What is Cloudflare? – Everything You Need to Know

There are millions of websites and web applications currently working around the world. One of the most important factors that their owner focus on is their security. That’s what Cloudflare is doing for over 27 million sites.

So, what is Cloudflare?

In simple words, it’s a company that offers a bunch of services and solutions for websites. One of the most important ones is the security.

In this guide, I have briefly discussed what is Cloudflare, how it works, its services and pricing details. Let’s start.

Cloudflare is a network of servers spread all across the Internet. These servers offer different services to many websites.

They help people optimize and secure their sites and web applications. The main objective that this site works around is very simple; making the Internet better.

Matthew Price, Lee Holloway, and Michelle Zatlyn introduced this company in 2009. After that, it completely revolutionized the way sites interact with their visitors. As of today, it is offering different services in this regard. They focus on improving the speed of content distribution and making platforms safe from different cyber threats.

Cloudflare’s main purpose is to enhance the security, performance, and reliability of websites and applications.

Here’s a more detailed explanation:

• Security: Cloudflare protects against various threats, including DDoS attacks, malicious bots, and other web vulnerabilities. 
• Performance: Cloudflare’s CDN distributes content across a global network of servers which ensures faster loading times for users worldwide, regardless of their location or the server’s physical location.
• Reliability: Cloudflare’s network is designed to be highly resilient and available, minimizing downtime and ensuring smooth operation even under heavy load. 
• Other Services: Cloudflare also offers services like SSL/TLS encryption, DNS management, and serverless computing through its Cloudflare Workers platform, further expanding its capabilities. 

Besides knowing what is Cloudflare, understanding how it works is equally important. The working mechanism of this network isn’t very complicated to understand. Back in the day, sites used to interact with their visitors directly. It is a fine approach when you have a low number of visitors.

However, having high visitors used to result in low site speed and sometimes crashed sites as well. Cloudflare offered a revolutionary solution for that. Now, with its usage, visitors don’t interact with the site directly. Instead, they go through the Cloudflare servers which already had stored the main data of the site. In this way, a large number of visitors doesn’t affect the site speed.

The company has spread its networks all around the world. This makes it easier for people to access and use international websites.

Example:

Using an example can help you grasp it better. Assume you live in the United States. You need to access a website that is originally running from Germany. Now, there’s a lot of distance between you and the site server. This means that accessing it will slow down the site experience.

Now, Cloudflare has attached itself to this site server. Since its servers are spread all across the world, in the US as well, accessing the German site becomes far easier. The whole experience also becomes faster. That’s the basic functionality of this network.

Cloudflare network company is famous for offering a lot of different services. Some of the most important ones are discussed below:

Cloudflare DNS

Cloudflare DNS service helps people access websites without having to remember their IP addresses. If you know a little bit about sites, you know that each one of them is assigned an IP address. It is a numeric code that can be difficult for normal users to remember.

Remembering the site’s name is easier than this. So when you enter a site’s name, Cloudflare translates it into the site’s IP address. Computers easily understand this address and open the site that you want to access.

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Web Application Firewall handles the security matters of a website. It acts as a shield wall between the site and the rest of the Internet. When someone tries to access the site, it analyzes different factors such as IP address and HTTP headers.

If the details are according to the guidelines, it allows the user to access the site. This service also prevents brute-force attacks. It does it by checking how frequently an IP is trying to access the site.

 Cloudflare CDN

What is Cloudflare CDN? Cloudflare CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. It is another important service this company offers. It is related to handling a website’s content. As we mentioned earlier, there are a lot of servers of this company around the world.

This network service gets the content of a site and distributes it to the servers. In simple words, it copies the site content and stores it on the servers. So, when a person visits the site, Cloudflare provides the content from the nearest server. This results in a smooth and high-speed website experience.

Here are the pricing details of this network:

Application Services:

• Free: $0/month
• Pro: $20/month
• Business: $200/month
• Enterprise: Custom

Zero Trust & SASE:

• Free Plan: $0 per user
• Pay-as-you-go Plan: $7 per user
• Contract Plan: Custom

Network Services:

• Magic Transit: Custom pricing
• Magic WAN: Custom pricing
• Magic Firewall: Custom pricing

Developer Platform:

• Workers Free: $0/month
• Workers Paid: Starts at $5/month

Cloudflare has become one of the largest server networks on the Internet. It is attached to millions of websites around the world. It offers different services to its clients. They are related to making the site well-functioning and secure. It has spread its servers all across the world.

This is the reason why it is very easy for us to access most of the websites. We have discussed what is Cloudflare in detail in the information given above. Besides that, it’s working mechanism is also explained.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is Cloudflare and why is it on my computer?

Cloudflare is a service that websites use to improve security and performance, but it’s not something you install on your computer. You might see it when visiting websites that use Cloudflare.

Is Cloudflare a free platform?

Some of the services of this network are free. You have to pay money in order to use the others.

Can this network protect a site from DDoS attacks?

Indeed. This network has the capability to protect a site against DDoS attacks.

What types of websites this network can work with?

The Cloudflare network can work with almost any type of website.