7 ms·

Drop in Cloudflare Replacement

31 points by ivanstegic 4y ago

Having trouble finding a drop-in replacement for Cloudflare. Any suggestions? - CacheFly has no easy trial to sign up for - Fastly has no DNS - CDN77 has no DNS - Google, Amazon, Azure are stand alone CDN There doesn't seem to be a good alternative? Or, am I missing something?

freedom-fries 4y ago
> Google, Amazon, Azure are stand alone CDN Not really sure what exactly you are looking for and at what price point, but Google and AWS both have domain registration and WW highly available DNS services.
alberth 4y ago
Which functionality from Cloudflare do you need? They have quite of few offerings.
- ivanstegic 4y ago
  Honestly, it's the DNS and whole HTML/File assets caching and acceleration that it provides.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    If you're willing to have two logins rather than one, your options are practically limitless. Get DNS from one provider, CDN from another, problem solved. There's even a decent chance your registrar offers DNS, which means you're not adding an extra login (unless CloudFlare's also your registrar) If you must have DNS bundled with the other stuff, your options are... way less limitless.
    - ivanstegic 4y ago
      I am OK with separating it out. It's much easier to manage for a larger number of clients though. That's why!
      - yamtaddle 4y ago
        Some providers of DNS and/or CDN have configuration Web APIs that can make managing multiple service providers less painful, especially if you're already scripting a lot of your other configuration (virtual machine deployments & config, or what have you)
- latchkey 4y ago
  Or, what's wrong with CF?
  - MacsHeadroom 4y ago
    Centralization, censorship, not supporting competition, etc.
    - rsstack 4y ago
      - How can a business, specifically a CDN, not be centralized? - Your business, your values, you're of course free to ignore Cloudflare if you disagree with their policies. - What kind of support are they supposed to give their competitors that they aren't?
      - yucky 4y ago
        >- How can a business, specifically a CDN, not be centralized? IPFS? Internet Computer? I know HN hates crypto, but isn't this one of it's main use cases?
        rsstack 4y ago
        Won't share my opinion on crypto, but concretely: I believe IPFS only serves static contents (which is what CDNs did a couple of decades ago) and doesn't serve web traffic directly due to latency and throughput limitations without a "centralized" CDN, such a Cloudflare https://developers.cloudflare.com/web3/ipfs-gateway/reference/updating-for-ipfs/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/web3/ipfs-gateway/referenc....
        MacsHeadroom 4y ago
        IPFS does serve traffic directly, and faster than through Cloudflare; if you run a local node. It accomplishes this by pre-caching content related to the content you access. So it is a bit network heavy. But I've been using it for about a year and the speed just can't be beat. https://docs.ipfs.tech/install/ipfs-desktop/ https://docs.ipfs.tech/install/ipfs-desktop/
- ivanstegic 4y ago
  oh, also: separate accounts with domains per account so my clients can access their own set of domains. I need some sort of separation of permissions.
izzytcp 4y ago
You won’t, unfortunately Cloudflare has no direct competitors.
rmdoss 4y ago
A couple that I know: Sucuri: DNS, WAF and CDN NOC.org: DNS, WAF and CDN
- ivanstegic 4y ago
  noc.org looked great to me, then I started clicking around and all I got what raw PHP files! for example, the homepage: <?php $content_canonical = "https://noc.org/ https://noc.org/"; $content_ogtype = "website"; include "includes/header.php"; ?>  <header class="masthead"> <div class="container px-5"> <div class="row gx-5 align-items-center"> <div class="col-lg-6">  <div class="mb-5 mb-lg-0 text-center text-lg-start">
  - TheNewsIsHere 4y ago
    And unfortunately, Sucuri is a GoDaddy product now :(
mdasen 4y ago
I think having separate DNS from your CDN isn't that big a deal, but bunny.net will combine both. Their DNS is currently in preview (open preview to anyone), but it looks like it'll be offering what you want. Cloudflare has been taking a more expansive view of a CDN, but bunny.net seems to be going in that direction as well. They're offering CDN, DNS, storage, and video so far.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  > Cloudflare has been taking a more expansive view of a CDN, but bunny.net seems to be going in that direction as well. They're offering CDN, DNS, storage, and video so far. I think most CDNs are at least trying to do this. I suspect the margins on nice-to-haves attached to CDN are way higher than heavily-commidified CDN on its own. Plus it gives you a deeper moat and much stronger lock-in.
