What is Cloudflare and why should I use it?

Let’s start with a small example to easily understand what Cloudflare is and why you should use it. Because the Cloudflare issue is very similar to this example.

Many enemies are created when one becomes more popular (jealous person). As a result, a guard or bodyguard is needed for his protection. Who is ready to repel any attack on that person?

Cloudflare is one such protector or guard.

So let’s know now what Cloudflare is, why, and how to use it.

What is Cloudflare?

Cloudflare is not a hosting or domain provider. You may be wondering, why is Cloudflare needed? Even if it does not benefit from a domain, Cloudflare hosting is enough to make you interested in using Cloudflare.

To put it simply, Cloudflare is a third party, a layer, a medium. But there is no third party that is harmful to you, or to your visitors. Rather the opposite, i.e., beneficial third party or medium.

Cloudflare gives you more benefits besides CDN, DDoS Protection, Web Optimization, etc. Which will keep your site fast and secure. So, Cloudflare is a layer that acts as a bodyguard for your website.

Why use Cloudflare?

What is Cloudflare? We found out. Now that we need to know why we use Cloudflare? Hopefully, if there is any shortcoming in understanding what I have discussed above so far, it will be clearer now.

For your convenience, I want to explain it in short in simple language. Suppose your site name is example.com. Taken from a provider like your domain & hosting from BlueHost, HostGator, or GoDaddy.

Now think, when a visitor visits your site, that visitor will visit your site directly. Visitors who come this way will visit your site directly. There is no problem. But there is no guarantee that all visitors will be real visitors. Hackers, robots, and crawlers can all come here with visitors. And you can also access your site directly. This can damage your site.

 

If you use Cloudflare, the image will be different, but you will not lose your visitors. If you use Cloudflare on your site, it includes all visitors, attackers, robots, and whatever. Not everyone will access your site directly. When someone wants to visit your site by typing example.com in the address bar, take them directly to Cloudflare instead of directly to the data center of your hosting server, then they will be able to visit your site.

 

Now you may be wondering why so many twist patches are needed? Yes, of course. When normal visitors come, they will visit your site very easily. But when an attacker comes to your site, Cloudflare will prevent them from entering your site. That way, it will also prevent robots and others who are not a benefit to your site.

 

Now you may wonder how Cloudflare will understand who is a normal visitor and who is an attacker? Yes, there is a way to understand that. Cloudflare has several IP addresses and all the IPs used by the attackers are blocked by Cloudflare. And when someone comes to visit your website from such an IP, Cloudflare will block their access.

If you look at the image below, you will easily get a clear picture of Cloudflare and why you should use it.

how does cloudflare works?

Image Credit: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/what-is-cloudflare/

Cloudflare’s data center facility

The Cloudflare System has data centers in more than 150 countries on six continents. As a result, your site is fast.

Now I am giving a light explanation of how fast it is! Suppose the data center of the people you have hosted your site is located in America. So when a visitor visits your site from Bangladesh, India. Then your site will take a little longer to load. Because America is far away from Bangladesh and India. So ping will increase here, and your site will take time to load. Again when someone visits your site from America, it will take time for the website to load while visiting from Bangladesh or India; It will take much less time to load. Since your site’s data center is located in the United States.

Check this out: 11 Things To Do If Your Website Is Down

But when you use Cloudflare on your site, your site can be visited quickly. Because as I said before, Cloudflare’s data center is located all over the world.

Why a quick visit?

When you add your site to Cloudflare, your site will read the essentials of your website. Then all the information on your site will be sent to all the data centers in the world where Cloudflare has data centers. Resulting in when a visitor would like to visit your website; Cloudflare then detects its IP from that visitor’s Cloudflare data center, and your site will “sleep” with that visitor. For example, when a visitor wants to visit Bangladesh, Cloudflare will see which data center is closest to Bangladesh. Your site will show visitors from the data center that will be very close to Bangladesh. This way, visitors to any country will be the same. As a result, your domain can be visited very quickly from all over the world.

Advantages in case of server problems

Cloudflare has many advantages, one of which is that there are times when there is a problem with the server causing your website to go down. But if you are using Cloudflare, your website will not be down even if your server is down for any reason. Cloudflare holds a catch on your site, so if a visitor fails your server for any reason, Cloudflare actually “sows” your website to that visitor from its catch. Looking at the screenshot below will make things easier for you.

how cloudflare's cache serving are working?

Image Credit: https://thedomainrobot.com/blog/what-is-cloudflare-cache/

The site is not live due to server problems, but there is no problem visiting the site. This is because the site has the advantage of using Cloudflare, and there is no fear of losing visitors. Here the visitor can easily visit from the catch of Cloudflare. Many visitors may not realize that the site is offline. The website will “live” again when the server problem is resolved.

Cloudflare Pricing Plan

Cloudflare has four types of packages. One of which is free. You can use the free package if you want. However, you will not benefit from using all the features in the free package. It goes without saying. However, free users will also benefit a lot. You can view their dashboard whenever you want by opening a free account. Where you can see all their features.

In our past article, we discussed why Cloudways is the best cloud web hosting company? – (Cloudways Review) You should read it out to gather more information.

Final Summary

Cloudflare is the best level of protector/guide to save our website from malware attacks, DDoS, or hackers. This company will basically provide a Content Delivery Network we know as CDN.