Company Overview
Cloudflare is currently one of the largest CDN providers on the market. Founded in 2009, it has raised a substantial amount of investor capital including their most recent round of funding which allowed them to raise $110 million. Cloudflare not only provides a content delivery network, however also provides Internet security services (such as DDoS protection and WAF) as well as DNS services. A few interesting facts about Cloudflare:
- They currently accelerate more than 4 million sites (As of September 2016)
- More than 10,000 users sign up for Cloudflare services every day
- They serve more traffic than Twitter, Amazon, Apple, Instagram, Bing, and Wikipedia combined.
Cloudflare certainly has some impressive statistics, however, in this Cloudflare review, we’ll dive deeper into what they actually offer someone looking for a CDN service provider.
Network
Cloudflare certainly has an extensive list of Points of Presence (PoPs). Their servers have a strong presence in the US, EU, China, and Asia Pacific. Their network currently consists of 100 data centers worldwide. Below is a view of both their server presence on a world map as well as a full list of where each server is located.
Features
Cloudflare comes with an array of additional features you can use to further accelerate your content delivery, provide increased security, etc. The following list provides a general overview of the list of features that Cloudflare currently provides and a few that they don’t provide. In the next section, we’ll go into more detail as to what major features are included in each type of Cloudflare plan.
| Feature | Supported? |
|---|---|
| Origin Pull | Yes |
| Instant Purge | Yes |
| API | Yes |
| ALPN | Yes |
| Gzip | Yes |
| HTTP/2 | Yes |
| Cloudflare SSL | Yes |
| Raw Logs | Yes (Only with enterprise plan) |
| Custom SSL | Yes (Only with business of enterprise plans) |
| DDoS Protection | Yes (Basic protection with free plan) |
| Free Support | Yes (Varies based on plan) |
| Custom Rules | Yes (Varies based on plans) |
| Real-time Statistics | No (Updated every 24 hours) |
| Origin Shield | No |
| Secure Token | No |
| Origin Push | No |
| Let’s Encrypt SSL | No |
Cloudflare Pricing
Unlike many other CDN providers, Cloudflare provides a free plan. Essentially, with Cloudflare you don’t pay for bandwidth usage but rather pay for additional features as mentioned below. Cloudflare pricing is based on a flat monthly rate and is outlined as follows.
| Free Plan | Pro Plan | Business Plan | Enterprise Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 / mo | $20 / mo | $200 / mo | Starts at $5,000 / mo |
Since Cloudflare’s pricing is based on a monthly fee, you are required to upgrade to the next plan if you want to use a particular feature. There is no option to purchase a feature individually.
The following is an overview of the important features that are included in each plan type. To see a full list of features included in each plan, visit their feature comparison page.
| Free Plan | Pro Plan | Business Plan | Enterprise Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instant Cache Purge | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| IPv6 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| HTTP/2 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Basic DDoS Protection | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Anycast DNS | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Email Support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| WAF | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Mobile Optimization | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Image Optimization | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Page Rules | 3 | 20 | 50 | 100 |
| SSL Certificate | CF-issued | CF-issued | CF-issued / Custom | CF-issued / Custom |
| Advanced DDos | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| China Networks | No | No | No | Yes |
| Purge by Tag | No | No | No | Yes |
| Phone Support | No | No | No | Yes |
Cloudflare Review – In Conclusion
To summarize our Cloudflare review, we can say that this CDN provider definitely offers a vast global coverage. They are well funded and are one of the largest CDN providers that offer a free plan. However, in the event that you require an extra feature, there is no option to pay solely for that feature or to pay on a per GB traffic basis. Therefore, if your website still produces a somewhat small amount of traffic, but you require a feature offered in the Pro plan, then you’ll need to pay $20 per month, regardless of your traffic volume.
Overall, choosing Cloudflare as a CDN provider really depends on the features required and the amount of traffic your website is generating. The free plan is certainly a popular solution for those who are not yet ready to start paying extra for a CDN provider, however, may limit you in terms of customizability and features.