christophilus 4y ago
It depends on why you use them. I use BunnyCDN which is fine for my usage. I use my own video transcoding servers (hosted on Netcup for suuuper cheap). I use Render for my applications. I use Cloudflare for a proxy, but could probably replace it in a week or so using Go + Caddy + a VPS of some kind and it would probably be fine for my use case. It really depends on your use case and volume.
- ivanstegic 4y ago
  I need something I can pay a fair amount for, that provides DNS service and HTML and file asset acceleration. I want to switch the proxy on, let it offload as much of the traffic from the original source server as possible, and forget about it. My clients should be able to control their DNS on their own, on let us do it for them. They should only have access to their own domains.
  - shyn3 4y ago
    Verizon has a good CDN but I don't know about managing multiple clients
  - Havoc 4y ago
    Bunny does now have DNS - though it is still in beta. Don't think they have support for sub-accounts/client access though
- BilalBudhani 4y ago
  Netcup looks great, thanks!
ivanstegic 4y ago
bunny.net keeps coming up, that's great! any takes on CacheFly?
distantsounds 4y ago
Akamai?
ofrzeta 4y ago
We've been using KeyCDN for some applications. It's comparatively cheap and is based in Switzerland, if that matters.
jayFellows 4y ago
There's https://fleek.co/ https://fleek.co/. It's not a drop-in replacement, but relevant to the conversation here. Haven't used it yet but it's increasingly on my radar.
- ivanstegic 4y ago
  this looks very web3, blockchainy
stevenicr 4y ago
It's DDoS protection that cloudflare can handle, and provide subsidized, that makes it so valuable. I too am interested in what competing services are available to protect dns / routing from DDoS.. Without cloudflare protecting the server ip / DNS, it only takes a few people using [script name] to essentially make a web site inaccessible (via Denial or Service attacks). If many people want to brigade and create DDoS against a site it can be impossible for people to use it to communicate with it / through it. Not sure there is a good / strong enough alternative, and not sure what the average / semi strong alternatives are at this time actually.
kmos17 4y ago
Stackpath (previously maxcdn) has cdn/waf/dns with ddos. The service is actually really good and pricing very competitive. Support is knowledgeable and very helpful and the cdn has extensive customization options. Only downside I’ve seen is somewhat slower performance in Asia than comparable cdn’s. In terms of cost they blow cloudflare, fastly or aws out of the water once you start needing enterprise level features for small to medium size sites. I’m surprised they’re rarely mentioned on HN.
- konha 4y ago
  > I’m surprised they’re rarely mentioned on HN. I’m not surprised at all: No public information on pricing & “contact sales” buttons. They don’t really seem to cater to small to medium sites.
  - kmos17 4y ago
    Not publicly disclosed pricing is very annoying I agree, not sure why stackpath doesn’t disclose them but the pricing we got with them was much lower than others. Also last time I was researching waf+cdn services it seemed to me all were doing the same thing, even if basic pricing was disclosed, real enterprise level features pricing were hidden behind contact us links, at least that was the case with fastly and cloudflare. With aws getting the ddos remediation team on a call required a $40k per year commit! Not in any way affiliated with them other than being a customer, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised.
- ivanstegic 4y ago
  i was surprised to learn maxcdn was bought up when i remembered they existed. had a good experience with them previously, and they were fast. it's sad that there are still companies that don't have a way to try a service out WITHOUT having to call someone or email someone. just give me a way to login and poke around. how hard is that?
  - kmos17 4y ago
    Yes that seems to be a mistake. Not sure what their core market is today, maybe they rely more on an enterprise sales channel. I’d still recommend checking them out, I just hope they stay in business because I like the pricing, feature set and support! Last time I checked Cloudflare and fastly were very expensive once you need more advanced features.
leros 4y ago
There is no 1:1 Cloudflare alternative. You can replace lots of their functionality with a variety of competitors but they also have some truly unique features you can't find elsewhere.
nik_stackpath 4y ago
@Ivan you can have all of the mentioned above within one login if you decide to check stackpath. I reached out to you on linkedin with no luck. Let me know if you want to connect and we talk more about your biz case. Cheers!

