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Cloudflare

Cloudflare

Overview

What is Cloudflare?

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).

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Recent Reviews

Warp Disappointment

1 out of 10
April 08, 2024
We decided to use the Cloudflare Warp product to replace our Cisco VPN. It's been frustrating to say the least. The application is always …
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Flair

10 out of 10
February 28, 2024
Incentivized
In our organization, Cloudflare plays a pivotal role in addressing critical business challenges. Specifically, we employ Cloudflare's Web …
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Cloudflare!

8 out of 10
December 12, 2023
Incentivized
Cloudflare is one of the primary products that is used (and recommended) to our customers for Zero Trust based remote access. Through …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Pro

$20

Cloud
per month

Business

$200

Cloud
per month

Free

Free

Cloud

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Details

What is Cloudflare?

Cloudflare Video

Call for Enterprise solutions: 1 (888) 993-5273 Try: https://www.cloudflare.com/a/sign-up Description https://www.cloudflare.com is a dedicated, intelligent network offering routing, caching, website firewall, load balancing, DDoS mitigation, WAN Optimization as a service. Us...
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Cloudflare Competitors

Cloudflare Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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).

Cloudbric are common alternatives for Cloudflare.

Reviewers rate Usability highest, with a score of 8.5.

The most common users of Cloudflare are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(467)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 65)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
I am an SE for Cloudflare Distributor i have multiple use cases for Cloudflare one of it most important one is L3,4 DDos protection magic transit
  • Network optimization
  • DDos protection
  • WAF
  • Geographical load balancing
  • Threat intelligence platform as an standalone offering
  • Canceling business plan as pay as you go
ISP provider have Cloudflare ip leased to protect their clients
February 28, 2024

