Why you should be using Cloudflare on your website?

Website speed, security, and reliability directly affect user experience, search visibility, and conversions. Cloudflare helps improve all three by combining a global content delivery network, caching, traffic optimization, and security services in a single platform.

Marny Lopez

Multiple Authors

November 18, 2024

As a result, companies need to improve the speed, reliability, and security of their digital platforms. For organizations that need additional cloud, backend, or infrastructure expertise, experienced teams providing IT outsourcing services can help implement and maintain these improvements. Always begin this process from the inside out, optimizing your website code first, then your multimedia assets, software, server components, cache systems, and so on.

‍

Cloudflare provides an analytics dashboard with information about CDN performance, traffic, cached bandwidth, security events, and other activity across the network.

‍

All of this is accomplished without the need for any additional script to be installed on your website. Cloudflare has developed, and continues to evolve, many ways for clients to access and acquire insights from Cloudflare-hosted Internet assets in an effort to make analytics a ubiquitous component of all Cloudflare products.

‍

You may use the GraphQL API to get more control over how you see the analytics and log information available on the Cloudflare dashboard, as well as root-level analytics that offers you an overview of metadata linked to your Cloudflare account.

Cloudflare Analytics: What Can You Measure?

It captures and analyses datasets that have the following characteristics:

Proxied traffic only: All metrics represent traffic proxied through the Cloudflare network, also known as orange-clouded traffic, based on the DNS records configured in the Cloudflare DNS app. Cloudflare cannot provide DNS analytics for a CNAME setup.
Unproxied records are excluded: DNS records that are not proxied through Cloudflare are not included. However, Cloudflare may still collect DNS metrics when it acts as the authoritative DNS provider.
Supported ports only: Cloudflare can only proxy traffic directed through supported network ports.
Country identification: Cloudflare uses the IP address associated with each request to estimate the country of origin. More information is available through Cloudflare IP Geolocation.

‍

A visitor's browser sends a request to your web server when they request a page from your website. All assets connected to your web page (HTML, CSS, JS, IMG) will be downloaded from your server by the visitor's browser. This process will be repeated every time a browser accesses that same web page if no cache solution is in place, adding overhead to your web server. Caching is only one part of modern infrastructure. Container platforms also help engineering teams deploy and manage applications consistently across environments, as explained in our comparison of Docker Desktop and Rancher Desktop.

‍

Cloudflare saves a copy of your website content in their internationally scattered data centers when you add it to their service.This implies that when a user visits a page on your website, they will most likely obtain a copy of your website assets stored in the nearby data center instead of having to request it from your actual web server.

‍

As a result, the user can see the content of your website much faster, and your web server is spared from the additional requests for static assets that it would otherwise get. Once your DNS and caching settings are configured, Cloudflare automatically handles content delivery and many performance optimizations through its global network. The primary records in your DNS area will have an orange cloud next to them when you add your site to Cloudflare.

‍

Cloudflare speeds up and protects your site when your DNS records are orange clouded. Routing traffic through Cloudflare also helps prevent your origin server's IP address from being publicly exposed, adding an extra layer of protection. Your server is more vulnerable to direct attacks if its IP address is disclosed. When traffic is routed through Cloudflare, your true server IP is concealed from the rest of the world, reducing the likelihood of a direct attack on your server.

How Does Cloudflare Work?

ACA VA LA IMGG!!!!!

Cloudflare sits between a website's visitors and its origin server. When someone requests a page, the request first passes through Cloudflare's network.

‍

Cloudflare can then serve cached assets from a nearby data center, filter malicious traffic, apply security rules, and forward only the necessary requests to the origin server. This reduces latency, lowers server load, and limits direct exposure of the server's IP address.

When Should You Use Cloudflare?

Cloudflare can benefit most public-facing websites, but it becomes especially valuable when:

Global audience: Your audience is distributed across different countries or regions.

High traffic volumes: Your server receives high or unpredictable traffic spikes.

Performance matters: Website speed and Core Web Vitals are important for user experience and SEO.

