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What is Cloudflare and what are its benefits?

Afbeelding What is Cloudflare and what are its benefits?

Cloudflare is a company from America that has brought a faster and more secure variant to the market for many different services. Think of DNS, CDN (Content Delivery Network) and much more in this list. That’s not for nothing: Cloudflare is a huge hit with 26 million users. For this purpose, 1 billion IP addresses are handled every day. Those are really big numbers which underlines the popularity of the platform. But why should you switch to Cloudflare? What are the benefits and how does it work? Which services do you get back and how much do you pay for them? You can read it all in this article.

Why Cloudflare?

Cloudflare is so popular for a reason. What makes Cloudflare so good, we explain:

Cloudflare makes your website very fast

By applying different caching and compression techniques, loading websites can be much faster than you are used to now. Before you surf to the actual page, you first end up on a page of Cloudflare. This shows you the cache data of the web page you requested. This is much faster than loading the normal page and is also compressed.

In addition, images on the original website are transferred to Cloudflare, to be loaded compressed there. This is then offered to visitors by a CDN, or a Content Delivery Network. Such a network offers all kinds of content all over the world. This is so fast, since the network is also spread all over the world. This coverage ensures that both people from Europe and Asia can charge the same very quickly, because there is coverage for the network in both Europe and Asia.
For speed optimization, you really have to go to Cloudflare. Competitor Google, for example, is a bit slower. This is even evident from the measurements of a tool from Google itself.

Cloudflare gives you free HTTPS

In addition, Cloudflare offers you a flexible SSL function. Cloudflare has already offered its services before the web server can be used and can thus establish a connection between its own servers and the visitor. For example, you do not have to apply for SSL certification yourself, but you are eligible for the HTTPS protocol. This is much safer for your visitors, since third parties can no longer access their personal data. In addition, you get higher in Google yourself, because the search engine recommends websites with HTTPS protocol earlier than websites without this certification.

Cloudflare provides extra security

Cloudflare has built a lot of security tricks into its service that can come in handy for you as a site owner. For example, Cloudflare can deny various visitors access to your website. For this purpose, the IP address of the visitor is looked at. This is kept along a list of IP addresses of known hackers. If an IP address matches, the visitor will be refused as a precaution.

Another advantage is that you can indicate whether you create the site via an open source CMS. Examples of such platforms are WordPress, Joomla or Drupal. Cloudflare has specific URLs with which hackers can harm your website and prevents access to your site via these links.

How does Cloudflare work?

Cloudflare, with all its services, is, as it were, between the visitor and the website. Normally, a visitor to your website is sent to your website’s DNS server. This redirects you to the website, because it links the specified domain name to the server.

Cloudflare replaces the website’s DNS server with a server from Cloudflare itself. This allows Cloudflare to first offer a faster and compressed version of your website, allowing users to get to your page faster. At the same time, Cloudflare can make all security options in order, such as keeping out unwanted visitors.

What services does Cloudflare offer?

Cloudflare offers more than just a faster website and the option to secure your website. In cases of an attack, the service does more for you. What exactly the service does, we list for you.

Cloudflare secures your website

As we said, Cloudflare can already protect your website from malicious visitors as a preventive measure. Visitor IP addresses are compared with the IP addresses of known hackers, so that matching IP addresses can be refused. Hackable links from a CMS are also recognized and not allowed.

DDoS Attacks

In the event of a DDoS attack, a distinction is made between the regular traffic on your website and the traffic that actually attacks your website. This way you can protect the website by means of a multi-layered protection.

Ransomware attacks

Ransomware is also banned by Cloudflare. Malicious domains are monitored and blocked as soon as they want to attack your website. To isolate the threats, you can continue to surf the internet via a special ‘Sandbox mode’.

Authentication and access attacks

When you work with multiple accounts for your employees, both in the office and employees working from home, Cloudflare also helps you. You can monitor and manage access for all employees. For this you no longer need a VPN connection.

How much does Cloudflare cost?

Cloudflare has several packages for you to choose from. Each package has its own services and benefits, but therefore also its own price. There are a total of 4 packages to choose from, namely: ‘free’, ‘pro’, ‘business’ and ‘enterprise’. The free package is, as the name suggests, free for everyone and already offers a lot of useful features. For example, you can already use the DNS, as well as the SSL certification as the CDN principle.

The pro feature costs 20 euros per month and offers everything the free package also offers, but there’s more. This way you get extra security here with the Web Application Firewall and a DDoS alert in case of emergency.

The business package costs 200 euros a month and offers even more benefits on top of all the features from the free and pro packages. You will then receive 24/7 customer service and an uptime of 100% for your SLA.

The enterprise package is the most comprehensive of all the features and gives you everything you can think of. You get Single-Sign-On, as well as a triple layer of protection for DDoS attacks, access to Chinese networks and additional account management options. There is no standard price available for this package. You can do the price on request for your own needs.

What are the alternatives?

Cloudflare is currently one of the very best all-in-one solutions, but there are also other good alternatives on the market. We’ll discuss the three best options:

Akamai

Akamai has been around for a while and therefore has a large market share. You get, as with Cloudflare, a CDN and many security measures. Akamai has chosen to sit a bit further apart, so that the proper adjustment of all parts can take a little longer.

Imperva Incapsula

Cloudflare and Imperva Incapsula are very similar to each other. They have been around for about the same length of time, have the same market share, and each offer roughly the same features. Major customers of Imperva Incapsula are, for example, WiX, General Electric or MOZ.

Amazon CloudFront

CloudFront also has the ambitite to create safer and faster websites. This is done on an extremely simple platform that every user can handle. For the less experienced web owners among us, this is a big advantage, but when you have a bit more knowledge, Cloudfront is not necessarily recommended.

How to install Cloudflare?

To get started, you’ll need a free Cloudflare account first. You can easily create this on the site of Cloudflare itself. Take a look at all the options that Cloudflare has to offer you. This way you can be sure that the software suits you and that you can get everything out of the software. Then you can start installing the software. There are many different options for this. You can search YouTube for the ideal way for you. Do you prefer to read along step by step? Then Cloudflare has a wide range of articles on its own website with information, step-by-step plans and tips ready for you. Finally, you can also ask your web hoster for help, as many hosts have embraced Cloudflare these days.

Need help with Cloudflare or website security?

Cloudflare can therefore set up a safer and fast website for every company with all the advantages that entails. The service is, even with the free variant, already very complete and can protect against all kinds of online attacks. If you don’t have Cloudflare yet or you don’t use a CDN at all, definitely think about using Cloudflare.
Do you have questions or can’t figure it out? Then be sure to contact a Cloudflare specialist. They can answer all your questions and install everything directly for you on your website. This way you are quickly and securely back in the air. This not only protects your own website, but also your customers. So it’s doubly nice.

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