Cloudflare is a premium web services company that helps protect websites from attacks, provides performance improvements, and optimizes websites for mobile devices, desktop computers, and other devices. Their service is free for websites, but they charge premium prices for it. If you’re looking to understand how Cloudflare’s pricing model works, this article is for you. Read on to learn more about the company.
What is Cloudflare?
Cloudflare is a service that provides protection to websites by mitigating DDoS attacks, speeding up your website, and also by optimizing sites for mobile devices, desktop computers, and other devices. They are also the parent company of Global Content Security, a company that provides security tools to help companies find and fix security vulnerabilities in their software.
Cloudflare was founded in 2009 to create a better web experience for its customers by eliminating the performance issues, site accessibility problems, and content delivery issues that plague the Internet.
They offer features that include security features, content delivery, performance optimization, and optimal web experience.
Cloudflare works with web and mobile apps to protect them from DDoS attacks, protect users from tracking, and to protect websites against spam and fraud.
Cloudflare has helped over 500 million websites, over 1.5 billion devices, and over 75% of all active web browsers since its inception.
How Does Cloudflare Protect Websites?
Cloudflare uses a content delivery network (CDN) where it distributes your website’s content from around the world to users from various locations. This lets your site load faster and also protects your site from DDoS attacks. Cloudflare also provides added security by tracking the location of the user and blocking hackers that try to target your website with a distributed attack.
They also offer other services like malware scanning, DNS monitoring, and ad blocking.
How to Set Up a Cloudflare Account
Cloudflare’s free account is limited to 1 GB of daily bandwidth, but you can upgrade to a Premium plan for $25/month for 20 GB of bandwidth or $200/year for 1 TB of bandwidth.
You can sign up for Cloudflare with a credit card or with PayPal.
Additionally, you can sign up for a free Cloudflare trial
Once you’ve created an account, you can easily set up your Cloudflare account.
Cloudflare offers the following setup methods:
- Hosted – You can host your website on Cloudflare’s infrastructure and let them take care of the security and performance.
- Self-hosted – If you’re already hosting your website on another server and you don’t want to move your site, you can set up Cloudflare as a SaaS (software as a service).
Cloudflare’s Standard vs Premium Plan
Cloudflare has two types of plans: Standard and Premium. The Standard plan is free, but you will have limited bandwidth and speed. The Premium plan has no bandwidth restrictions and you can use as much bandwidth as you need.
Cloudflare does have an enterprise plan as well, which we will discuss later in this article.
Cloudflare’s Enterprise Plan Pricing
Cloudflare’s Premium plans start at $20/month for 2 GB of bandwidth and go up to $200/month for 20 GB of bandwidth. Cloudflare’s Enterprise plan is $10/month for 25 GB of bandwidth. Cloudflare provides discounts on the Premium and Enterprise plans on a quarterly basis.
Cloudflare also offers a free plan, which you can use if you’re just starting out.
Final Words: Should You Use Cloudflare?
Cloudflare is a well-known and trusted security and performance services company. They have been in the industry since 2009 and have helped over 500 million websites, over 1.5 billion devices, and over 75% of all active web browsers since its inception.
Cloudflare is well-known for providing DDoS protection, content delivery, security, and performance optimization to websites.
Cloudflare is a premium service and does have some plans that start at $1/month. Cloudflare’s enterprise plan is $10/month for 25 GB of bandwidth. Cloudflare provides discounts on the premium and enterprise plans on a quarterly basis.
Cloudflare’s service is free for all websites, but you will have to pay for it if you want the performance improvements, security, and content delivery that comes with it.
Cloudflare’s pricing model is complicated, but if you want to understand how it works, this article is for you.