Flair

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In our organization, Cloudflare plays a pivotal role in addressing critical business challenges. Specifically, we employ Cloudflare's Web Application Firewall (WAF) to enhance web application security. This solution effectively protects against cyber threats like DDoS attacks, SQL injection, and cross-site scripting. By customizing security rules and utilizing real-time threat intelligence, Cloudflare's WAF ensures a proactive defense for our web applications, aligning with our overarching goal of fortifying our online presence.
  • Simplifying AI.
  • Helping Customers build fast, private, and scalable AI apps in the cloud.
  • Web Application Firewall.
  • Integration with popular AI frameworks and APIs.
  • Edge computing capabilities and scaling of AI usage.
  • Developer friendly platform for AI Capabilities adoption.
  • Complex Privacy rule adoption.
Cloudflare Simplifying AI. Helping Customers build fast, private, and scalable AI apps in the cloud.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Cloudflare Zero Trust to have control of our SaaS apps and to be able to control the devices with device posture. One of the few problems that I detect when carrying out an audit from external tools is that the IP that these services receive is from Cloudflare instead of the final equipment.
  • Simplicity when adding a new user
  • Creation of rules and management of them
  • Show information with the logs it provides
  • Show final IP instead of warp IP for when you review logs on external systems
  • Clearer information for products like Magic WAN and Magic Transit
  • Be able to block the warp user from being able to exclude apps on mobile devices and block them from being able to change virtual network
Ease of use and easy implementation when you deploy users. Cloudflare also provides easy rule management to control both navigation and access.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I recently explored Cloudflare's capabilities and attended their webinar on "Simplifying AI: Building fast, private, and scalable AI apps in the cloud," and I must say, the experience was nothing short of impressive. The webinar provided valuable insights into the challenges of AI application development in the cloud, showcasing Cloudflare's clear understanding of the complexities involved. The emphasis on speed, privacy, and scalability resonated throughout the event, reflecting the platform's commitment to addressing key issues in artificial intelligence. Cloudflare's dedication to speed was a central theme, with a focus on performance optimization through its content delivery network (CDN). Techniques such as image and asset optimization highlighted the platform's commitment to delivering a seamless user experience for AI applications. The webinar commendably underscored Cloudflare's commitment to privacy and security. Detailed discussions on encryption, DDoS protection, and privacy-enhancing features demonstrated the platform's ability to safeguard sensitive AI data without compromising performance. One of the standout features discussed was Cloudflare's scalability solutions. The webinar explained how the platform's edge computing capabilities enable seamless scaling of AI applications. The integration of serverless computing and the ability to deploy code at the edge showcased Cloudflare's commitment to efficiently handling varying workloads. Developer-friendly features were also highlighted, including easy integration with popular AI frameworks and APIs. The demonstration of the user interface and API capabilities emphasized the ease with which developers can deploy and manage AI applications on the Cloudflare platform.I do not have a complete hands-on exploration of Cloudflare's capabilities to affirm further the strengths discussed in the webinar, but their global network reach, with data centers worldwide ensuring low-latency access, is a significant advantage for AI applications requiring real-time processing and Cloudflar's expertise would help in achieving this quickly. The comprehensive security measures, such as SSL/TLS encryption and Web Application Firewall (WAF), instilled confidence in the protection of AI applications from potential threats. Cloudflare's commitment to privacy and security aligns well with the growing concerns surrounding data protection. Smart routing and load balancing mechanisms contribute to optimal performance, a valuable feature for AI applications demanding high availability and responsiveness. The edge computing capabilities enable code execution at edge locations, reducing latency and enhancing overall performance, especially in scenarios requiring real-time decision-making. Finally, Cloudflare emerges as a powerful ally for developers and businesses venturing into AI applications. The platform's commitment to speed, privacy, and scalability positions it as a leading solution for the challenges associated with building fast, private, and scalable AI apps in the cloud. I highly recommend Cloudflare to organizations seeking a robust and developer-friendly platform for their AI endeavors.
  • Web Application Firewall
  • Image and asset optimization
  • Integration with popular AI frameworks and APIs
  • Edge computing capabilities and scaling of AI usage
  • Developer friendly platform for AI Capabilities adoption
  • Complex Privacy rule adoption
Cloudflare is well suited for addressing key issues in AI adoption at pace, highly scalable, and cost-efficient operations. Further in highly technology-competitive areas like IoT and secure communication protocols handling edge computing capability requirements. It is less appropriate for customers with a low digital presence and with no scalable architecture demand.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
If you aren't using Cloudflare, you should be. Cloudflare is one of the few companies that seem to think of the solution before you even know it is a problem.
We use Cloudflare to manage our DNS, CDN our web traffic, be a WAP for our applications, manage our DMARC records, provide DDOS protection, and are looking into their Zero Trust network tunnels and we are just barely scratching the surface of their offerings. Their tools are always well thought out, the user interfaces intuitive, and the functionality just works. They are constantly advancing their offerings both existing and expanding in logical directions. Other IT providers should definitely be looking to model their business practices after a company like Cloudflare.
  • 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
  • Restricting SSO to enterprise accounts disadvantages smaller organizations using products like Google Workspace
Cloudflare scales from the smallest organizations (right down to personal domain use) to the largest (I believe IBM Cloud is white labeling their services). It is intuitive and evolves at a steady pace. I would say that their biggest drawback is that they provide so many different functions under one roof, but it is also designed to allow you to start small and expand as needs and time allows. I recommend looking into them to manage your domains and DNS records to start, and then expand from there.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Ease of use, affordability, security, performance: pick four.

Started using Cloudflare for web performance, security improvements, and DDoS protection. Have since used its incredibly flexible Workers platform [the web's ultimate Swiss Army knife], at-cost domain name registration, 1.1.1.1 and WARP, and am now implementing my first enterprise Magic-WAN and Zero Trust rollout.
  • Products adapt to shifting needs of the web [and internet]; keep your biz safe.
  • Unparalleled security and internet engineering expertise; keep your bits safe.
  • Plurality of presence points nearer to end users; shift your bits fast
  • Newer features sometimes launch with scant documentation or support [c.f. recent workers AI]
  • Centralization is a worry
  • They could improve their marketing or product integration; they offer SO much it's sometimes hard to parse
I asked my current boss if he'd heard of Cloudflare on day one at my current role. We're now implementing Magic-WAN and Magic Firewall as a replacement to our MSP-managed Fortinet solution [keeping hardware in place, but massively upgrading our control plane with Cloudflare's easy, optimized interface].

