CloudFlare Reviews

Excellent for managing server loads and site speed for our clients. Most would have to buy bigger hosting packages to handle their busy days, but CloudFlare picks up the traffic and reduces the burden on the server. Most clients can rely on smaller hosting accounts to keep their sites up.

If you have a website that you want secure (https) and fast (CDN) then the CloudFlare free plan is a no-brainer. For anything other than a simple personal blog/website, CloudFlare makes sense (and it would be good even for that humble blog as well). Ever since I discovered CloudFlare I've used them for every single website I create. The funny thing is, none of my sites have needed to go beyond CloudFlare's free plan, so I still haven't actually paid them.

We use CloudFlare primarily for its content delivery network and security features like DDoS protection. It's threat blocking and page speed rules also help us maintain the setup we want for our web applications. While we will use it for web applications 100% of the time, we also put at least the free plan on almost all websites we create because it is so quick to implement and still provides great performance and security features.

Regardless of the size of your company, website, or technical needs, CloudFlare can not only protect your sites but make them faster and more efficient. With the right setup I can see using CloudFlare actually saving you money vs. hosting yourself or using other free DNS and traffic management providers. It can scale with you as your business grows.

Our site was running outdated software for a while, and CloudFlare protected us while we went through the process of upgrading everything. This was a huge help! But the firewall rules prevent admin users from doing simple things like saving blog posts which contain links, and the User Challenge screens don't work properly. We've wasted a lot of time figuring out the exact set of whitelisting rules necessary for various users at various locations, and then every once in a while it all breaks and we need to start over! And when it does, the support staff is zero help.

Protecting a website against malicious traffic and DDoS attacks is all but required these days and Cloudflare makes these protections relatively easy to use and free or low cost to get started. Anybody can set up a free account which will provide rudimentary website protection, so there is really no reason not to use Cloudflare. If your website comes under attack, it is easy to get in touch with a human at Cloudflare who can advise in modifying Cloudflare settings to remediate the attack. While they cannot do anything with your website or other services, they can generally advise and assist in troubleshooting to pinpoint the source so the attack can be diffused as much as possible. Aside from the website protection features, Cloudflare provides options and tools to work with anything from a small website or company on up to large, heavily trafficked sites.

CloudFlare has a lot to offer in one place: WAF, anti-DDOS, DNS, CDN, load balancer, and certificates. Other solutions don't offer that much, and if they do, they cost much more. So far we didn't experience major issues with the service, and Cloudflare Support was very responsive when we used them. I believe there are alternatives which focus on specific features and for that reason, they have more abilities, for example, in WAF. But if your environment doesn't require it, Cloudflare is a great solution.

Cloudflare is essential if you are looking to have a free CDN, free SSL certificates that auto-renew, speed optimizations, instant CDN configurations, awesome apps to inject into your sites, reducing the chances to make mistakes editing the .htaccess file with rules and so much more. Also, we use it as a registrar, they are offering wholesale price on almost all the TLDs with DNSSEC that auto configure.

CloudFlare is best suited, in my experience, to organizations who rely on web-based applications for critical business functions and where application uptime is essential. In our situation, our ERP system is web-based and if we have sustained network outages due to servers between us and the host, that impacts all aspects of the business from customer support to accounting. CloudFlare has a lot of other product solutions, but the routing and reliability services are what's most important to us.

It is very good for any large sites that are vulnerable to attacks from malicious users that could slow down the site. Also for ecommerce sites that cannot afford to be down for any amount of time. If speed is a top concern, then their premium and free versions are worth a shot so that you can test out their speed features to make your site even faster.

I don't think I have ran into any issues that they could not solve or help out with, so I can't think of any areas that are weak points for them.

CloudFlare does a superb job of being a one-stop-shop for domain services. It updates you if there are any security threats as well as provides best practice recommendations including SSL certificates and other secure traffic concerns. The base package is useful just to see the traffic hitting one's website and how many are "unique" visitors.

We use CloudFlare primarily in situations where we need a simple-to-use, free or cheap CDN. For most uses that are deeper integrated into other services, we tend to select offerings from Amazon, Google, or Microsoft Azure, as those tend to work better with other products from those companies.

CloudFlare is great if you are looking for a fast DNS service that will mask your IP address.
While I use a paid plan, their free tier is amazing and should not be discounted or overlooked if you are just getting started.

CloudFlare is one of the very few CDN service providers that offer a robust, free CDN service for all its users. The best part about it is that you don’t need to pay a dime for it irrespective of how much traffic your site’s generating, which is a proposition that’s hard to beat.

I already did, I even recommended it to a few startup companies. Also I will definitely recommend it if a friend is working on some blogs or website of his own.

It does all the things that one web administrator requires starting from DNS management to Always on Mode.

DNS configuration with very easy CDN settings. Also you can use free SSL CloudFlare certificates and it is very easy to configure.

Great for small, simple sites with few non-standard situations. Good for WordPress and other CMS/Frameworks that have a pre-built plugin. Otherwise, you may need some expertise or assistance to configure and troubleshoot your particular situation. The more dynamic the site in terms of backend interaction, the more chance for these types of situations. Also, watch out for server firewalls which can block CloudFlare's IPs and cause problems. Ideally, you'll need access to update these settings or a responsive and helpful hosting support.

I can't think of a scenario where CloudFlare isn't appropriate. The only time somebody shouldn't use it is if they have internal requirements prohibiting them from using alternate DNS managers. It can be slightly more cumbersome for a novice user to have to set up another account to manage their domain too, but it's 100% worth the few extra minutes to get this up and running.

Super fast implementation of CDN functionality and security. It is very easy to disable these features during development or for troubleshooting as well. The dashboard makes it easy to manage these features, especially the ones unnecessary for low-traffic situations.

CloudFlare is great for shared hosting customers and perhaps even SMBs. These comprise about 90% of the sites on the Internet so CloudFlare is a great solution for the majority of sites out there. Enterprise customers probably already have their own dedicated CDN solutions and in-house IT departments in place.