CloudFlare as a primary shield.

If you choose to do so, you can use their DNS servers. Because DNS amplification is also a vector of attack, this is one more optional feature you can delegate to CloudFlare at no additional cost.

How has it helped my organization?

It allows us to have a backup in case Incapsula has issues.

What needs improvement?

I would like to not need a separate server for non-www redirection under the CNAME setup option. With Incapsula, they simply tell me to point the non-www records to the servers they tell me and they take care of the non-www redirection. In CloudFlare's case, I need to get an external server, set up the redirection there using Apache or NGINX and put my own SSL certificates there.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used it for one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not encountered any stability issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is 10/10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used pretty much all solutions. In some cases, Incapsula is better; in others, CloudFlare is.

How was the initial setup?

We were used to the CNAME setup. Initially, this was not offered but now it is. The only issue is handling the non-www redirections that, with CNAME setup, requires us to use an external server. (Incapsula does not.)

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Pricing and licensing is standard when compared to its competitors.

What other advice do I have?

Don’t hesitate to contact support; they answer very quickly.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user850401

IT Service Manager at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Sep 5, 2018

Download

Allows us to self-host services like Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in HA mode

Pros and Cons

"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."

What is our primary use case?

In addition to a reliable and easy to use a DNS service, Cloudflare enables us to host websites on hardware in-house, by protecting us against DDoS attacks as well as from our slightly unreliable ISP.

How has it helped my organization?

Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations.

What is most valuable?

DNS
Round robin DNS
Load balancing
DDOS protection

to protect us from botnets and attackers, as we are hosting sites in-house.

What needs improvement?

Cloudflare is one service that has been absent of any frustration when setting up or using. Perhaps I would ask that they improve the Free plan and allow us to use it with any TLD (certain ones are not allowed).

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How was the initial setup?

Very straightforward, we were set up in minutes.

What other advice do I have?

I'd rate it a 10 out of 10. There is no service as mature as Cloudflare that is also as easy to use, reliable, and hosted from excellent infrastructure.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user242514

Owner/Developer at a marketing services firm with 51-200 employees

May 21, 2015

I needed to do something differently because we were getting hacked often.

I’ve been with CloudFlare for a year and a half at the time of writing this post and realized that I never gave it a review of any kind. What kind of terrible person am I?

I worked for a couple a few years ago who was using a content management system called Joomla to build their clients’ sites. We would launch a site by simply pointing the DNS settings to our servers and calling it good.

Then we started getting hacked. A lot.

With the number of sites we had on our server, the exploits found in the plugins being used, as well as poor server practices, we had a huge target on our chest.

A while later I decided to leave to company to go on to do other things. One of those things was to open my own web development and hosting shop.

First things first: Get away from Joomla.

Next: Learn WordPress.

Now let’s get a server setup.

The first thing I did when I got my server setup was make sure that no one was allowed to host on my server unless we ran all of the DNS through CloudFlare. No exceptions.

A couple of things I noticed when I got all this in place:

My sites ran faster
My server load was lower

Most importantly: My sites never got hacked (fingers crossed).

I attribute the latter to a couple of things, but mostly I would like to think that CloudFlare had a huge part in that. If you don’t know what CloudFlare is, watch their promotional video.

Here’s some other cool stuff about this site from the last 30 days:

CloudFlare saved me more than 54,000 server requests
Cloudflare saved me more than 600 MB of bandwidth
Cloudflare blocked 50 threats to my site

And how much do I pay for CloudFlare? Nothing.

That’s pretty amazing stuff! I didn’t have to pay anything for better website security and reduced server load.

If you’re looking for the same, be sure to go get signed up at CloudFlare. It’s easy to setup and the results speak for themselves.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user69345

Owner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Nov 17, 2013

Does It Really Work?

I’ve been on a quest for the need for speed lately. I recently swapped to a new host Host Gator and that helped with the load speeds of the site increased (a bit). But it also gave me an opportunity to make the site even more lean and mean by going through the plugins I was using and removing the fluff. A big part of that though was deciding to add a CDN to help optimize and speed up the load times of the site. But like most bloggers on a budget I had to find something that not only worked but was in my price range – free! This is where CloudFlare comes into play. Read more to find out what a CDN is, and if CloudFlare is right for you!

Site Speed

Even if you have the greatest content in the world and a site that is designed right the one thing that will turn people away faster than anything else is a website that takes forever to load. Things like not optimizing your images, having too many WordPress plugins, and using too many java script all can affect your load times greatly. So when starting to optimize your own website that is where I would start. But after you have worked on fixing them what next?

CDN – Content Delivery Network

The next step to consider is to implement a CDN to take that final step to speeding up your website. A CDN will take all of your images, java script, and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and host them on to their network to quickly load them on your visitors browsers. Another benefit is that a CDN has a huge network of servers that are closer to your potential visitor ensuring that your site will load quickly wherever in the workd they are visiting. The downfall is that they can cost a lot to implement.

Cloud Flare

I happened to first seeCloudFlare from a fellow blogger’s site The Bad Blogger. I decided to do some research and found that they offered a FREE service! I thought there was some sort of catch or I would have to plaster their logo all over the place. But as it turns out not only was it simple to setup – there was not catch! It really is FREE. But not only do they offer their CDN services check out the other features they offer:

CDN

Well first they offer your basic CDN service. By caching things like your images, CSS, and javascript on their servers you are sure to have a site that will load quickly no matter where in the world visitors are checking out your site. Another cool feature of using a CDN? Say your host went down for whatever reason. You would still have a cached page instead of the dreaded 404 message people would usually get! I know it works… I inadvertently tested it while switching to a new host!