Where is it well suited? Any place you need peace of mind as to security, assurances about performance, and where ease of use is appreciated [your CCIEs may not appreciate Cloudflare but your IT staff writ large will, as will users who get faster help].
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
1. Transform classic web servers, backend servers into Cloudflare Pages and Workers
2. Cloudflare CDN, DDOS Application solutions
3. PoC AI engines
4. PoC Serverless DB D1, R2, KV
5. Build JAMstack and serverless solutions to sell B2B, D2C products
  • Free tier forever (help much developers and nano/micro/SMEs)
  • Impressive serverless-based Pages & Workers Architecture
  • Lower Total Cost of Ownership
  • Leading new tech trend PaaS better than AWS/Azure/GCP
  • Enterprise/production-grade sourcecode templates like Vercel for CRM, HRM, ERP, CMS, E-COMMERCE, EMR/HIS, Multi-tenancy SaaS etc
  • Enterprise grade Serverless Database & solutions : Postgres/MySQL, NoSQL, Kafka, Multi-tenancy, Compliances like Vercel/TiDB
  • AI domain-specialty engines: healthcare, ASR/TTS like HuggingFace
  • Common technology services: WebRTC/VoIP/SIP; HMS digital sign
  • Source code market place where I can sell
1. CDN & DDOS Application level
2. Low TCO/flat-pricing for Serverless Web servers and backends
3. Limited V8 engine, limited integration pool with other DBMS
4. Tech-stack Roadmap is not warranted for long-term
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Cloudflare mainly for two reasons, one of them is workers and the other one is pages.
After a short while of setting up those products we also leveraged everything they have to offer in domain management.
We have hundreds of IoT devices that are constantly querying our database.
In our previous setup we dealt with inconsistency, and the pricing for allowing so many connections to our servers was very high.
In the pages department, we needed a quick and easy way to sho static HTML website.
  • Accepting hundreds of requests per minute
  • Logging all requests
  • Manouvering the requests to different places according to specified rules
  • Documentation sometimes lacking, prepare to learn from forum posts and Discord
  • Mysterious bugs might appear, but they are usually known
Cloudflare excels in its pricing vs value, it's just beating every competitor, and they always add more tools, so they might enable business operations you never thought possible.
But if you are not willing to take the time and understand how it works to get the most value out of it - go for a pricier and easier solution.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use Cloudflare to protect our applications against web attacks and also to create access caching.
  • Detecção de requisições de Bots
  • Mitigação contra ataques de DDoS
  • Facilidade no gerenciamento de regras
  • Could reduce the number of false positives in managed rules
  • Improve detection of brute force attacks
  • Possibility to see complete payloads without having to decrypt the payload manually when sending the log to a SIEM.
Cloudflare is a comprehensive solution that can be used to cover a range of resources from content delivery to advanced protections against web attacks. It also has the great advantage of serving various sizes of companies, with a free plan up to enterprise.
Chris Denny | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cloudflare has eliminated so many hits on our firewall since moving to their tunnels. We can access our servers remotely without exposing them to the outside world. This has saved us so many headaches knowing our data, network, and servers are safe behind our firewall. I highly recommend Cloudflare for small businesses.
  • Cloudflare routes web traffic intelligently and dynamically across its network, avoiding congestion and outages. We have never had any issues with outages since moving to Cloudflare.
  • Cloudflare isolates browser sessions from users' devices, preventing malware, phishing, and zero-day exploits. This is vital in today's world.
  • Cloudflare secures our web traffic with SSL encryption, preventing hackers from intercepting or modifying any data in transit.
  • Cloudflare offers various security features, such as SSL, DDoS protection, web application firewall (WAF), and browser isolation, but some of these are only available on the higher-tier plans. These may not be affordable to all users.
  • Setting up some of the services is not always easy. I have an IT background, and I found myself reading through the steps and looking for outside help on some items.
From our usage, the tunnels are well suited for many cases. We have three tunnels running so we can access three separate services on our servers, and they operate very well in our scenarios. Running media through tunnels is forbidden, and rightly so, this is not really a good scenario for tunnels.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
I am working as solutions architect for system integrator company and had successfully offer, deploy and manage cloudflare solutions to some of our customers.
These are some of business problems that has been addressed by using cloudflare product:
1. Content Delivery
2. Web Security Threat