Lower infrastructure load: You want to reduce bandwidth usage and minimize the load on your origin server.

Security concerns: You need protection against DDoS attacks, malicious bots, and other unwanted traffic.

Easy implementation: You want to add caching, performance optimization, and security controls without changing your hosting provider.

‍

It is particularly useful for ecommerce platforms, SaaS products, media websites, APIs, and applications that need to remain available during traffic spikes. Cloudflare also blocks threats and restricts the use of bandwidth and server resources by abusive bots and trackers. Cloudflare's global network helps reduce latency by serving cached content from locations closer to users and routing traffic through its optimized network. We connect directly to all major cloud providers and interconnect with almost every service provider on the planet.

‍

We have data centers in more than 250 places that provide sub-50 millisecond latency to 95% of the world's Internet users. Google Analytics, like any other HTML analytics, relies on users having JavaScript enabled and the page loading to the point where the tracking code is visible.

Cloudflare at a Glance

The table below summarizes how Cloudflare can improve website performance, security, and reliability compared to a traditional setup.

Without Cloudflare	With Cloudflare
Every request reaches the origin server.	Static assets can be served from Cloudflare's global edge network.
Higher server load during traffic spikes.	Caching reduces requests to the origin server and lowers infrastructure load.
Longer loading times for visitors far from the server.	Content is delivered from the nearest edge location, reducing latency.
Limited protection against malicious traffic.	Built-in DDoS mitigation, bot management, and additional security features.
Performance depends entirely on the origin server.	Caching, optimization, and traffic routing improve overall website performance.
Limited visibility into network traffic.	Network-level analytics provide insights into traffic, caching, and security events.

Cloudflare Analytics and browser-based analytics tools such as Google Analytics collect data differently. Because Cloudflare operates at the network level, it can measure requests that browser-based analytics may not capture, including blocked traffic and requests that never fully load a page.

‍

Because the attacker targets IP addresses that deliberately bypass Cloudflare, Cloudflare can't fully protect the server from DDoS if the hacker knows your IP address. Change the IP address and solely use the new IP address in Cloudflare as a workaround. Using Cloudflare makes sense if a platform experiences too many DDoS attacks.

‍

You gain access to a growing international user community while also increasing your website hosting experience. An attack on any individual is quickly discovered and, as a result, the entire community is prohibited. Cloudflare helps mitigate DDoS attacks, malicious bots, suspicious traffic, and several application-layer threats. However, it should be considered one layer within a broader security strategy that also includes secure application development, monitoring, and proper server configuration. Maintaining a secure, high-performing cloud environment also requires the right engineering capabilities. Devlane's staff augmentation services help companies add experienced backend, DevOps, cloud, and security professionals to their existing teams.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Cloudflare?

Cloudflare is a web infrastructure and security platform that provides services such as content delivery, caching, DNS, DDoS protection, traffic filtering, and performance optimization.

Is Cloudflare a CDN?

Yes. Cloudflare operates a global content delivery network that caches eligible website assets and serves them from locations closer to users, helping reduce latency and origin server load.

Does Cloudflare improve website speed?

Cloudflare can improve website speed through edge caching, content compression, optimized routing, and reduced distance between users and cached assets. The actual improvement depends on the website's configuration, hosting, and content.

Does Cloudflare improve SEO?

Cloudflare does not directly improve rankings, but faster load times, better availability, stronger security, and improved Core Web Vitals can support a better user experience and indirectly contribute to SEO performance.

Is Cloudflare free?

Cloudflare offers a free plan that includes CDN, DNS, basic DDoS protection, SSL, and other core features. Paid plans add more advanced security, performance, and support capabilities.

Can Cloudflare protect a website from DDoS attacks?

Cloudflare provides DDoS mitigation by identifying and filtering malicious traffic before it reaches the origin server. Protection is most effective when the origin IP remains hidden and the server is configured to accept traffic only through Cloudflare.

‍

Marny Lopez

As part of Devlane’s engineering team, he brings technical expertise, problem-solving, and collaboration to build reliable, high-quality solutions that support our clients’ growth.