Cloudflare Reviews

For the free and Pro plans, they could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components.

We had a couple of back-and-forth communication with the Cloudflare team. The support team's responses are comparatively slow and not as optimized as they could be. So, it leads to a couple of delays.  The communication process is a bit linear, which can be frustrating.

Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance. 

Many regional e-commerce websites and information-based pan-India websites like WordPress. These sites were facing tech challenges, particularly with WordPress. It's one of the most popular content management systems, but it needs robust support because it's inherently vulnerable. 

WordPress security can be tricky, and that's where Cloudflare can be absolutely helpful for small businesses. They utilize its security features to combat those pesky DDoS attacks and other threats, significantly improving their website stability. It can be a pretty satisfying and decent experience.  

Cloudflare's biggest plan for initial businesses is $200 per month, and if you're an enterprise, you'll likely exceed that on either AWS or Cloudflare itself. 

For comparison, Akamai's minimum billing starts at a couple of thousand dollars. That's where Cloudflare shines for smaller businesses – it's ten times cheaper than Akamai.

Interestingly, even their enterprise solution is cheaper than other platforms like Akamai and Amazon CloudFront.

For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed.

Many small businesses lack the budget for solutions like AWS and rely on GoDaddy, hosting, or even Versal plans for their initial setup. At that level, Cloudflare is the best option, even though it's not as powerful as Amazon CloudFront or Akamai. Those are built for different services, while Cloudflare caters specifically to smaller teams that eventually scale up.

For smaller businesses, they're the absolute best, so I'd give Cloudflare a nine out of ten. 

For larger businesses, it depends on the budget. Even for them, I'd rate it a seven out of ten.

I use Cloudflare for legacy websites that I need to protect because they're very vulnerable or to secure a client's critical websites. We will implement it after a review or if the website has gotten a poor grade on one of those online checks to see if the security meets the minimum requirements. 

Usually, after I show them their website is vulnerable, I get them to sign up immediately. For me, it's more of a delta suspender as a security measure. I find that many web developers do a poor job of updating their websites and keeping all the security modules.

Cloudflare has a server, and you point your DNS there. From there, you either enable the passthrough or use their full proxy. When you use their full proxy, you get all the features. If you're only doing the DNS, it's just a basic DNS server. Most people don't use it just for DNS; they use it for proxying their websites. You can proxy other services as well, but I've only used it for web applications on different ports.

Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a certificate, okay?

It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal. 

I have been using Cloudflare for several years.

Cloudflare is highly stable.

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive.

Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions.

Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

It depends on the level of support. Basic Cloudflare support is average. Enterprise support is amazing. It's 10 out of 10. However, if you're paying $20, you get email-based support. 

Cloudflare is effortless to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working. You enable the proxy and SSL. The website is protected within 10 or 15 minutes. The biggest wait is for the internet to see that the DNS has changed. I always do the initial setup myself and then give it to one of my web guys to manage. There's a reason behind I do it that way. When ordering a client, I generally manage their DNS, email, and other services. I don't want to let the web developer mess it up.

The web developers know how to do it but don't have a stake in it like I do. If they flip a switch and forget to update the FPF or TXT records, and other essential documents start to break, it's a problem. I don't trust them to do the setup. Other than that, I let them have access. I let the web developers have access because they need to make changes. They're going to add host entries, etc., and they may want to adjust some of the features in Cloudflare.

I'm not a web expert. I have expertise in infrastructure, server planning, and SQL. I can support the whole picture, but I'm not a web expert. You don't need a web expert to do it. You can get a generalist like me, and I have many specific skills. However, I don't do that every day, and you don't have to touch it daily. In a lot of ways, it's a set-it-and-forget-it kind of deal.

The solution requires some primary care and feeding for performance problems and functionality issues, like if something doesn't work because it's a bad link. I engage with the web developer to determine if it's a problem with caching, the code, filter configuration, etc. We look at all the different features. That may require some effort. However, if you don't make any changes to the website, you might only touch it twice a year after it's configured. 

I have some clients whose sites don't do anything. It's like a virtual business card. For those sites, I give them the lowest common denominator of Cloudflare set up for that domain. The website is protected and much less likely to get hacked.

However, if I have a company that has online sales and sends out many newsletters, then they need to have a CDN. That way, if a thousand people get that email and click it at once, it will not kill their server. That's the value of having Cloudflare or something similar. It's different if a thousand people click on a server farm in one location. 

