As a CTO of a startup trying to build a product on the web, though, CF is awesome. It solves a whole bunch of problems for free, and I don't have to worry about

As a CTO of a startup trying to build a product on the web, though, CF is awesome. It solves a whole bunch of problems for free, and I don't have to worry about stuff that I would otherwise have to worry about (and I don't have time to worry about those things on top of all the other things I have to worry about). In a few years, when I have a team of engineers and can spare the resources/expertise, we'll come off CF and do it properly. Until then, CF is a great service. Sorry that your experience from SEA is not great, but tbh we're not selling in SEA, so any traffic from there is just a resource drain on our servers. Anything to discourage traffic from areas we're not serving is a positive for us. Anything to discourage bot traffic is a huge positive. CF won't stop the bots, but costing them some minor amount of money per visit is still positive.