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The major Cloudflare products (namely the CDN, WAF, DDoS protection, DNS management, and even serverless workers) are already replicated in AWS, GCP, and Azure.

The major Cloudflare products (namely the CDN, WAF, DDoS protection, DNS management, and even serverless workers) are already replicated in AWS, GCP, and Azure. AFAIK the main thing that draws people to Cloudflare instead is "it's easier to use than bloated AWS/etc." And while that might be a completely valid value proposition, I'm not sure if it's a long term winner, especially as more and more companies migrate to the big 3 cloud providers. It reminds me a lot of Dropbox and the situation where for years Dropbox's value proposition was "yea OneDrive and iCloud provide the same service, but people like Dropbox because it is independent, unbloated, and simpler to use". But over time that's become less true, and as more and more companies move to using O365, they end up getting OneDrive as part of the deal anyway. And once you're already working in an environment with OneDrive, why continue using Dropbox?

rusteh1 6y ago
I wouldn't call Cloudfront bloated. It is under featured if anything, the product has seen little change in the past few years.
- taf2 6y ago
  However unlike Cloudflare it does support multiple origins with a IMO pretty simple to understand nginx like location x maps to origin b and location c maps to origin... This feature alone is one reason I stopped looking further into Cloudflare...
ternaryoperator 6y ago
I don't dispute the point you're making, but Dropbox for my purposes is way ahead of OneDrive. In particular, OneDrive offers only "eventual sync," whereas in Dropbox, you change a file and it's quickly replicated on other systems. Also, OneDrive has a fixed ceiling of ~ 200K files per OneDrive. Dropbox allows you way more than that. So, while I see your point that eventually OneDrive could displace Dropbox entirely, I believe that Dropbox still has plenty to offer at the moment.
- avvb6ktj 6y ago
  But are you in the majority? Timmy is happy with Google Drive, OneDrive, DropBox or iCloud. He will pick whichever is cheaper and android/office 365/apple environment may weight in each specific case, what's drop box edge? The tech savvy may already go with a personal ftp server, aws, rsync, and other custom solutions. I would like to see data, but from my pov, dropbox is only losing market.
- katbyte 6y ago
  I'd head onedrive was bad a 200k file limit?! I have 800k in google drive right now and no issues.
danielheath 6y ago
The thing that draws me to Cloudflare over AWS is AWS bandwidth charges. CF charge $20/mo for a basic business plan; fronting our domain with CF reduced our AWS egress bill by over $2500/mo.
- mike_d 6y ago
  Cloudflare is the "unlimited storage" of the CDN world. They are giving away investors money today with the hopes that down the road they can... something something. In 3-8 years activist investors are going to realize that Cloudflare is the man-in-the-middle data collection point for a percentage of the internet and that a merger with $adnetwork would produce a money printing machine. A handful of "good guys" in engineering and management will be powerless to stop it when the time comes.
  - danielheath 6y ago
    They’re cheap because they have to buy tons of ingress for their ddos protection product, and bandwidth is sold symmetrically at those volumes, so the egress is functionally free to them.
    - mike_d 6y ago
      Here is another way to think about it: reset the Cloudflare bank account balances to $0 at the beginning of the month. They provide services and collect payments from customers. At the end of the month when bills come due, all the hand waving and "functionally free" in the world doesn't change the fact they spent more than they made.
risyachka 6y ago
It makes sense to use AWS/GCP offerings if you are already using many of their other services. Also it means you have a ton of cash to burn. There are hundreds of thousands of companies that choose not to pay ridiculous price of AWS or not to use Amazon and Google at all - they use smaller providers, many of them manage their infrastructure themselves. For them there is 0 reason to us CDN, DDoD protection etc from Google or Amazon. Cloudflare is one of the best choices for them. It makes sense even for AWS/Google clients that don't want to be changed millions for bandwidth like its gold or something.

rusteh1 6y ago

I wouldn't call Cloudfront bloated. It is under featured if anything, the product has seen little change in the past few years.

taf2 6y ago
However unlike Cloudflare it does support multiple origins with a IMO pretty simple to understand nginx like location x maps to origin b and location c maps to origin... This feature alone is one reason I stopped looking further into Cloudflare...

ternaryoperator 6y ago

I don't dispute the point you're making, but Dropbox for my purposes is way ahead of OneDrive. In particular, OneDrive offers only "eventual sync," whereas in Dropbox, you change a file and it's quickly replicated on other systems. Also, OneDrive has a fixed ceiling of ~ 200K files per OneDrive. Dropbox allows you way more than that. So, while I see your point that eventually OneDrive could displace Dropbox entirely, I believe that Dropbox still has plenty to offer at the moment.

avvb6ktj 6y ago
But are you in the majority? Timmy is happy with Google Drive, OneDrive, DropBox or iCloud. He will pick whichever is cheaper and android/office 365/apple environment may weight in each specific case, what's drop box edge? The tech savvy may already go with a personal ftp server, aws, rsync, and other custom solutions. I would like to see data, but from my pov, dropbox is only losing market.
katbyte 6y ago
I'd head onedrive was bad a 200k file limit?! I have 800k in google drive right now and no issues.

danielheath 6y ago

The thing that draws me to Cloudflare over AWS is AWS bandwidth charges. CF charge $20/mo for a basic business plan; fronting our domain with CF reduced our AWS egress bill by over $2500/mo.

mike_d 6y ago
Cloudflare is the "unlimited storage" of the CDN world. They are giving away investors money today with the hopes that down the road they can... something something. In 3-8 years activist investors are going to realize that Cloudflare is the man-in-the-middle data collection point for a percentage of the internet and that a merger with $adnetwork would produce a money printing machine. A handful of "good guys" in engineering and management will be powerless to stop it when the time comes.
- danielheath 6y ago
  They’re cheap because they have to buy tons of ingress for their ddos protection product, and bandwidth is sold symmetrically at those volumes, so the egress is functionally free to them.
  - mike_d 6y ago
    Here is another way to think about it: reset the Cloudflare bank account balances to $0 at the beginning of the month. They provide services and collect payments from customers. At the end of the month when bills come due, all the hand waving and "functionally free" in the world doesn't change the fact they spent more than they made.

risyachka 6y ago

It makes sense to use AWS/GCP offerings if you are already using many of their other services. Also it means you have a ton of cash to burn. There are hundreds of thousands of companies that choose not to pay ridiculous price of AWS or not to use Amazon and Google at all - they use smaller providers, many of them manage their infrastructure themselves. For them there is 0 reason to us CDN, DDoD protection etc from Google or Amazon. Cloudflare is one of the best choices for them. It makes sense even for AWS/Google clients that don't want to be changed millions for bandwidth like its gold or something.