Even at AWS, you have to have this auto-scaling, and the configuration is significant. I would get paid thousands of dollars to set that up. That costs a fortune in monthly payments. I don't know of any of these different companies that host servers. I just put the website on Cloudflare, and they don't spend much money on my time. Maybe I should be smarter and push the AWS, so I get paid more.

It could range from free to $1,500 a month. I put all my clients on Cloudflare, so it's around 20 or 30 customers. One of my clients has more than two dozen domains on Cloudflare, so they pay $20 times 20 domains. He's paying $400 a month. It isn't cheap, but it's totally worth it.

I rate CloudFlare 10 out of 10. I couldn't recommend it more strongly. If you have a website, you need to use Cloudflare or something like it. Don't leave your website unprotected. That's my advice. I set up Cloudflare for every client that wants to host a website because it protects their site and makes it easier for me to manage the DNS. 

I get them to pay the $20 for it. That's the bare minimum. If you want something that can enhance the security of your website, just do Cloudflare. I always do it. I mean, I'm always going to add to my Cloudflare base. I'm never going to shrink unless I find something better. But I don't know of any other solutions that.

You can do a self-sign. That's a couple hundred dollars a year that you don't have to spend, and you don't have to manage that. You can lock down your security on your website so that only the Cloudflare data centers can access your web server. You're limiting a lot of risks.

Let's say you're hosting your site on GoDaddy. GoDaddy's server is unprotected. It's just a server out there. They have enterprise IDS and all that other stuff, but for the most part, they're vulnerable. People attack them all the time. You can limit that by only allowing access to your website from Cloudflare servers. Cloudflare stands in front of your servers as a firewall. That increases performance and security. It limits a lot of access to your servers. 

There are so many benefits here. You don't need SSL on your site, which is excellent, because you don't have to pay for that certificate. That makes it a lot easier. Troubleshooting your site for problems and not having SSL enabled between you and Cloudflare is huge. 

In my company, Cloudflare's PoC phase is going on, and so it is not an active contract we have had with them, but just basic experience is what I have with DDoS protection. I basically use Cloudflare for DDoS protection. My company recently tested the tool for its DDoS protection capabilities.

In terms of the tool's advantages, I would say that it can be highly automated and is very quick when it comes to propagation. The tool is user-friendly. The product's reporting capabilities are great. We need to do a bit of customization in the tool, but most of it is automated. The tool has a lot of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The solution has been able to compare it to the market, and I think the product has taken great strides in automating quite a bit of things, and they use a lot of AI.

I have not extensively worked with it, so I can't think of any improvements that are needed in the tool at the moment.

It is a foolproof solution. The support is great. I don't think that I can come up with any cons about the tool at the moment.

The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool. What Cloudflare is doing internally is that it is stepping ahead in areas like detection and protection. The tool should integrate LLMs on the dashboards and assist you with policy creation.

I have been using Cloudflare for about six months. My company has a partnership with the solution.

We did not face any stability issues in the solution.

Scalability is one of the added advantages of Cloudflare as it is used across the world. It is a SaaS tool, but the fact that they have workloads deployed across the world proves that it is a highly scalable tool.

I have primarily worked not with the tool's customer support but with the product's sales engineers and technical sales engineers, who seem to know their stuff.

I have used Imperva. Compared to Imperva, I feel Cloudflare has better support and a straightforward licensing model. Cloudflare gives you a free trial for an extended period of time. The number of services Cloudflare offers in one package is also quite a lot. The number of folks Cloudflare has is more widespread compared to Imperva, so you can redirect the traffic to wherever you want and continuously do health checks, which PoP is up. If there is a PoP that is down, Cloudflare automatically reroutes you to it.

Imperva is better than Cloudflare in the area of bot protection. Imperva offers advanced bot protection, specifically in terms of the detection and protection for advanced bots it provides. Imperva is able to detect dangerous bots in a more efficient manner, making it better than Cloudflare. There are more ways to bypass Cloudflare than there are on Imperva.

The product's initial setup phase is straightforward.

One person can manage the product's installation phase.

The solution is a SaaS tool, so there is no maintenance required from the user's end.

The solution can be deployed in half an hour.

The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive.

