6 ms·

I'm old-man-yelling-at-the-clouds here. Everyone just uses Cloudflare, which is not a bad thing by itself. But do they _have_ to? Is managing your own edge real

by nzeid 3mo ago

I'm old-man-yelling-at-the-clouds here. Everyone just uses Cloudflare, which is not a bad thing by itself. But do they _have_ to? Is managing your own edge really that terrifying?

skinfaxi 3mo ago
> Is managing your own edge really that terrifying? It's about convenience, not fear. Cloudflare is free for most companies until you need more advanced features.
- hungryhobbit 3mo ago
  So a fear of being inconvenienced then? I'll show myself out ...
- someonebaggy 3mo ago
  What's more convenient about Cloudflare in front of your server than just your server? I think people use Cloudflare because of the fear of DDoS.
AviationAtom 3mo ago
I think DDoS attacks are really what propelled them to the heights it has. The attacks seem to get bigger and bigger by the year. You need a really big pipe to filter them out on before passing on traffic to servers with a much smaller pipe.
- windexh8er 3mo ago
  Yes, DDoS was definitely their entry point. I remember recommending them to a friend about a year or so after they had launched with the free tier. He was managing a small school district that was dealing with DDoS issues intermittently. What he needed was just outside of free at the time and I believe Cloudflare was still small enough where he had a call with Mr. Prince. I was a strong proponent of Cloudflare for years, but looking back should have known better. I felt like others in the space would have tracked along how they went to market but that didn't play out as I would have suspected. I still use Cloudflare for DNS on domains that I use sparingly (mostly just for mail records), but no longer recommend anyone let Cloudflare terminate TLS unless they need it. It's pretty amazing what you can get for a server host (bare metal) these days at the price point. I don't run any of those behind Cloudflare and haven't had any issues as of yet.
ygouzerh 3mo ago
For non-corporate entities, it is! Having an almost a plug and play solution who does CDN + DDoS Protection + WAF/Rate Limiter + Bot Protection, for a few bucks, is very useful for startups and SMEs. And compared to cloud different offerings, their quick setup and lower cost is hard to beat.
Catloafdev 3mo ago
DDoS protection and the number of features they offer are kind of unmatched. I often see threads complaining about Cloudflare, never see suggestions for better alternatives.
tristor 3mo ago
It would be economically impossible for me to run a small personal website without Cloudflare thanks to the sheer quantity of badly behaved automated traffic on the Internet in 2026.
- someonebaggy 3mo ago
  What happened when you tried?
  - tristor 3mo ago
    I got stuck with a very large bill for bandwidth overages due to bots hammering my photo gallery on my website. With Cloudflare in front I've since been running my site for years off a $10/mo VPS.
    - someonebaggy 3mo ago
      How much bandwidth was that?
flawn 3mo ago
Dumb question here - how can I manage effectively edges across the whole world without the huge maintenance overhead? Which tools would be recommended for that? I e.g. have a VPS at Hetzner with Coolify but users from the US have high latency. I wouldn't know how to not use CloudFlare?

by nzeid 3mo ago

I'm old-man-yelling-at-the-clouds here. Everyone just uses Cloudflare, which is not a bad thing by itself. But do they _have_ to? Is managing your own edge really that terrifying?

skinfaxi 3mo ago

> Is managing your own edge really that terrifying? It's about convenience, not fear. Cloudflare is free for most companies until you need more advanced features.

hungryhobbit 3mo ago
So a fear of being inconvenienced then? I'll show myself out ...
someonebaggy 3mo ago
What's more convenient about Cloudflare in front of your server than just your server? I think people use Cloudflare because of the fear of DDoS.

AviationAtom 3mo ago

I think DDoS attacks are really what propelled them to the heights it has. The attacks seem to get bigger and bigger by the year. You need a really big pipe to filter them out on before passing on traffic to servers with a much smaller pipe.

windexh8er 3mo ago
Yes, DDoS was definitely their entry point. I remember recommending them to a friend about a year or so after they had launched with the free tier. He was managing a small school district that was dealing with DDoS issues intermittently. What he needed was just outside of free at the time and I believe Cloudflare was still small enough where he had a call with Mr. Prince. I was a strong proponent of Cloudflare for years, but looking back should have known better. I felt like others in the space would have tracked along how they went to market but that didn't play out as I would have suspected. I still use Cloudflare for DNS on domains that I use sparingly (mostly just for mail records), but no longer recommend anyone let Cloudflare terminate TLS unless they need it. It's pretty amazing what you can get for a server host (bare metal) these days at the price point. I don't run any of those behind Cloudflare and haven't had any issues as of yet.

ygouzerh 3mo ago

For non-corporate entities, it is! Having an almost a plug and play solution who does CDN + DDoS Protection + WAF/Rate Limiter + Bot Protection, for a few bucks, is very useful for startups and SMEs. And compared to cloud different offerings, their quick setup and lower cost is hard to beat.

Catloafdev 3mo ago

DDoS protection and the number of features they offer are kind of unmatched. I often see threads complaining about Cloudflare, never see suggestions for better alternatives.

tristor 3mo ago

It would be economically impossible for me to run a small personal website without Cloudflare thanks to the sheer quantity of badly behaved automated traffic on the Internet in 2026.

someonebaggy 3mo ago
What happened when you tried?
- tristor 3mo ago
  I got stuck with a very large bill for bandwidth overages due to bots hammering my photo gallery on my website. With Cloudflare in front I've since been running my site for years off a $10/mo VPS.
  - someonebaggy 3mo ago
    How much bandwidth was that?

flawn 3mo ago

Dumb question here - how can I manage effectively edges across the whole world without the huge maintenance overhead? Which tools would be recommended for that? I e.g. have a VPS at Hetzner with Coolify but users from the US have high latency. I wouldn't know how to not use CloudFlare?