Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, specifically , why are using Cloudfare? Kind of sounds like you're saying both that you do and don't need it.
It’s free, solid DNS product, gives me a CDN on top of it and stops a lot of pesky bots. Plus moving the domain registration there keeps the renewal at the lowest possible price. I can’t see any good reason not to use it.
>...but I had Cloudflare out front absorbing all the traffic that would have come from serving static assets.
I interpreted that to mean Cloudflare contributed significantly load-wise, then you indicated that your site wasn't largely static or cacheable (I think?).
Anyway, in addition to curiosity, we're also considering Cloudflare to offload from more costly AWS instances. So, just trying to suss out whether Cloudflare was or wasn't instrumental for you per your comments. Still not 100% sure, but thanks for the discussion.