BunnyCDN
Do you use them in prod. The price is alluring. Thinking of putting my next large project on there.
Tell HN: Don't Use Cloudflare
21–30 of 34 posts
Re: Tell HN: Don't Use Cloudflare
#22Perhaps a few comments are missing what seems to me to be the main point... its not about whether the product is cheap vs the competition.
It's about the sales process... if the client was open about bandwidth estimates and has broadly met them, then its still not great to offer a teaser rate and pull the rug later, once the integration is done. This would negatively impact the client, and isn't a way of doing business that great companies promote.
JGC said he'd take a look and that seems like a good response from CF.
Re: Tell HN: Don't Use Cloudflare
#23> I'm not saying CF is bad, but, their sales tactics are shady
Sounds like your company had unreasonable expectations, their business plan [1] doesn't mention anywhere they provide unlimited bandwidth, what they do say is who their Business plan is for, which should've set expectations:
> For small ecommerce websites and businesses requiring advanced security and performance, PCI compliance, and prioritized email support.
i.e. it's unreasonable to assume 200-300TB /month can be classified as a small ecommerce website and that your company should've been more diligent in verifying what the expected cost should be for their high bandwidth requirements than just assuming cloud hosting companies should bear the loss of their excessive resource usage in a fixed rate plan.
But I do think Cloudflare should clarify the free bandwidth their plans include to better clarify the suitability of their plans.
Re: Tell HN: Don't Use Cloudflare
#24I have my issues with Cloudflare and their captcha and their contribution to the centralisation of the internet, but this doesn't really seem justified. You clearly aren't using their business plan for its intended use - and yes, marketing and sales teams are always going to emphasise features over limits, but I'm guessing a quick "hey we plan to use this for 300TB/month is that OK?" question up front would have saved a lot of effort on both sides.
Overall, I'm always really impressed by how the Cloudflare exec team is on here, helping out directly or offering to get involved personally when HN has a problem. I think if people keep abusing it like this, that level of support will probably be dialled back significantly, which would be a shame.
Re: Tell HN: Don't Use Cloudflare
#25Re: Tell HN: Don't Use Cloudflare
#26I have my issues with Cloudflare and their captcha and their contribution to the centralisation of the internet, but this doesn't really seem justified. You clearly aren't using their business plan for its intended use - and yes, marketing and sales teams are always going to emphasise features over limits, but I'm guessing a quick "hey we plan to use this for 300TB/month is that OK?" question up front would have save…
Overall, I'm always really impressed by how the Cloudflare exec team is on here, helping out directly or offering to get involved personally when HN has a problem.
There's something to learn from every customer interaction. Big or small. Free or paying. I like to hear from customers.
Re: Tell HN: Don't Use Cloudflare
#27300TB is a lot. No idea what your business is. But that is a lot of data for a medium sized business. I remember an article here about someone optimizing their cloudflare setup with something else and sending tons of data through some peering agreement. Its 2am and I don’t remember the details. Anyone else remember seeing that?
Maybe Tory Hunt and his bandwidth post[0]
[0] https://www.troyhunt.com/how-i-got-pwned-by-my-cloud-costs/
Re: Tell HN: Don't Use Cloudflare
#28300TB is a lot. No idea what your business is. But that is a lot of data for a medium sized business. I remember an article here about someone optimizing their cloudflare setup with something else and sending tons of data through some peering agreement. Its 2am and I don’t remember the details. Anyone else remember seeing that?
This feels familiar - was it image hosting? Using Backblaze b2 for storage and Cloudflare workers to chuck data around
Re: Tell HN: Don't Use Cloudflare
#29Are you serving files other then html/images/css, etc? 300tb is a lot, AWS cloudfront would be charging ~$6000/month by a quick estimate. Recognize they were probably taking a loss with your business, I'm surprised you didn't discuss how much bandwidth you were expecting when you agreed to the contract, sounds like a miscommunication.
Cloud front is also pretty expensive bandwidth wise. CDNs has a pretty wide range of quality, features and pricing.
I would put Cloudflare in the lower tier of quality but they do have a lot of features. If the OP only cares about raw bandwidth pricing, then they could probably find a CDN with no features except file serving and reporting for about $1500.
They’d have to compromise a little on Time to first byte but there’s a lot of applications where that matters less like video serving.
Re: Tell HN: Don't Use Cloudflare
#30I love their products, but their sales hasn't really convinced me either. I contacted them while our web service was getting hammered by a TCP SYN flood. They asked me which layer the attack was on, and I told them L4. They proceeded to try to sell me some TCP proxy product of theirs for $$$$, and despite my protests, just wouldn't listen when I told them that their HTTPS proxying/load balancer/CDN/whatever product would probably be enough.
I left that call and activated that free tier product and it has been enough. No wonder their sales reps need to resort to such tactics when their $0/$20/$200 product is enough.