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It would be good to understand what Cloudflare gets out of the deal. The article is very much just "Astro, but someone else pays the bills!" which is of course

It would be good to understand what Cloudflare gets out of the deal. The article is very much just "Astro, but someone else pays the bills!" which is of course lovely for Astro.

pxtail 10mo ago
It's obvious when you look at https://astro.build/blog/astro-6-beta/ https://astro.build/blog/astro-6-beta/ and see "Cloudflare" sprinkled everywhere in the article.
lateral_cloud 10mo ago
Mindshare with developers is what cloudflare gets
philipwhiuk 10mo ago
Feels like they are trying to do vertical integration on the whole stack and compete with Vercel.
- pjmlp 10mo ago
  For me, anyone that tries to compete with Vercel has to beat their offering in backend runtimes.
mpeg 10mo ago
Same reason vercel buys open source... it makes cloudflare always a great deployment option for all Astro sites, which in turn helps cloudflare's core business. For example, Cloudflare released their vite plugin which makes it effortless for frameworks that use the vite env API to run inside workerd (meaning you get to use cloudflare service bindings in dev) back in April and only React Router had support for it. Nextjs has no support, the draft PR to add support for Sveltekit has been parked until the next major version, Astro only just added support in their beta 6.0 release 3 days ago With this acquisition, Astro will probably be first to future updates that increase compatibility with cloudflare. It's smart, and was probably not very expensive (more of an acqui-hire)
- jtbaker 10mo ago
  > Nextjs has no support From what I remember, you can't even run a NextJS app through vite?
  - mpeg 10mo ago
    Yes, that's part of the problem, deploying nextjs to cloudflare in the first place used to be an absolute nightmare, let alone the dev experience (I think it's better now)
    - sp4cec0wb0y 10mo ago
      Wasn't this a decision made by Vercel to incentivize people using Vercel for NextJS apps? I can't recall.
    - jamieatlason 10mo ago
      It's gotten a lot better since last year with OpenNext. Last I tested was Next.js 15 though. Who knows what Vercel has broken with Next.js 16. https://opennext.js.org/cloudflare https://opennext.js.org/cloudflare
  - mattgreenrocks 10mo ago
    This is insane to me, and validates my irrational dislike of next.
    - jtbaker 10mo ago
      100% rational. Nuxt/Astro FTW.
    - hungryhobbit 10mo ago
      Definitely irrational. There are lots of logical reasons to dislike Next (like the fact that they pile new shiny bit on top of new shiny bit without caring about the regular user experience) ... but being mad that it can't run on Vite is silly. It's like being mad that Rails can't run on Python, or that React can't run on jQuery. Next already has its own build system, so of course it doesn't work with another build system.
Aissen 10mo ago
What does Vercel get out of Next.js? Just default integration of overpriced cloud infra.
- azangru 10mo ago
  Vercel was founded (or co-founded?) by the author of Next.js. That's a very different story. Vercel is like what some hypothetical Astro Cloud could have become if it had grown out of Astro.
  - amitav1 10mo ago
    "I don't care, it's a stupid question."
- pjmlp 10mo ago
  It gets to be THE platform where to deploy frontends for many headless enterprise CMS and comerce stores that due to partnerships with Vercel only have Next.js based SDKs. Additionally, I wish more serveless cloud vendors would offer a free tier like Vercel, including support for compiled languages on the backend (C, C++, Rust, Go) without asking me for a credit card upfront.
richardwhiuk 10mo ago
https://www.tumblr.com/ourincrediblejourney https://www.tumblr.com/ourincrediblejourney This is probably just an acquihire.
pier25 10mo ago
Probably better support for CF Workers/Pages and better integration with Wrangler.
paxys 10mo ago
They get to make Astro -> Cloudflare the default publishing pipeline. Sure users may pick something else, but even if a small % stick with Cloudflare that's an overall win.
- threetonesun 10mo ago
  I expected something clearer in the blog post about deploying Astro on Cloudflare Pages, as I imagine many Astro users (like me) are on Netlify. I think every deployment pipeline having it's own preferred UI framework (and CMS, and cloud-DB solution) makes a lot of sense.
  - HumanOstrich 10mo ago
    Why did you expect info about deploying Astro to Cloudflare Pages? It's been supported for a long time already.
    - threetonesun 10mo ago
      Seems like an obvious thing to call out for people (like me) who don't know.
      - HumanOstrich 10mo ago
        So something like "now that we own Astro, all of you using Netlify should start migrating to Cloudflare Pages"?
        threetonesun 10mo ago
        "Hey don't forget it's easy to deploy Astro on Cloudflare pages" with a link to the docs? I saw them mention deployments to Cloudflare (and continuing to support other platforms) but had to go look up what Cloudflare's platform is even called myself. Seems like a missed marketing opportunity.
csomar 10mo ago
Nextjs doesn’t really work on cloudflare with the latest versions. There is an adapter but it’s buggy as hell. The direction is also likely to continue: https://omarabid.com/nextjs-vercel https://omarabid.com/nextjs-vercel Source: I use cloudflare and used to run my app there (nextjs) and had to do a migration to vite.js. So the way I see it, this is cloudflare response to vercel.
- solarkraft 10mo ago
  My god. Every time I touch Next.js in some project I think “hey, this actually doesn’t feel so bad to develop with, dare I say it feels nice?“ and every time I read about it I think “what the hell, this is the worst choice you can make“. It’s wild that they’re somewhat taking the whole React ecosystem with them.
- everybodyknows 10mo ago
  Following your link, the fault for this appears to lie entirely with Vercel management. Cross fingers that CloudFlare never try similar lock-in games, now that they control Astro?
  - csomar 10mo ago
    I don’t think so since they are using the worker model. My guess is that the first class support will go to that. Though they can do lockin differently (kv, queues, etc..)
bflesch 10mo ago
Cloudflare definitely gets positive PR out of this which makes people forget their CEO's recent meltdown on twitter.
- chuckadams 10mo ago
  The "meltdown" where he refused to jump to the whims of Italy's football cartel and block whatever addresses they wanted without accountability or review? More meltdowns, please.
  - epolanski 10mo ago
    A meltdown is a meltdown. Cloudflare is bound to respect the laws of the countries it operates, and if he disagrees with the process, understandable, that was not the way to express it.
    - philipallstar 10mo ago
      You get what you pay for with free PR commentary.
adverbly 10mo ago
I for one host several Astro sites on Cloudflare Pages. Its quite a nice DX actually. I could see Cloudflare just wanting to push for a bit more vertical integration in the space to give themselves some more options.
nindalf 10mo ago
None of us have access to Cloudflare's internal data. But a reasonable guess is that enough of their current and future paying customers use Astro? I'm one of those - Astro hosted on Cloudflare.
whimsicalism 10mo ago
cloudflare wants to be vercel
- unfunco 10mo ago
  Cloudflare wants to be worth much less?
kelvinjps10 10mo ago
Advertise their solution? Now astro can put them into the main deploying option and that's a good way for cloudfare to acquire new customers
zipy124 10mo ago
Sometimes it is cheaper to buy a company than build the internal tool team you might have had to build from scratch anyway. Half acqui-hire, half knowing you've built something on-top of it and want it to stick around. I also wouldn't be surprised if cloudflare wants to build this into their site-hosting capabilities.
jayanmn 10mo ago
VMware maintained spring framework for many years. It was good ( as a user)