31 points by ivanstegic 4y ago

freedom-fries 4y ago

> Google, Amazon, Azure are stand alone CDN Not really sure what exactly you are looking for and at what price point, but Google and AWS both have domain registration and WW highly available DNS services.

alberth 4y ago

Which functionality from Cloudflare do you need? They have quite of few offerings.

ivanstegic 4y ago
Honestly, it's the DNS and whole HTML/File assets caching and acceleration that it provides.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  If you're willing to have two logins rather than one, your options are practically limitless. Get DNS from one provider, CDN from another, problem solved. There's even a decent chance your registrar offers DNS, which means you're not adding an extra login (unless CloudFlare's also your registrar) If you must have DNS bundled with the other stuff, your options are... way less limitless.
  - ivanstegic 4y ago
    I am OK with separating it out. It's much easier to manage for a larger number of clients though. That's why!
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      Some providers of DNS and/or CDN have configuration Web APIs that can make managing multiple service providers less painful, especially if you're already scripting a lot of your other configuration (virtual machine deployments & config, or what have you)
latchkey 4y ago
Or, what's wrong with CF?
- MacsHeadroom 4y ago
  Centralization, censorship, not supporting competition, etc.
  - rsstack 4y ago
    - How can a business, specifically a CDN, not be centralized? - Your business, your values, you're of course free to ignore Cloudflare if you disagree with their policies. - What kind of support are they supposed to give their competitors that they aren't?
    - yucky 4y ago
      >- How can a business, specifically a CDN, not be centralized? IPFS? Internet Computer? I know HN hates crypto, but isn't this one of it's main use cases?
      - rsstack 4y ago
        Won't share my opinion on crypto, but concretely: I believe IPFS only serves static contents (which is what CDNs did a couple of decades ago) and doesn't serve web traffic directly due to latency and throughput limitations without a "centralized" CDN, such a Cloudflare https://developers.cloudflare.com/web3/ipfs-gateway/reference/updating-for-ipfs/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/web3/ipfs-gateway/referenc....
        MacsHeadroom 4y ago
        IPFS does serve traffic directly, and faster than through Cloudflare; if you run a local node. It accomplishes this by pre-caching content related to the content you access. So it is a bit network heavy. But I've been using it for about a year and the speed just can't be beat. https://docs.ipfs.tech/install/ipfs-desktop/ https://docs.ipfs.tech/install/ipfs-desktop/
ivanstegic 4y ago
oh, also: separate accounts with domains per account so my clients can access their own set of domains. I need some sort of separation of permissions.

izzytcp 4y ago

You won’t, unfortunately Cloudflare has no direct competitors.

rmdoss 4y ago

A couple that I know: Sucuri: DNS, WAF and CDN NOC.org: DNS, WAF and CDN

ivanstegic 4y ago
noc.org looked great to me, then I started clicking around and all I got what raw PHP files! for example, the homepage: <?php $content_canonical = "https://noc.org/ https://noc.org/"; $content_ogtype = "website"; include "includes/header.php"; ?>  <header class="masthead"> <div class="container px-5"> <div class="row gx-5 align-items-center"> <div class="col-lg-6">  <div class="mb-5 mb-lg-0 text-center text-lg-start">
- TheNewsIsHere 4y ago
  And unfortunately, Sucuri is a GoDaddy product now :(

mdasen 4y ago

I think having separate DNS from your CDN isn't that big a deal, but bunny.net will combine both. Their DNS is currently in preview (open preview to anyone), but it looks like it'll be offering what you want. Cloudflare has been taking a more expansive view of a CDN, but bunny.net seems to be going in that direction as well. They're offering CDN, DNS, storage, and video so far.

yamtaddle 4y ago
> Cloudflare has been taking a more expansive view of a CDN, but bunny.net seems to be going in that direction as well. They're offering CDN, DNS, storage, and video so far. I think most CDNs are at least trying to do this. I suspect the margins on nice-to-haves attached to CDN are way higher than heavily-commidified CDN on its own. Plus it gives you a deeper moat and much stronger lock-in.

