CloudFlare CDN Review About Prons And Cons.
Recently I was doing some research about web hosting services to write an article about it, in between my research I came across CloudFlare hosting services which have different kind of features and benefits compare with traditional web hosting services.
I went on to know more about CloudFlare WordPress hosting services to include in my article, but finally I came to know it is not traditional web hosting service which keeps and maintains your updated content and domain register services like BlueHost, DreamHost, Hostgator.
Interestingly CloudFlare offers a free service to improve our website’s load time and protects from various threats on internet.
Later I thought of writing one article about CloudFlare CDN review, now I got the opportunity to explain more about this service for better understanding.
What Is CloudFlare?
CloudFlare is a CDN (Content Delivery Network) system which works as a reverse proxy for websites to speed up and protect the website from malware and other threats from the internet.
Reverse Proxy: This is a proxy server which retrieves information and content on behalf of the customer from one or more servers and returns the information to end user.
CloudFlare is an intermediary reverse proxy server between your end user and your original web hosting server.
In layman’s language once you become CloudFlare user all the traffic coming to your website is routed through CloudFlare’s “Intelligent Global Network “it filters all the spam, bot crawlers, and other threats to reach your website to improve your website performance.
CLOUDFLARE CDN REVIEW
FEATURES OF CLOUDFLARE
Security
Main feature of CloudFlare is its security; it has the ability to block spam comments, excessive bot crawling, SQL injection and DDOS attacks.
CloudFlare continuously updates its information about new attacks on internet, once you become CloudFlare member you don’t have to bother about any attacks to your website.
Setting up security levels on CloudFlare is very easy if your end users are facing any problem in accessing your website because of the CloudFlare security feature; change your security settings from high or medium to Low for better accessing.
You have the option to select your security settings based on your requirement, here is a security level list
- I am Under Attack
- High
- Medium
- Low
- Essentially Off
CloudFlare reports the information about how many threats it has been stopped to protect your website, so don’t ignore establishing CloudFlare WordPress security on your blog.
Makes Our Site Faster
Another best feature of CloudFlare is it improves our website speed, which is essential to decrease the bounce rate and improve search engine rankings.
This service has more than 30 data centers around the world; it caches all the static files on our website and keeps these cache files on those data centers, whenever a visitor access your website static files are delivered from CloudFlare server and the dynamic content is delivered directly from original web hosting server.
Because of this process your website loads faster for your visitors regardless of their location where they are located, this is one of the best reason why so many professional bloggers choose CDN system for their blogs.
Content Optimization
To make our website even faster only caching static files will not help to improve our website performance it needs efficient rendering of every page from whatever the device or browser a visitor is surfing from.
To ensure proper rendering of every page, CloudFlare uses Rocket Loader technology which can automatically optimize our pages to minimize the network connections.
Here is the list how CloudFlare optimizes the content
- Javascript Bundling: Combines all javascript files into a single file to reduce the multiple requests
- Browser Optimization: CloudFlare Optimizes the content delivery system according to the browser and device
- Gzip Compression: All your resources are compressed to reduce the size of your content for better performance
- Supports Local Storage: New devices and browsers allow caching the files on local storage, this service supports local storage for better rendering of your site on those devices.
Content optimization and static files cache both combined process will increase our site speed by reducing the requests and improving bandwidth.
ANALYTICS (VERY NEAR TO ACCURATE)
CloudFlare provides analytics about your website’s traffic based on regular traffic, bot/crawled, threat/spam traffic.
It tracks search engine crawlers information to know which search engines are crawling your website and how much bandwidth they are consuming and how the search engines crawling volumes are changing over a period of time.
CloudFlare is compatible with all the popular analytics programs including Google Analytics.
Drawbacks Of CloudFlare
Technical knowledge Required: CloudFlare requires DNS changes, if you don’t know how to change the settings then it is mandatory to take advice from expert people to configure CloudFlare.
Not Useful for CDN Users: There is no remarkable change in the website speed if you are already using a CDN services for your website.
High-Level Security: Sometimes even normal user doesn’t get access to your website because of this high-level security.
Conclusion: CloudFlare has its own strengths and weakness when it comes to its features and benefits, till now I have not used CloudFlare but definitely in near future I am going to use it, I request all the readers to comment your experiences with CloudFlare for better understanding of the topic CloudFlare hosting review.
