Most of us in IT engineering support have experience with one or multiple providers in the following fields:

• CDN
• DNS registration & management
• Image serving
• Web analytics
• Website creation & management
• Web-streaming

I would like to make the case why anyone could consider Cloudflare. Full disclosure, I do not work or am I affiliated to Cloudflare (I actually pay full dollar for anything I do with Cloudflare - keeping my independence intact and being able to express my honest unprejudiced opinion).

Throughout the last two decades I have tried most, if not all, of the big names in domain registration, web-hosting, web-analytics, you name it I have probably experienced it personally or through clients.

For starters, Cloudflare allows you to transfer your domain name to their cloud and pay just the cost of ICAN domain registration. No profit on their part and I have saved money the last year having transferred and consolidated domain names from different registrars.

Up to recently they did not allow new registrations (only transfers), but recently I noticed they do offer new domain registrations. As this business is very cut throat and having experienced service deterioration with several registrars the last few years, my suggestion is go with the largest name in the industry, while saving a few dollars in the process. I would love to hear other people's opinions on this subject.

The Cloudflare sidebar is illustrated below. Note they are making changes and they seem to be adding services all the time. At the time of writing I have to say their service is well above the experience from other registrars. From the region I am in (Middle East) their 1.1.1.1 open DNS server not as fast as the 8.8.8.8 open DNS from Google, but faster than other providers.

DNSSEC from both Cloudflare and Google does suffer from issues now and then and IMHO you should not consider DNSSEC unless you DO have sensitive traffic to protect.

The Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 app initiative (https://1.1.1.1) does have performance and compatibility issues, frequently enough for my linking that I stopped using it (I have tried under Windows and I have had issues frequently enough for my liking I uninstalled it - used it for about 8 months).

What I like about the DNS services from Cloudflare is the ability to be in complete control of your DNS zone, and all the DNS protection tooling around your DNS zone. See the tools at your disposal for a domain name. The one recent feature which I think is a killer feature for smaller companies and individuals is the email routing service. Read their recent email below. Why is this feature a killer feature you might ask? For the simple reason we can create multiple virtual email addresses and route them to a single email address without the need for a mail server (e.g. if you use Exchange you can create email aliases, but you need to have Exchange or similar mail server). This is especially useful to people like myself who have hundreds of accounts to manage with different cloud services and I am confident I am not something special or unique in this regard. See for yourself below what email routing looks like: Lastly if you are developing Jamstack websites, Cloudflare is a solid option for deployment, not only for performance reasons, but also for everything else offered by them, infrastructure-related, which is as solid as the best out there.

Hopefully Cloudflare will not lose the plot like most have done the last few years.

Will be posting updates on Cloudflare as soon as something noteworthy comes up.