Cloudflare's CDN performance enhancements work in a lightning fast manner. The good thing is that there are PoPs all across the world, and I think that it is minimally required.

I saw quite a number of integration opportunities with Cloudflare. Cloudflare has a lot of capability to integrate with different tools, teams, or across on-premises or cloud networks.

I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

I use Cloudflare primarily for protecting a web application firewall.

The most valuable feature is its usability. Additionally, the built-in rules are great because they protect the applications without the need for large customizations. The CDN performance is also a great benefit, especially since the server was in Canada and users accessed it from Brazil, which improved content delivery significantly. During high traffic periods, such as when the site received increased traffic, Cloudflare effectively provided users with access to the site.

Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option. While they have a free basic tier and an enterprise tier, a mid-priced option would be great for small projects. The number of rules in the web application firewall could also cater more to small projects.

The stability is great. I would rate the stability as ten out of ten.

The scalability is good, and I would rate it as ten out of ten.

I did not deal with their support or customer service as there was no need. The online documentation was sufficient.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward.

For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.

For large enterprises, the pricing is okay. However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high. A mid-tier pricing option would be beneficial.

Overall, I would rate Cloudflare a nine out of ten.

We subscribed to Cloudflare for cloud-based services, and we are planning to explore its additional features as it aligns with our organizational needs.

The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options. However, I am not completely aware of all the specific features, but Cloudflare was chosen for its feature advantage.

Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly. Exploring it is interesting, and it would be helpful if those integrations were improved.

We just started using it recently.

We have not encountered any stability issues with Cloudflare.

I am satisfied with Cloudflare's customer service.

Positive

I am not involved directly in the setup as my technical team handles it, however, it was completed very quickly, in less than a day.

We are satisfied with the pricing we received for Cloudflare compared with other commercial options.

We were considering firewall solutions like Citrix and NetGate PFSense before eventually choosing Cloudflare.

The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten.

We used the solution mostly as a DNS registry. I was the director of IT, and we had dozens of web assets, websites, and domain names. Instead of hosting the domain names with our content host, I would redirect pretty much all of them through Cloudflare to mitigate DDoS attacks and provide some resiliency. Our content host was largely WordPress based and backed by AWS. It was my go-to DNS registry for domain name verification or email security because we didn't run one on-premise. So Cloudflare was my DNS registry in effect.

DNS proxy was very valuable to me. The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation. In my previous organization, our main website experienced up to two million visits in a year. 

There was a four-month curling tournament from the fall to the spring season. It became important to distinguish legitimate viewers and fan traffic where they would want to go and visit our website for information on tournaments to buy tickets and merchandise and to view scores of our major national tournaments. It was important to protect legitimate traffic from illegitimate group-force traffic. 

Though Canada was not a major target for the DDoS attack, it was important that we protect our website through Cloudflare. If we saw a lot of traffic that we wouldn’t usually get, like from Russia, China, or any bot-like behavior, the product would filter it out. We did not have to think about a cyber strategy because the product did it for us. Cloudflare is one of the pioneers of cybersecurity software.

I think the solution is for users at the level of enterprise hosting. It is not meant for small or medium business users or sysadmins. The solution could be more user-friendly.

I would like to see Cloudflare take on more of the advocacy and lobbying role for internet security because they're the leaders in it.

I used the solution in October 2022 in my previous organization.

I have never had a website go down while using the product.

The solution is scalable. The sky is the limit.

The initial setup was pretty easy.

The deployment process is just as simple as knowing your A records. Other than adding or updating new records, I never really had to maintain the product.

A free version of the solution is available. I have never needed anything more than free DNS.

We explored and spoke to a sales representative about one of our flagship CRMs. We were thinking about taking advantage of more of the product's features. We did not go with it because it was a cost reckoning at that point. If we had more scale, it would start to look a little bit more lucrative.

As the geopolitical situation develops, we have to be mindful of cyber threats, even in the small and medium business spheres. People should be more mindful and aware of the tools available. The tool needs to be holistic. It must help users to protect and strengthen their passwords through multifactor authentication. The tool must also protect online businesses.

Entrepreneurs need to be sure that their whole web ecosystem is projected end to end. Cloudflare offers APIs for event logging and analysis. Even if you're using an assembly of tools in your cyber protection toolkit, you can monitor what Cloudflare is detecting and mitigating and report on it holistically. The solution providers are very rigorous about their documentation and learning resources. They're invested in raising general awareness.