It would be good to understand what Cloudflare gets out of the deal. The article is very much just "Astro, but someone else pays the bills!" which is of course lovely for Astro.

pxtail 10mo ago

It's obvious when you look at https://astro.build/blog/astro-6-beta/ https://astro.build/blog/astro-6-beta/ and see "Cloudflare" sprinkled everywhere in the article.

lateral_cloud 10mo ago

Mindshare with developers is what cloudflare gets

philipwhiuk 10mo ago

Feels like they are trying to do vertical integration on the whole stack and compete with Vercel.

pjmlp 10mo ago
For me, anyone that tries to compete with Vercel has to beat their offering in backend runtimes.

mpeg 10mo ago

Same reason vercel buys open source... it makes cloudflare always a great deployment option for all Astro sites, which in turn helps cloudflare's core business. For example, Cloudflare released their vite plugin which makes it effortless for frameworks that use the vite env API to run inside workerd (meaning you get to use cloudflare service bindings in dev) back in April and only React Router had support for it. Nextjs has no support, the draft PR to add support for Sveltekit has been parked until the next major version, Astro only just added support in their beta 6.0 release 3 days ago With this acquisition, Astro will probably be first to future updates that increase compatibility with cloudflare. It's smart, and was probably not very expensive (more of an acqui-hire)

jtbaker 10mo ago
> Nextjs has no support From what I remember, you can't even run a NextJS app through vite?
- mpeg 10mo ago
  Yes, that's part of the problem, deploying nextjs to cloudflare in the first place used to be an absolute nightmare, let alone the dev experience (I think it's better now)
  - sp4cec0wb0y 10mo ago
    Wasn't this a decision made by Vercel to incentivize people using Vercel for NextJS apps? I can't recall.
  - jamieatlason 10mo ago
    It's gotten a lot better since last year with OpenNext. Last I tested was Next.js 15 though. Who knows what Vercel has broken with Next.js 16. https://opennext.js.org/cloudflare https://opennext.js.org/cloudflare
- mattgreenrocks 10mo ago
  This is insane to me, and validates my irrational dislike of next.
  - jtbaker 10mo ago
    100% rational. Nuxt/Astro FTW.
  - hungryhobbit 10mo ago
    Definitely irrational. There are lots of logical reasons to dislike Next (like the fact that they pile new shiny bit on top of new shiny bit without caring about the regular user experience) ... but being mad that it can't run on Vite is silly. It's like being mad that Rails can't run on Python, or that React can't run on jQuery. Next already has its own build system, so of course it doesn't work with another build system.

