Cloudflare, from the company of the same name in San Francisco, provides DDoS and bot mitigation security for business domains, as well as a content delivery network (CDN) and web application firewall (WAF).
$20
per month
Cloudinary
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
Cloudinary is an image and video management tool enabling users to manage, optimize, and deliver images, videos and other media across every device and channel.
Cloudinary seemed to be the most sophisticated with the most documentation and platform support. Other solutions seemed to be a lot harder to implement, however, due to the good documentation and API samples on their GitHub we were able to implement it nicely. Additionally, …
It is easy to set up, and within 10 minutes it is up and running. You can add many domains in one dashboard. So no need for a separate Cloudflare account. I can access all my domain DNS, and customize/add it further. For example by adding the Google Webmaster DNS key or my email provider.
Cloudinary handles pretty much anything you have related to images. From serving them up efficiently to adding transformations on the fly, there's really little this service doesn't do. Their pricing plans allow you to grow into the right levels and their website dashboards are very helpful. I would easily recommend this for all but the simplest of use cases.
Registrar and DNS services are impeccable, with registrations done at cost and without ADs. DNS services setting standards for speed of resolution.
DDOS protection. With their content distribution network to back them they have the bandwidth and tools to be both proactive and reactive to bad actors.
WAF - Their Web Application Firewall helps mitigate common site vulnerabilities and has active zero-day protection running for breaking exploits
In some cases, using Cloudflare can actually lead to slower website speeds if the network is congested or if the website's traffic is particularly heavy.
Some website owners may find that the level of customization offered by Cloudflare is limited, especially in comparison to other solutions.
While Cloudflare is easy to set up and manage, it may be too complex for users who are not familiar with web technologies.
Everything is extremely concise and all settings apply immediately and take effect globally. There is no reason to explicitly plan/think in terms of individual regions as one would have to traditional cloud offerings (AWS, OCI, Azure). All Cloudflare products integrate seamless as part of a single pipeline that executes from request to response.
Cloudinary is very easy to use and offers fast way to upload your images, files and videos to their servers. Then they give you quick ways t implement those files or images onto your website using their API or just a normal URL. They also give you very fast ways to make edits to those files and include them in the url.
We really like to talk to a person on the phone or using chat. But the system is very slow and sending to much email to get the issue solve. Something we don't like to spend time writing on the community forum our issue because we don't want to share detail information of our POC.
We rarely use their support. But when we need it they are always there. They provide great consultation and suggestions to help us manage our costs and resources better. In the last 8 years perhaps we have contacted them 3 or 4 times - which is really really great
Firebase can be a good starter for basic projects but as I scaled up, I found it lacking the maturity Cloudflare has. Naturaly, I opted for Cloudflare for bigger projects. I still use Firebase, but for small scale hobby projects only.
Cloudinary seemed to be the most sophisticated with the most documentation and platform support. Other solutions seemed to be a lot harder to implement, however, due to the good documentation and API samples on their GitHub we were able to implement it nicely. Additionally, they have a lot of really well-known brands using them like Wired, Sky News, and eBay which gave us a lot of confidence that this was a good robust solution to use and to help others with
A lot of requests are cached and so egress costs from downstream providers are mitigated.
DDoS protection has also managed to keep our site up and our cloud computing bill down.
Setting up a proxy with a worker made putting various Google Cloud Functions running behind a single URL very easy and performant. Plus they offer API Shield on top of this.
Images are essential to our product and using Cloudinary has allowed us to serve them up in a cost-effective and efficient way. Not having to worry about your images frees you up to tackle the real challenges for your product.