Optimization

CloudFlare offers for your pages to be further optimized before being loaded onto your visitors browser. I already mentioned some of them above! The other benefit of using a service like CloudFlare? It will save your bandwidth and the amounts of requests to your webhost!

Security

Add another layer of security from Spammers, SQL Injection attacks, and DDOS attacks from the script kiddies. By having to go through their CDN first it is just another layer of protection to keep your site and your visitors safe! It also offers services like obscuring email addresses and preventing hotlinking of your images.

Analytics

CloudFlare offers you some awesome stats to see how your site is performing. I take them with a grain of salt though. Although Google Analytics uses java script to track visitors, CloudFlare’s numbers will be greatly inflated showing you more of a “raw data” indicating almost 5-10x more traffic then you are actually receiving!

Applications

There are a slew of applications available that CloudFlare will implement on their end. Some are pretty frivolous to being really beneficial. You can add Google Analytics, PunchTab Rewards, and even experiment.ly!

Implementing Cloud Flare

So with a ton of forethought and planning (i.e. I’m full of crap) I decided to go for it. So how did I implement it? Seriously it was probably the easiest setup process I’ve ever gone through!

First I signed up for my CloudFlare account. After I received my confirmation email I then signed onto CloudFlare.
I then imported my DNS settings which CloudFlare exported and setup for me automatically. I do recommend doing some research to understand what you are looking at though.
After I had everything setup with CloudFlare I then went to my GoDaddy account and changed the DNS settings to point to CloudFlare instead of my webhost. This is the scary step as GoDaddy states this could take up to 24hrs for them to make the changes. For me it took 10 minutes for the changes to take place.
After all of that all I had to do was see if I could still see if the website was up and running and *poof* I had implemented CloudFlare onto my site.
When this is all completed you can go back into the CloudFlare dashboard and finish tweaking the settings by enabling applications or making any necessary changes to your DNS. (I had to manually add things like FTP and SSH that I had forgotten about.)

Do You Really See An Improvement?

Considering I had already tweaked this site? I can definitely say yes I do see an increase. Of course I would do your own testing first to see if I’m lying to you or not. I did a random test (as of this writing) to see how fast it loaded. Actual content of the site loaded fairly quickly with the added geegaws and doo hickeys loading a few seconds afterwards (i.e. ads, the sharebar, and my PunchTab toolbar at the bottom of the screen.) What this means is that the stuff you want to see – the images and text loaded really fast, and the rest of it kind of popped up a little bit afterwards. So I still have some work to do… *sigh*

Updates

I had a fellow blogger Bryan from www.thehobbyblogger.com ask about how the CDN refreshes the site if I make changes.

If you are going to implement small changes to your blog? They will take place ‘on the fly’. I have not had any issues performing basic site updates/maintenance. If you are doing extensive updates? You can either temporarily disable Cloud Flare through their control panel by clicking on the “Development” option. Or disable Cloud Flare altogether. I do recommend using the Development mode as that will only temporarily disable the service for a few hours.

Update #2

Lost Traffic?

People have told me horror stories about potential lost traffic or visitors getting blocked to their sites. I have done a short test with my own site and I can say I did not see any noticeable difference in traffic with the service off or on. I would suggest though that if you think you are losing traffic? You should conduct your own testing. This can be done by either:

A) Adjusting the Security settings from what you currently have it set at to a lower setting.

B) Disable Cloud Flare altogether and test to see if your traffic changes dramatically.

Also please note I do not have a huge traffic site. So your results may vary.

Is a CDN For You?

Well, that depends really. If you don’t get much traffic and if your site loads quick as it is? Then um, no? But if you want the added security and speed you get with a CDN then I say sure! I had a great test this past week with visitors averaging around 1500 – 2000 visitors (hey I hear you snickering!) and everything remained snappy even when I had 30 visitors hammering (OK, knocking softly) on the site!

For me the benefits outweigh any negatives using CloudFlare might bring.

And did I mention all of this is FREE already? For larger sites they do offer paid plans that offer additional functionality – but for most folks the free plan will definitely do the trick!

Other Resources/Additional Reading

I am suggesting that you read these two articles to help you make a decision as well. Why? Well I respect the sites and more importantly I want you to have a better overall opinion rather than some little blog you happened to run across while searching for information. Both will give you a more technical explanation and I found them interesting.

Conclusion

CloudFlare is a fantastic option for bloggers on a budget. From what I’ve researched on the web CloudFlare is considered “CDN-lite” by some folks. All I know is that it works! I might look into using a different CDN later on but for now CloudFlare is an awesome solution!

What are your thoughts on using a CDN? What service do you use if any? Leave a comment below with your experience with using a CDN or if you have any questions!

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

sumodirjo

Senior Site Infrastructure Engineer at Kurungsiku

Jun 30, 2017

Download

Initial setup is straightforward and guided by Cloudflare

Pros and Cons

"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"

"DNS Management."

What is most valuable?

- DNS Management

- CDN

- Page rules

How has it helped my organization?

- Easier DNS management via API

- Easier http to https redirect using page rules

What needs improvement?

Several features that I think is essential is not available in the free and business package. One of them is multi users. Multi users and multi API key is important for organizations in any size.

For how long have I used the solution?

2-3 years

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup is straightforward and guided by Cloudflare. NS changes for new site is easy. For existing NS migrated to Cloudflare, user must recheck current DNS records to ensure all records already available in Cloudflare.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.