What Cloudflare can do for you‍

Cloudflare is predominantly a Content Delivery Network (CDN), although the vendor also offers expanded functionality to accelerate website loading times and bolster security. Beyond core CDN features, Cloudflare pricing plans also offer additional security tools, domain name registration, technical SEO enhancement, and visual content-specific upgrades. The versatile subscription tiers – Free, Pro, Business, and Enterprise – make it suitable for personal websites right up to large organizations. The vendor also makes a flat rate price promise, refusing to charge extra for potential bandwidth spikes – although this doesn’t apply to add-ons for Free, Pro, and Business plans.

‍Cloudflare pricing structures and tiers

‍Cloudflare pricing is split into four main categories, notably containing a free subscription. The tiers are highly flexible, with options for personal websites and blogs all the way up to large enterprises. Answering a few questions about your specific requirements can give a rough indication of which Cloudflare pricing plan will be the perfect fit. Variables include web application security and speed, Zero Trust application access, corporate network security, and whether you need a developer platform for building on the Cloudflare network.  We’ll illuminate the costs and main features for each of the four plans below:

Cloudflare pricing – Free

Monthly cost: Free

The free Cloudflare pricing tier is a great way to explore the platform and get to grips with the user-friendly interface. A free plan includes industry-leading DDoS mitigation, private and extremely fast DNS resolvers, best-in-class CDN supported by 310 data centers, and SSL certification. The vendor provides a few use case examples:

• Blogs
• WordPress sites
• Minecraft servers
• Ecommerce stores
• Web applications
• Jamstack sites

The free plan is aimed predominantly at personal projects and individuals scoping out Cloudflare’s basic functionality and software design. Billed add-ons can optimize performance and security, but small-to-large businesses will likely need the expanded possibilities afforded by the three paid subscriptions.  

Cloudflare pricing – Pro

Monthly cost: $20 (billed annually)

Cloudflare pricing for the Pro tier starts at $20/month billed annually or $25/month billed monthly. This is subject to several potential add-ons, which we’ll explore in detail further down the page. As a quick example, a Pro subscription with Argo Smart Routing starts from $30 per month. Cloudflare builds on its free plan with added website optimization tools, including:

• Image file optimization – Streamline image loading by automatically stripping metadata and leveraging lossless or lossy compression.
• Optimized mobile image delivery – Cloudflare’s Mirage tool optimizes image delivery depending on the site visitor’s device and screen size.
• Prioritized loading – Empower your server to prioritize site resource loading for a streamlined visitor experience.
• Enhanced CDN caching – Detect assets slowing down site speed due to caching problems.
• WordPress APO – Speed up WordPress sites by up to 300% with APO and intelligent caching.
• Supercharged technical SEO – Improve Core Web Vitals to make websites faster and boost SERP positioning.

This tier targets high-traffic blogs and websites alongside startups requiring enhanced security and performance. It’s arguably the most cost-effective option, as more powerful plans are significantly more expensive.

Cloudflare pricing – Business

Monthly cost: $200 (billed annually)

The Business Cloudflare pricing plan notably steps up the security features, making it a perfect fit for businesses requiring more sophisticated firewalls and DDoS protection. Available from $200 per month (billed annually) or $250 per month (billed monthly), the overall cost is also subject to add-ons.  The main additional security solutions for this Cloudflare price plan are:

• 24/7/365 security support – Unmetered DDoS protection ensuring uninterrupted online presence.
• OWASP threat protection – Sanitize incoming traffic and block malicious requests using the Web Application Firewall.
• Block sophisticated bots – Leverage machine learning to guard after cyber threats with Super Bot Fight Mode.
• Create custom security rules – Formulate customized target rules to guard against malicious incoming traffic.
• Analyze site traffics – Cloudflare’s Security Analytics dashboard enables proactive analysis to find security gaps.
• Classify site requests – WAF Attack Score Lite categorizes site requests and assigns scores defending on the likelihood of malicious attacks.  

Alongside the expanded security functionality, Cloudflare Business users also access everything from Pro on top of additional selling points like PCI and SOC 2 Type II compliance and a 100% uptime guarantee.