3. Website Performance


The scope of these use case are :
1. CDN
2. WAF & Anti DDoS
3. Web Optimization





  • DDoS Protection, unmetered Mitigation of DDoS Attacks whether it is L3 or L7 DDOS
  • Web Application Firewall (WAF), able to mitigate common web attack mainly for OWASP top 10 attack.
  • Zero Trust Security, easy to use and reliable ZTNA platform
  • missing IDS/IPS functionality for user internet protection
  • missing Next gen Firewall capability on Magic Firewall
  • missing Identity aware endpoint SWG proxy, currently based on IP address
Cloudflare is well suite for application side protection, such as anti DDoS, WAF, CDN, and identity aware Proxy for ZTNA.
even though CF has RBI offering in its SWG, it less appropriate for user internet access protection as it is missing IPS and NGFW functionality.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have recently implemented CF after moving away from Zscaler. Within our company it is used for firewalls as well as content filtering for all browser traffic when working from the office, or anywhere else in the world with an internet connection. This is currently rolled out to users in multiple countries using laptops, and we make use of the WARP client. It appears to run much smoother and no deterioration in bandwidth or speed has been noticed. The dashboards are straight forward and easy to use and navigate.
  • Content Filtering
  • Dashboards are easy to navigate
  • No drop in speed/bandwidth noticed
  • WARP client was easily distributed and configured
  • We are having issues with deployment in Dubai and the Middle-East
We've had cases where our company was under cyber attack and received phising emails which contained links to malicious and credential stealing websites, impersonating trusted pages, or hosting malicious files to be downloaded. These malicious links were all blocked 95% of the time due to various methods used by CF to detect malicious pages and/or content. We have had a few minor cases where legit pages were blocked, but this was mainly due to domain age, and pages/domains created specifically for joint ventures or projects.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Cloudflare DNS to manage many sites with page rules for redirects, caching static content before it reaches our backend, Bot/DDoS mitigation, web analytics, and most recently as a proxy for our web app's API. Analytics are non-intrusive and tend not to be blocked by clients whereas Google Analytics are mostly blocked by our audience. We are exploring Pages and Workers for deploying a web app created in SvelteKit.
  • DNS is quick to set up and seems to propagate quicker than other DNS name servers. Page rules are very convenient for quickly setting up redirects with wildcards.
  • Setting up a proxy with Cloudflare Workers for my API, which runs on Google Cloud Functions was much simpler than any solution I came across using Google Cloud Platform itself. It also doesn't cost us a lot of money for this use case.
  • Web Analytics are privacy-focused, so it is nice to get insights into our application without worrying about the data being sold. The interface is very clean. I like being able to query page views by bot score, to see how many bots are viewing pages compared to actual users. Querying this data is also very quick and simple when compared to Google Analytics API.
  • I wish Analytics had a larger window to query for historical data. At the moment we have to store the data in our own database to retain historical records. I also wish the web UI had the ability to filter on "likely human" traffic, at the moment, I need to use the GraphQL API to include this filter.
  • I would like to see a performant way to do "rewrites" where traffic from another domain we operate is served up without changing the URL. To be fair, part of the problem with this is related to how the pages are served.
  • Managing users is a little awkward. You invite users to manage your account via email like the copy on the site says "Invite Members to join user@domain.com's account. Invite Members to access your account and edit configurations." which is confusing because it seems like people are using my email to log in. However, this is just the wording they chose, it does work as expected. Once you get passed that, the access controls are fine-grained and intuitive.
  • I wish I could set up a cache based on the body of the request, to use an ID within the payload as a key to cache each type of request.
Cloudflare is very fast and offers a lot of tools to manage your site traffic, caching, bot mitigation, web analytics, HTTPS certificates with auto-renewal, cloud workers for all sorts of purposes, a key-value store, image storage and optimization, pages for static content, a SQLite database is even on the way. Everything is offered at a great price too. Their free tier for services makes me reach for Cloudflare for every site I make public. I really can't think of much I wouldn't use it for, save for their Workers not being a true node.js environment and so you will still want to run functions with another service.
Milton Costa | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pipefy is a SaaS that runs on AWS + Kubernetes but relies on Cloudflare for Proxy, CDN, WAF, rate limiter, advanced security features and others.