A lot of people don't understand DNS security, the routes that web traffic takes around the world, as being very important, but it is important. Data sovereignty is important, and the more that you secure your exchange points within your country and are mindful of the hops that your data takes and how it might be intercepted, the better everyone's awareness will be because people don't think about that stuff.

Sometimes even our websites and web applications were hosted across multiple different providers. A redundant and distributed DNS provider on the cloud, independent of our host, became almost necessary. A lot of people think that it is over-complicating and over-distributing for the web ecosystem. However, I see the security merit of a ubiquitous third-party DNS record host like Cloudflare. If one hosting service goes down, we will still have that redundancy through Cloudflare.

CIRA and .ca domain providers are the only ones advocating for data sovereignty, internet affordability, and accessibility, starting with offering free Canadian Shield DNS registration and partnering with various exchange providers. No one else is advocating for domain name security. Canada does not have any homegrown DNS providers. Everyone defaults to whoever their host is, which may or may not be inside the country.

The only hiccups we've ever had had less to do with Cloudflare and more with one of our other service providers messing around with our domain records. If you were in a situation where you had to adhere to domestic sovereignty and compliance laws, be mindful of where most of your users and traffic are coming from, and then make your decision to buy the product.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

When I was in Singapore, I used Cloudflare for DNS management, but when I started at Yoma Bank, I started using the application gateway routing and firewall features. 

I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection. 

I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us.

I have used Cloudflare DNS management for around seven years, but I have only used the firewall features for four years. 

I rate Cloudflare eight out of 10 for stability.

I rate Cloudflare eight out of 10 for scalability. 

I rate Cloudflare support seven out of 10. The technical support is mostly fine, but the response times could be better, and we'd like a dedicated account manager. 

Neutral

Before Cloudflare, we relied on on-prem hardware and software solutions.

I rate Cloudflare eight out of 10. The basic setup is straightforward, but you may need to configure some advanced settings in some cases. We finished the setup in under an hour. However, we need to do some regular maintenance. 

I rate Cloudflare eight out of 10 for overall value. It's cost-effective, but I think they should have a custom pricing model for enterprise customers based on the features you use. That's why I think it would be helpful to have a dedicated account manager to periodically review and address our usage. 

I rate Cloudflare seven out of 10. It isn't bad overall, but it's difficult to use in this country. 

Cloudflare serves as both a Content Delivery Network and a security system. When integrated into the software, it optimizes content loading speeds, ensuring users access content swiftly. Additionally, Cloudflare safeguards websites from various cyber threats, providing security. 

DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately.

In Cloudflare, numerous features cater to web security needs. Conducting thorough research on your company's operations is crucial for configuring VAS. This involves determining which requests to whitelist, challenge, or block. Additionally, Cloudflare offers rate-limiting capabilities for endpoints. You can set limits to the number of requests, preventing overload situations. Another valuable feature is the ability to implement geoblocking using IDS rules.

When a user accesses the website, Cloudflare's CDN system checks for static content such as JavaScript files, CSS, and HTML. It then caches this static content on its CDN servers across approximately 140 data centers worldwide. When subsequent users request the same content, Cloudflare serves it from the nearest data center, improving performance.

Cloudflare's impact on SEO rankings and website visibility is notable. Collaborating with the business team to optimize website loading speed can benefit SEO.

We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.

I have been using the product for five years. 

I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten. 

I rate the product's scalability an eight out of ten. 

The tool's support takes at least one hour to respond. 

Neutral

I rate the tool's ease of deployment a ten out of ten. It's very quick. Deployment time largely depends on how we configure it, whether done through coding or the UI. For a single-user setup, it's straightforward. However, for more complex configurations with multiple use cases, it can vary. However, setting up a single zone for production load typically takes less than an hour.

The product's pricing is cheap. 

Our clients include larger companies such as one that sells automobile parts globally, another that deals with banks and financial institutions, etc. It is mostly recommended for enterprises. 

I highly recommend Cloudflare as a superior solution compared to others in the market. It offers coverage for various use cases, including SaaS products, web application security, and Content Delivery Network systems. Additionally, Cloudflare provides features like the Magic Transit system, which helps control internal traffic.

I rate it a ten out of ten.