Cloudflare

A huge share of the world's internet traffic passes through Cloudflare every day. Born as a content delivery network and attack protection service, it's now an infrastructure that handles the speed, security and reliability of websites.

Cloudflare is a web infrastructure platform that sits between a site's visitors and its server, acting as an intermediary that improves performance and security. Its content delivery network (CDN) stores copies of the site in data centers distributed worldwide, so content is served from the node closest to the user, reducing loading times. On the security side, Cloudflare filters incoming traffic protecting against DDoS attacks, blocks bots and threats with a web application firewall and manages SSL certificates for connection encryption. Cloudflare's DNS service is among the fastest and most widely used in the world. A very broad range of products has grown around this core: Cloudflare Workers to run code at the network edge, R2 for object storage, Pages for site hosting, Zero Trust for enterprise security, email protection and much more. Most essential features are available in a surprisingly generous free plan, which is one reason for the platform's widespread adoption.

For website owners, developers and businesses of every size who want to improve the speed, security and reliability of their online presence, from a small blog to enterprise infrastructure.

Cloudflare offers a very complete free plan, including CDN, basic DDoS protection, SSL certificate and DNS, sufficient for most personal sites and small projects. Paid plans for websites start with the Pro plan at around $20 per month per domain, followed by Business at around $200 per month, with progressively more advanced security and performance features; Enterprise plans are custom-priced. Many developer products, such as Workers and R2, have their own consumption-based pricing model, often with an initial free tier.