Cloudflare addresses Pipefy a well-defined cache system with several features to improve the performance of the applications. This is the main focus + excellent reliability and stability.
  • CDN to cache static content
  • WAF for specific application and network rules
  • Global Network to improve availability.
  • Improve integration and features for AWS and other Clouds
  • A better pricing definition
SaaS that requires global availability
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cloudflare DNS plays a crucial role in resolving my domain in the fastest possible time. Cloudflare CDN with tiered cache ensures that my site is available to visitors in the shortest time and as close to them as possible. The tiered cache also helps reduce the load on my server, making it more efficient. Cloudflare also offers a page caching solution for WordPress, which helps to reduce time-to-first-byte and increase cache hit ratios, further improving the performance of my website. Cloudflare's IP Firewall provides added security to my site by blocking certain types of attacks. Rate limiting further strengthens security by reducing the impact of layer 7 attacks. Cloudflare is at the forefront of introducing new technologies like HTTP/2, HTTP/3, and more to its customers as early as possible.
  • You can protect your domain from email spoofing and phishing by creating the required DNS records with few clicks.
  • Easy to setup and update DNS records.
  • Set security level for individual sites as well as for all sites.
  • 1-click image resizing.
  • Auto minify HTML, CSS and JavaScript with 1-click .
  • Create redirect rules to send visitors from old page to new one.
  • Modify request and response headers.
  • Easily setup page rules to cache your site.
  • Detailed guide with examples are required to setup new cache rules.
Cloudflare is well suited for: 1) High-traffic websites: Cloudflare's CDN reduces the latency and improving website speed by delivering content quickly to visitors from a geographically distributed network of servers close to them. 2) Websites prone to DDoS attacks: Cloudflare's IP Firewall, rate limiting, and other security features help prevent DDoS attacks and other malicious traffic from reaching the website. 3) E-commerce websites: Cloudflare's SSL/TLS encryption and web application firewall provide added security for online transactions, protecting sensitive data and ensuring customer trust. 4) Websites using WordPress: Cloudflare's WordPress-specific page caching solution helps improve website performance by reducing load times and increasing cache hit ratios. There are also scenarios where Cloudflare may be less appropriate, including: 1) Websites that need full control over their DNS and security configurations. With some features you get limited control in Cloudflare. 2) You may not get the exact level of customization or control.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have web based applications and face lot of cyber ddos attacks. Cloudflare can support us to avoid these hurdles for smooth web-based operations across the globe.
  • Have solutions for DDOs
  • Service availability round the clock
  • Ease in USe
Best for Web Based application to host thru Cloudflare
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cloudflare is an out of the box easy to plug in solution for a lot of problems companies faces. For instance it easily adds web protection to your websites and improve performance over web traffic and DNS. It is pretty easy to use for average users, but there are lots of cool configurations for advanced users. They offer an AMAZING free tier that enables smalls/startup companies to really take advantage and grow with them. If you need a security vendor for modern architecture you will probably find everything you need on Cloudflare on a engineering perspective.
I suggest trying out their ZTNA solution which is awesome and is something really interesting for modern companies with distributed workforces working remotely.
  • WAF
  • ZTNA
  • DNS
  • HTTPS Enforce
  • CDN
  • ZTNA
  • Terraform Integration
If you need a web application firewall you can use Cloudflare.
If you need fine tuned access control for your services when you have remote distributed workforce you can use ZTNA.
If you need to share local application with someone you can use cloudflared.
If you need DNS you can use Cloudflare.
If you need CDN you can use Cloudflare.
If you need DDOS protection you can use Cloudflare.
If you need to ensure traffic encryption for you website or your workforce you can use cloudflare.
💻 Joel Herbert | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cloudflare is basically the lifeblood of Grabify. We heavily utilize it for its many features, such as DDoS protection, as well as using it as a CDN and its built-in analytics. With Cloudflare's WAF, we are able to craft specific rules just for our site's specific needs. Highly recommend Cloudflare.
  • It's DDoS protection is second to none.
  • It was able to speed up our site with a click of a button.
  • It's saves us thousands on our data usage.
  • Faster dashboard loading.
  • Global search.
