What is Cloudflare? #
Cloudflare is one of the largest networks on the internet. It acts as a reverse proxy: visitors connect to Cloudflare first, and Cloudflare connects to your hosting server on their behalf. This lets it speed up and protect your website without any change to your site itself.
How does it work? #
When you add your website to Cloudflare, you change your domain nameservers to Cloudflare. From then on, requests to your domain pass through Cloudflare network, which serves cached files from the location closest to the visitor and filters harmful traffic before forwarding the rest to your server.
Main features #
- CDN: caches static files such as images, CSS and JavaScript around the world.
- DDoS protection: absorbs large attacks that would otherwise take your server down.
- Free SSL: encrypts the connection between visitors and Cloudflare.
- Firewall (WAF): blocks known attack patterns and bad bots.
- Fast DNS: one of the fastest DNS services available.
Free or paid? #
The free plan includes the CDN, basic DDoS protection, free SSL and DNS, which is enough for most small and medium websites. Paid plans add advanced firewall rules, image optimization and priority support.
Does Cloudflare slow down my site? #
Usually the opposite: most websites load faster, especially for visitors far from the server. Problems only appear when security settings are too strict, which can make visitors see a verification page. If that happens, see how to fix “Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed”.
