Speed up your websites with Cloudflare?

Hey Guys,

I was just wondering, did anybody here use CloudFlare and can say if this CDN is actually that good? I see a lot of hype around it these days.
I checked it on my blogs with a decent traffic and it could handle as well, also speed up the loading of web pages with about 30%, but I have no idea if it really protects the sites from DDoS attacks and such things.

Your answers would be appreciated.

Yes, you should use Cloudflare, even if it's not as a CDN because it's already a better DNS server than any other host.
And as a CDN it's better than nothing, but you will have to use a real CDN (keycdn, maxcdn, aws) to deliver your assets faster.

But i recommend you to use it, DNS propagration is faster (>2 minutes), and you can have http2, ssl, anti-ddos, and cdn for free.
For DDoS it's the first step to secure your website, but It will require an premium if you have a lot of attack to get the Cloudflare complete firewall.

Dopani said:

Hey Guys,

I was just wondering, did anybody here use CloudFlare and can say if this CDN is actually that good? I see a lot of hype around it these days.
I checked it on my blogs with a decent traffic and it could handle as well, also speed up the loading of web pages with about 30%, but I have no idea if it really protects the sites from DDoS attacks and such things.

Your answers would be appreciated.

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The good thing about CloudFlare is you can start out with a free account / see how you link the DNS management / as VirtuBox mentioned / you are taking advantage of an Global AnyCast network / so DNS is supported within there world wide network / AND on the free account you will see based on the logs how many times and what types of attacks that your site will be protected from ... now for DDoS you will need to have a Paid Account as mentioned / but from what I have heard and seen on other sites / they way they protect from DDoS is works well.

Free cloudflare accounts a great for DNS management, and basic DDoS Protection.

If you realy want the best CDN possible, pick a host that is a Cloudflare Certified Optimized partner
This way, you can get Cloudflare Railgun for free (Usually requires a $200/mo Cloudflare account!)
Railgun allows you to cache dynamic content and only transmits the changes on a updated page vs re-transmitting the entire page!

https://www.rdoservers.com/knowledgebase/cloudflare/Railgun-FAQ

Dopani said:

I was just wondering, did anybody here use CloudFlare and can say if this CDN is actually that good?

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I use it for almost all of my sites (many) and have noticed a big improvement in load speed. At first I was just using the basic CloudFlare setup but then turned on the Railgun feature and that's when they really got faster.

Dopani said:

I checked it on my blogs with a decent traffic and it could handle as well, also speed up the loading of web pages with about 30%, but I have no idea if it really protects the sites from DDoS attacks and such things.

Click to expand...

Yes CloudFlare helps give a level of protection against DDOS attacks and the level of protection will depend on which plan you are on. Even the lowest free plan has some protection so it will definitely be a good idea to use that at the least.

Hey, i'm using it, it's so good. it has cache feature, support SSL, it can optimize html, js, css for you too. It's perfect for me now

I love CloudFlare! I recommend using it, even if its just the free version it will still help in many ways.

designman said:

Hey, i'm using it, it's so good. it has cache feature, support SSL, it can optimize html, js, css for you too. It's perfect for me now

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I am getting a little problem with its caching system for my Wordpress sites. I changed some parts on my template files but they didn't change till I purged all caches in Cloudflare.

VeyraHost said:

I love CloudFlare! I recommend using it, even if its just the free version it will still help in many ways.

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I agree with @VeyraHost.

Yes you have clear caches on cludflare if you have some changes on your WP like CSS and something like that.

You can good site speed if your website is optimized. check your site on www.gtmetrix.com and see how much good work is done on your websites. You can also give a try on http://tools.pingdom.com

KevinHV said:

You can good site speed if your website is optimized. check your site on www.gtmetrix.com and see how much good work is done on your websites. You can also give a try on http://tools.pingdom.com

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I don't know why but pingdom is always giving the result your website's loading time is lesser than gtmetrix

VirtuBox said:

There is a big difference between website speed and website optimization. Some websites are optimized but slow when some others have a terrible pagespeed score and are faster to load.

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What is the reason for that? I have to agree with your opinion because I saw this case when checking websites with page speed testing tools

The website optimization make google happy, but the biggest part of a website speed is the server optimization and the solutions like cloudflare which make your website faster all around the world. For example I'm working on a website currently, and I haven't done the optimization process on it yet, but the loading speed is already faster than most of optimized websites ^^

While is true that using Cloudflare might boost your website performance there is still possible to do the opposite.

Regarding the DDOS protection under the free plan, it may filter some lame flooding however they would charge you a liver and leg per month ($200 Biz plan) to provide you with good DDOS protection (something that you can get for less or free from your hosting provider).

We would suggest using real CDN provider most of them are now even more affordable charging like 0.04c per 1GB. For an average blog that would be no more than $2.00/mo.

I personally see using cloud flare as an essential as it not only protects your website but as you said speeds it up (and its free of charge).
As VirtuBox mentioned I also do not use Cloudflare for DDOS protection however do make use of 100% of the other features.

Depends on your hosted server. CloudFlare can be fast but not locally when compared to a properly optimized server using a reverse proxy + caching in play. We have found MaxCDN to be much faster and we run https:// over our website and typically run under 1.5 seconds.

Dopani said:

Hey Guys,

I was just wondering, did anybody here use CloudFlare and can say if this CDN is actually that good? I see a lot of hype around it these days.
I checked it on my blogs with a decent traffic and it could handle as well, also speed up the loading of web pages with about 30%, but I have no idea if it really protects the sites from DDoS attacks and such things.

Your answers would be appreciated.

Click to expand...

I'm using Cloudflare for one of my sites, and the feelings are not that great with it - that's also the reason why I'm not using it with my other sites. Some people are saying that it makes sites faster, and some saying it's not. When I installed it to one of my older sites a few years ago, I immodestly noticed speed improvements, and those DDoS protection things are also nice to have. I've heard more that Cloudflare paid plans are truly great and improve things, but their free plan is just waste of your time (not money, since it's free).

Since installing it to one of my newer sites, the loading speeds have risen dramatically. Cause it causes more headache to get rid of Cloudflare, I usually just keep it turned off via its settings. If you're looking for a CDN that improves loading times, then my recommendation is KeyCDN; I've used/tried a lot of different CDNs and find KeyCDN the fastest + they have pay-as-you-go pricing which is the cheapest around. I found a review about Cloudflare at Reviewhell's site, you can check it out here - it describes similar things I have with Cloudflare.

After experimenting with a lot of CDNs, I found that using Cloudflare for protection against attacks (I'm getting around 100 attacks, says their page) and KeyCDN (I'm not affiliated with them, I just love their CDN) in a combination is just perfect - together they really improve loading speed and provide protection.