Cloudflare Review

cloudflare review featured

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.

cloudflare map

cloudflare network list

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.

Leave a Reply