Cloudflare is a CDN headquartered in San Francisco, USA. Cloudflare was originally an application that was only used to detect the origin of spam mails, but now it is the most used CDN in the world with a market share of over 70%. Cloudflare not only provides better performance, but also serves to protect content. The company's goal is a sustainable improvement of the Internet.
Use of Cloudflare
About 5.5% of all websites that use a CDN rely on Cloudflare for this purpose. Thus, the market shares are far higher than those of the largest competitor Akamai. Cloudflare has many well-known customers from various industries and is supported by numerous investors. Among said investors is even the Chinese company Baidu, in addition to Google and Microsoft. Not without reason Cloudflare has a number of servers in China, which is not a matter of course given the political situation.
Advantages and disadvantages of Cloudflare
Cloudflare has a good server coverage. Most of the data centers are located in Europe, Southeast Asia and the US, but there are also a relatively large number of data centers in mainland China. Websites with many international users can expect low load times for most visitors when using Cloudflare. Another crucial factor is security. Cloudflare not only offers cloud-based DDoS protection as well as a firewall, but generally has an infrastructure designed for user security and a competent team that can respond quickly in case of attacks.
The support of the CDN can be contacted via email and is rated good overall. The average response time depends on the booked package. While the Free package receives a response within the next 24 hours, companies with the Enterprise package usually receive a response within an hour. Unlike most other CDNs, Cloudflare's costs are manageable and basic features are free anyway. One of the reasons why the CDN is suitable for both businesses and individuals. Only the statistics are negative, since the data collection is not optimal and is therefore only conditionally suitable for analysis
Cloudflare costs
The Free package is free and is aimed at private individuals with hobby projects. If, on the other hand, the aim is the professional operation of web projects, the Pro package for $20 per month is more suitable. It offers additional features such as lossless image optimization and a web application firewall (WAF). The PCI-compliant Business package for $200 per month is aimed at smaller businesses. It includes advanced security features and a 100% uptime SLA. In addition, the average support response time is less than 2 hours. For larger businesses, the Enterprise package is available, which scores best in terms of performance, security and reliability. Costs are based on the needs of the business.