Aissen 10mo ago

What does Vercel get out of Next.js? Just default integration of overpriced cloud infra.

azangru 10mo ago
Vercel was founded (or co-founded?) by the author of Next.js. That's a very different story. Vercel is like what some hypothetical Astro Cloud could have become if it had grown out of Astro.
- amitav1 10mo ago
  "I don't care, it's a stupid question."
pjmlp 10mo ago
It gets to be THE platform where to deploy frontends for many headless enterprise CMS and comerce stores that due to partnerships with Vercel only have Next.js based SDKs. Additionally, I wish more serveless cloud vendors would offer a free tier like Vercel, including support for compiled languages on the backend (C, C++, Rust, Go) without asking me for a credit card upfront.

richardwhiuk 10mo ago

https://www.tumblr.com/ourincrediblejourney https://www.tumblr.com/ourincrediblejourney This is probably just an acquihire.

pier25 10mo ago

Probably better support for CF Workers/Pages and better integration with Wrangler.

paxys 10mo ago

They get to make Astro -> Cloudflare the default publishing pipeline. Sure users may pick something else, but even if a small % stick with Cloudflare that's an overall win.

threetonesun 10mo ago
I expected something clearer in the blog post about deploying Astro on Cloudflare Pages, as I imagine many Astro users (like me) are on Netlify. I think every deployment pipeline having it's own preferred UI framework (and CMS, and cloud-DB solution) makes a lot of sense.
- HumanOstrich 10mo ago
  Why did you expect info about deploying Astro to Cloudflare Pages? It's been supported for a long time already.
  - threetonesun 10mo ago
    Seems like an obvious thing to call out for people (like me) who don't know.
    - HumanOstrich 10mo ago
      So something like "now that we own Astro, all of you using Netlify should start migrating to Cloudflare Pages"?
      - threetonesun 10mo ago
        "Hey don't forget it's easy to deploy Astro on Cloudflare pages" with a link to the docs? I saw them mention deployments to Cloudflare (and continuing to support other platforms) but had to go look up what Cloudflare's platform is even called myself. Seems like a missed marketing opportunity.

csomar 10mo ago

Nextjs doesn’t really work on cloudflare with the latest versions. There is an adapter but it’s buggy as hell. The direction is also likely to continue: https://omarabid.com/nextjs-vercel https://omarabid.com/nextjs-vercel Source: I use cloudflare and used to run my app there (nextjs) and had to do a migration to vite.js. So the way I see it, this is cloudflare response to vercel.

solarkraft 10mo ago
My god. Every time I touch Next.js in some project I think “hey, this actually doesn’t feel so bad to develop with, dare I say it feels nice?“ and every time I read about it I think “what the hell, this is the worst choice you can make“. It’s wild that they’re somewhat taking the whole React ecosystem with them.
everybodyknows 10mo ago
Following your link, the fault for this appears to lie entirely with Vercel management. Cross fingers that CloudFlare never try similar lock-in games, now that they control Astro?
- csomar 10mo ago
  I don’t think so since they are using the worker model. My guess is that the first class support will go to that. Though they can do lockin differently (kv, queues, etc..)

bflesch 10mo ago

Cloudflare definitely gets positive PR out of this which makes people forget their CEO's recent meltdown on twitter.

chuckadams 10mo ago
The "meltdown" where he refused to jump to the whims of Italy's football cartel and block whatever addresses they wanted without accountability or review? More meltdowns, please.
- epolanski 10mo ago
  A meltdown is a meltdown. Cloudflare is bound to respect the laws of the countries it operates, and if he disagrees with the process, understandable, that was not the way to express it.
  - philipallstar 10mo ago
    You get what you pay for with free PR commentary.

adverbly 10mo ago

I for one host several Astro sites on Cloudflare Pages. Its quite a nice DX actually. I could see Cloudflare just wanting to push for a bit more vertical integration in the space to give themselves some more options.

nindalf 10mo ago

None of us have access to Cloudflare's internal data. But a reasonable guess is that enough of their current and future paying customers use Astro? I'm one of those - Astro hosted on Cloudflare.

whimsicalism 10mo ago

cloudflare wants to be vercel

unfunco 10mo ago
Cloudflare wants to be worth much less?

kelvinjps10 10mo ago

Advertise their solution? Now astro can put them into the main deploying option and that's a good way for cloudfare to acquire new customers

zipy124 10mo ago

Sometimes it is cheaper to buy a company than build the internal tool team you might have had to build from scratch anyway. Half acqui-hire, half knowing you've built something on-top of it and want it to stick around. I also wouldn't be surprised if cloudflare wants to build this into their site-hosting capabilities.

jayanmn 10mo ago

VMware maintained spring framework for many years. It was good ( as a user)