Cloudflare pricing – Enterprise

Monthly cost: contact Cloudflare’s sales team for a quote

Larger businesses operating mission-critical applications will require the Enterprise Cloudflare pricing plan, especially those wanting to scale add-on usage without costs spiraling. The vendor operates a flat rate on all subscriptions for the core functionality, but add-ons like Argo Smart Routing and Load Balancing are charged per usage unless you have an Enterprise plan. Aside from the flat-rate add-ons, users also access advanced Enterprise-only features like logging, management options, multi-channel support, network prioritization, and more.  Pricing is available per quote, so be prepared to negotiate to get the best price. At Vertice, we can use our unique pricing benchmarks to help here, negotiating directly to optimize costs.

Additional Cloudflare costs to consider‍

Cloudflare pricing is subject to various security and performance optimization add-ons:

• Argo Smart Routing – Starts at $5/month
• Load Balancing – Starts at $5/month
• Stream – Starts at $5/month
• Automatic Platform Optimization – Included in Pro, Business and Enterprise plans. Form $5/month for Free tier users
• Cache Reserve – Price based on data volume and operations
• Advanced Certificate Manager – Starts at $10/month
• Cloudflare Access – Starts at $3/month
• Additional Page Rules – $5 for 5 rules
• Cloudflare Registrar – Starts at $7.85/month
• Video Streaming – Starts at $5/month
• Cloudflare Images – Starts at $5/month

These costs are rough estimates, as the add-on prices scale with your usage. Organizations anticipating high add-on usage should negotiate an Enterprise plan with flat rates.

‍Other vendors offering Content Delivery as a Service

Cloudflare is a particularly useful entry to CDN and cloud-based security, with versatile pricing and a user-friendly, managed approach. Nevertheless, alternative Content Delivery as a Service vendors may suit your needs better. Here are a few examples:

Cloudflare pricing vs Fastly

Fastly pricing is generally more expensive than Cloudflare, and will be a better option for businesses with advanced requirements. The vendor focuses on high-performance, real-time content delivery and advanced edge computing. It’s ideal for high-traffic websites or apps needing ultra-low latency and granular control. Pricing is only available per quote. Our data shows Fastly has a high discount possibility, so there may be opportunities to negotiate a cheaper price.

Cloudflare pricing vs Amazon CloudFront

Organizations already invested in the Amazon Web Services ecosystem might find Amazon CloudFront is a better fit than Cloudflare. This is particularly true for larger businesses with less resources to focus on CDN implementation and upkeep. High-bandwidth usage can also be cheaper within AWS. However, there are notable downsides compared to Cloudflare. Amazon Cloudfront pricing lacks built-in security features (requiring separate AWS WAF) and has a less user-friendly interface. It also has much more significant vendor lock-in.

Cloudflare pricing vs StackPath

Stackpath pricing isn’t as transparent as Cloudflare, with the vendor operating purely on a per-quote basis. It’s a more specialist option for organizations searching for a high-performance CDN for media content, leveraging advanced cloud orchestration, AI, and edge computing. On the other hand, customer stories suggest that Cloudflare has a more user-friendly interface, making it a better fit for less-specialist purposes. It also has a larger global network of servers, so will suit international organizations better. Depending on usage, however, StackPath can end up cheaper for higher-bandwidth activity.

‍Cloudflare pricing – the Vertice verdict

Cloudflare is a versatile, scalable, and easy to use content delivery and cloud security vendor with a broad toolset perfect for all business sizes. Customer stories praise the user-friendly interface and particular suitability as a launchpad for organizations starting their CDN journeys.Cloudflare pricing can be extremely cheap (or free) for basic functionality, but be wary of the various add-ons. The vendor offers a flat rate for add-on usage for businesses using the Enterprise Plan, although this can still end up more expensive than alternatives specializing in high-traffic and bandwidth environments.  The Vertice platform is a particularly useful tool for ascertaining your resource usage before pressing ahead with IT procurement. Our unique pricing benchmarks can also deliver a cheaper price – let Vertice experts handle your contract negotiation and upkeep for optimized spend management.