christophilus 4y ago

It depends on why you use them. I use BunnyCDN which is fine for my usage. I use my own video transcoding servers (hosted on Netcup for suuuper cheap). I use Render for my applications. I use Cloudflare for a proxy, but could probably replace it in a week or so using Go + Caddy + a VPS of some kind and it would probably be fine for my use case. It really depends on your use case and volume.

ivanstegic 4y ago
I need something I can pay a fair amount for, that provides DNS service and HTML and file asset acceleration. I want to switch the proxy on, let it offload as much of the traffic from the original source server as possible, and forget about it. My clients should be able to control their DNS on their own, on let us do it for them. They should only have access to their own domains.
- shyn3 4y ago
  Verizon has a good CDN but I don't know about managing multiple clients
- Havoc 4y ago
  Bunny does now have DNS - though it is still in beta. Don't think they have support for sub-accounts/client access though
BilalBudhani 4y ago
Netcup looks great, thanks!

ivanstegic 4y ago

bunny.net keeps coming up, that's great! any takes on CacheFly?

distantsounds 4y ago

Akamai?

ofrzeta 4y ago

We've been using KeyCDN for some applications. It's comparatively cheap and is based in Switzerland, if that matters.

jayFellows 4y ago

There's https://fleek.co/ https://fleek.co/. It's not a drop-in replacement, but relevant to the conversation here. Haven't used it yet but it's increasingly on my radar.

ivanstegic 4y ago
this looks very web3, blockchainy

stevenicr 4y ago

It's DDoS protection that cloudflare can handle, and provide subsidized, that makes it so valuable. I too am interested in what competing services are available to protect dns / routing from DDoS.. Without cloudflare protecting the server ip / DNS, it only takes a few people using [script name] to essentially make a web site inaccessible (via Denial or Service attacks). If many people want to brigade and create DDoS against a site it can be impossible for people to use it to communicate with it / through it. Not sure there is a good / strong enough alternative, and not sure what the average / semi strong alternatives are at this time actually.

kmos17 4y ago

Stackpath (previously maxcdn) has cdn/waf/dns with ddos. The service is actually really good and pricing very competitive. Support is knowledgeable and very helpful and the cdn has extensive customization options. Only downside I’ve seen is somewhat slower performance in Asia than comparable cdn’s. In terms of cost they blow cloudflare, fastly or aws out of the water once you start needing enterprise level features for small to medium size sites. I’m surprised they’re rarely mentioned on HN.

konha 4y ago
> I’m surprised they’re rarely mentioned on HN. I’m not surprised at all: No public information on pricing & “contact sales” buttons. They don’t really seem to cater to small to medium sites.
- kmos17 4y ago
  Not publicly disclosed pricing is very annoying I agree, not sure why stackpath doesn’t disclose them but the pricing we got with them was much lower than others. Also last time I was researching waf+cdn services it seemed to me all were doing the same thing, even if basic pricing was disclosed, real enterprise level features pricing were hidden behind contact us links, at least that was the case with fastly and cloudflare. With aws getting the ddos remediation team on a call required a $40k per year commit! Not in any way affiliated with them other than being a customer, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised.
ivanstegic 4y ago
i was surprised to learn maxcdn was bought up when i remembered they existed. had a good experience with them previously, and they were fast. it's sad that there are still companies that don't have a way to try a service out WITHOUT having to call someone or email someone. just give me a way to login and poke around. how hard is that?
- kmos17 4y ago
  Yes that seems to be a mistake. Not sure what their core market is today, maybe they rely more on an enterprise sales channel. I’d still recommend checking them out, I just hope they stay in business because I like the pricing, feature set and support! Last time I checked Cloudflare and fastly were very expensive once you need more advanced features.

leros 4y ago

There is no 1:1 Cloudflare alternative. You can replace lots of their functionality with a variety of competitors but they also have some truly unique features you can't find elsewhere.

nik_stackpath 4y ago

@Ivan you can have all of the mentioned above within one login if you decide to check stackpath. I reached out to you on linkedin with no luck. Let me know if you want to connect and we talk more about your biz case. Cheers!