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> I'm pretty sure there are hosting services who can just take your site offline if you exceed your bandwidth quota Having my website instant-killable "for fun

• akkartik 4y ago
  Have you ever actually had this problem? I haven't in 20 years of hosting a site.
  • naet 4y ago
    I have had it happen many times for large sites. Always assumed it was some overseas business competitor or extortionist but we've been able to get things back up quickly or prevent it from bringing the site down completely. There's also tons of sites that get the "HN hug of death" when they're posted here (or Reddit, or wherever else that generates a surge in traffic). Tragic to miss out on all those potential hits and easy to prevent with Cloudflare free. You can dislike Cloudflare policies, but they do provide a valuable service and often completely free of charge. That's exactly why they have such a large slice of the internet under their domain. People don't just opt in for no reason.
    • akkartik 4y ago
      > There's also tons of sites that get the "HN hug of death" when they're posted here (or Reddit, or wherever else that generates a surge in traffic). Tragic to miss out on all those potential hits and easy to prevent with Cloudflare free. Sure. But I was originally responding to a comment that claimed the key reason to use Cloudflare was DDoS protection. If the traffic is real, it's not too unreasonable to pay for it. Using any service comes with costs and benefits. Any reason you have to use a service irrespective of their behavior is just a blind spot.