If a website has many users or is an active target, Cloudflare's DDoS protection and load balancing will save the day. They are easily the best in the business when it comes to this level of protection.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use our websites for DNS service, firewall protection, traffic analysis and caching. We are protected from bot attacks that are made for malicious purposes and to make the website unable to serve. Cloudflare has a very good service against bot attacks.Thanks to the CDN service it offers, it caches websites and ensures that they are loaded in a shorter time.
  • DDoS Protection
  • DNS service
  • CDN
  • Page Rules
  • Load Balancing
  • The location of the menus in the administration panel changes a lot. The interface design is constantly updated. This is both a good feature and a bad feature.
It is very useful in cases such as getting an SSL certificate for your applications, protecting from DDoS attacks, analyzing your traffic.If your site doesn't have a custom caching method, Cloudflare can do it for you. It optimizes the size of your images and provides you with a CDN service. It provides a service focused on security, performance and continuity to your site.It will solve your problem if your site is getting hacked and your site is loading late. It is also cost-effective, as it does these over DNS instead of a server.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • To improve website speed and performance, as it can serve traffic from the nearest locations to the user and reduce the wait time
  • DNS services
  • Protect against security threats such as DDoS attacks and malware
  • Web application firewall (WAF) and SSL/TLS encryption to enhance the security and privacy of their website
  • DNS - provides really simple way to import all the existing DNS entries and then manage it
  • Security - protects against the bad actors, has WAF and pre-configured rules
  • DDoS protection - makes sure that the website is protected from DDoS attacks
  • DNS speed is not the fastest as compared to some of the other paid alternatives
  • Interface can be sometimes confusing for a new user
  • Some of the advanced features are locked in Pro plans
The product is well suited for organization of any size as Cloudflare has various usecases which it solves well. It can handle all the DNS requirements, protect you against bad actors via its WAF and DDOS protection services. Overall it is a solution which any website should ideally place in front without thinking twice.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I manage websites for a variety of small businesses. I also manage their emails. Having a reliable DNS is critical to my business. Cloudflare not only provides a reliable managed DNS solution for me, but it also provides DDoS protection and web application firewall if you enable traffic through Cloudflare. Most recently, Cloudflare introduced a better captcha to detect robots. Best of all, Cloudflare is free to start using.
  • Fast DNS
  • Reliable DNS resolution
  • Quick DNS propagation
  • Crowded UI as new features are released
  • WAF difficult to troubleshoot (diagnose where traffic is being blocked)
  • Built-in analytics not very useful
Cloudflare is suited for startups that need reliable DNS and DDoS protection for their Internet exposed assets. That is because startups usually don't have a lot of cash for more expensive services and Cloudflare is free to start. As an added bonus, Cloudflare provides free CDN services if you route traffic through Cloudflare's network (configurable at the DNS level). Cloudflare is less suited for large enterprises that need to integrate many different services with serverless functions. As I'm writing this review, Cloudflare only offers R2 (AWS S3 alternative) and Workers (AWS Lambda alternative). Cloudflare is developing more serverless products but I'm curious if they will do well if they move away too far from what they're good at (DNS and CDN).
Jez John | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Cloudflare for client websites utilising their name server service and enhanced security features (Web Application firewall) and caching / Content Delivery network. Transferring DNS from other suppliers with a robust and easy-to-use auto-scan feature is effortless. This is especially useful when migrating from legacy providers who cannot provide a zone file export. We also like their enhanced security features and to an extent CDN and page caching.
  • Managed DNS
  • DNS record import
  • Redundant network
  • CDN and caching can be confusing to set up
  • To get the best from them you need to use their nameservers
  • At times support on their Business plan can be "here is an article" rather than asking a question. I would expect this on their free tier but not paid tiers.
Great to manage DNS with an easy-to-use interface and useful features. The security features provide peace of mind, but the caching and CDN needs some work to take real advantage of what it offers.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
  • High Performance
  • HTML as well as traditional CDN caching
  • New features
  • They are raising their prices starting May 2023, so we'll be switching to an annual plan to stay at the same rates.
I have run a web hosting company since 2005. One of those customers has high volume (~5 million monthly visits) and needs fast response time. I used to use Akamai and then Verizon/EdgeCast.

