Cloudflare
Cloudflare provides web performance and security services including DDoS protection, WAF, CDN, and DNS management. The free tier offers meaningful protection for small business websites.
Cloudflare is one of the most widely deployed web security and performance platforms available. It operates as a reverse proxy in front of your website, filtering malicious traffic before it reaches your server.
What It Protects Against
- DDoS attacks ... absorbs volumetric attacks that would take down an unprotected site
- Common web application attacks (SQLi, XSS, etc.) via the WAF
- Bot traffic and scraping
- Known malicious IPs
Free vs. Paid
The free plan includes CDN, basic DDoS protection, and SSL. The WAF with managed rules requires a paid plan. For most small businesses, starting with the free plan and upgrading when needed is a reasonable approach.
Setup Complexity
Requires changing your domain's nameservers to Cloudflare. Setup takes 15-30 minutes. No server-side changes required.
Tool Details
- Website
- https://cloudflare.com
- Category
- WAF / DDoS Protection / CDN
- Pricing
- Free tier available; Pro from $20/mo
- Free Tier Available
- Yes
- Status
- active