Cloudflare cold-called us and won our business with an enterprise account (which was still significantly lower cost and higher features than either of the previous two). I later switched down to the business account because the performance and support was still better, and I reduced the cost from $5,000 month to $200/month, and have better speed and features.

In short, Cloudflare has been amazing and they are always adding features to make it better. I now have other customers who use the $20 and free accounts, which are quite good as well, and enable me to use a single server for the origination.

The main feature I use is the page rules, where I have customized the rules over the years to be very performant. The automatic firewall rules are handy, and do some blocking without me even having to think about it.

I don't know of any downsides of using their free account, and have debated about moving all of my customers to use their free account and gain those benefits.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use cloudflare to manage our websites and our client's sites DNS, DNS caching and firewall. It has helped us not only to centralize the DNS management but also to reduce unexpected visitors and DDoS attacks attempts thanks to CloudFlare security features.

For some cases where we need a lot of traffic management, we have used their load balancer without having to migrate our DNS to a different system
  • DNS is easily managed, the UI is easy to use and learn
  • the firewall rules are easy to test and configure and are quick and effective
  • The "we are under attack" feature has saved our sites from DDoS attempts with only one click
  • Their Cache is easy to set and use and integrates easily with other systems
  • their analytics could hold more data
  • some DNS may be misconfigured but they do not show information about it
  • The documentation may be tricky to use; it is usually easier to try directly in the UI instead of searching through the documentation
Cloudflare works great for any DNS you need to manage and whose website and hosting is managed by you directly; specially if you need to show static data, public information and you are waiting for a lot of traffic.

If your site is hosted in a service such as Cpanel, it is better to check if the provider allows to connect with Cloudflare. Else, it may be tricky to make them work and you may lose some features when removing the DNS from Cpanel service.
January 09, 2023

A lot more than a CDN

Yaco Lioi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cloudflare is default now in our business. Every client gets onboarded into Cloudflare, either with their account or in ours. It solves all our DNS problems, the DNS propagation is super quick, and we also get to protect our sites and speed them up at the same time. Cloudflare is awesome.
  • DNS management.
  • Anti DDoS.
  • Fast caching and optimization.
  • More pricing plans.
  • More page rules in the free tier.
  • Speed in certain countries with less PoPs.
Cloudflare is the best tool to speed up and harden security in websites of all sizes. I recommend Cloudflare to all my colleagues because it is now the norm in our business to use it. It saves us so much time because Cloudflare has the fastest DNS propagation we experienced, so we can get to work sooner. It may not be the best solution for enterprise sites, because it can get expensive and there are cheaper alternatives.
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