This is very worrying.
I use Workers to cache and stream audio. I was under the impression Workers were under a different TOS since the business model is totally different and paid per req.
Small SaaS banned by Cloudflare after 4 years of being paying customer
231–240 of 329 posts
Re: Small SaaS banned by Cloudflare after 4 years of being paying customer
#232My experience with the Cloudflare sales team is they were woefully disconnected from any ability to make good on their promises, and that it didn’t matter to them at all. It was a strange narcissism -bit wasn’t that they were deliberately lying, it was as if the notion of truth and lies didn’t matter. That if they kept blabbering assumed that they’d get the sale. In general you can’t trust salespeople and need to get…
20 billion in exchange for control of 10% of global traffic and 30% of US traffic seems awful low.
Re: Small SaaS banned by Cloudflare after 4 years of being paying customer
#233Very similar to this other one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34235237 I just repost the same comment I put in the above thread > The thing that scary me most is that his business get shut down without any notice period (at least the author not mentioning any previous communications from Cloudflare team about the issue). > This is really a shitty thing from Cloudflare, you cannot shut down an already running bu…
I disagree. The other one was a clear case of someone knowingly breaking the TOS (same non-HTML content but in that case they were hosting a service which almost exclusively returns non-HTML content). The OP even admitted in the comments that they knew very well they were breaking the TOS but wanted some notice. I don’t really feel any sympathy for that poster. They knowingly broke the rules, they had to have known t…
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34642984 I wasn't breaking the ToS at least not 2.8 (non html content) - my point was that I can understand I'm heavy user of the Workers and built-in pricing may not be economically feasible for CF to serve me hence push to Enterprise plan - I get it, just wish it was communicated to me clearly and beforehand my site went down.
Re: Small SaaS banned by Cloudflare after 4 years of being paying customer
#234I stopped paying for cloudflare after their support team was unable to debug why one of my rewrite conditions wasn't working. I provided them full details like for kindergarden, but they replied after days saying it's working on their end, lol. I deeply respect the cloudflare tech and the dev team, but support sucks and i don't trust cloudflare anymore. I won't pay even a single cent, even if they would have stellar…
just make your own CDN by installing an old raspberry pi on the network of every house you visit. Simple!
Re: Small SaaS banned by Cloudflare after 4 years of being paying customer
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've had only limited interaction with their sales people, but find it interesting they weren't on-the-ball trying to sell an account that valuable, either—we were more toward the bottom end of their enterprise range, so I'd just assumed we were too small-potatoes for them, but those were by far the least-hungry sales people I've ever interacted with. It was like I was bothering them. LOL. Also some of them seemed to…
I agree. I contacted Cloudflare sales for a small order of just a 100k or so per year, and they totally ghosted me after my first round of questions. No quote, no contact, nada. I gave up and went to Fastly. You may say my order was too tiny but even Akamai gave a response; they just didn’t have any turn key product that suited my needs.
exact same experience here.
Re: Small SaaS banned by Cloudflare after 4 years of being paying customer
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. The other one was a clear case of someone knowingly breaking the TOS (same non-HTML content but in that case they were hosting a service which almost exclusively returns non-HTML content). The OP even admitted in the comments that they knew very well they were breaking the TOS but wanted some notice. I don’t really feel any sympathy for that poster. They knowingly broke the rules, they had to have known t…
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34642984 I wasn't breaking the ToS at least not 2.8 (non html content) - my point was that I can understand I'm heavy user of the Workers and built-in pricing may not be economically feasible for CF to serve me hence push to Enterprise plan - I get it, just wish it was communicated to me clearly and beforehand my site went down.
Specifically was talking about the GP comment’s link to the other post, where they very explicitly and knowingly went against the non-HTML clause. They were running some sort of image SaaS product where the vast majority of their (non-Worker) usage was images.
I think that case is different than this one because it was very obvious that it was against the rules, to the point where even the OP of that post came in to say that yes, they knowingly violated the TOS but would have appreciated a heads up.
The comment I was referring to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34235749
Sorry for the confusion, I tried to separate using “this post” and “that post” but I’m sure I slipped up somewhere there.
Re: Small SaaS banned by Cloudflare after 4 years of being paying customer
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow this is the worst take about customer service I have ever seen by a company. You cause huge issues for business with the touch of a button, and when they require help and don’t think the cause was acceptable behavior, they’re whining? Just wow.
Those are the people in control of like half the internet traffic in the world. Let that sink in.
10% globally and 30% of US traffic. Probably. Google has more aggregate users and traffic, and they're also world renowned for not having any customer service short of "blowing up on twitter" or getting lucky here on HN.
Re: Small SaaS banned by Cloudflare after 4 years of being paying customer
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dear John, I absolutely love and admire Cloudflare’s services as a customer (and recent investor), but please please get stuff like this sorted as it will absolute ruin Cloudflare’s reputation in the long run. I beg you!
Believe me that this is what I'm doing. I'm really disappointed this customer got into this state and I'm working internally to figure out why it did.
This happens all the time though. Your business and processes are fundamentally broken.
And all you do is pop up on HN anytime someone complains, that's enough of a red flag to avoid your business completely and actively keep all my clients away from you.
Re: Small SaaS banned by Cloudflare after 4 years of being paying customer
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've had only limited interaction with their sales people, but find it interesting they weren't on-the-ball trying to sell an account that valuable, either—we were more toward the bottom end of their enterprise range, so I'd just assumed we were too small-potatoes for them, but those were by far the least-hungry sales people I've ever interacted with. It was like I was bothering them. LOL. Also some of them seemed to…
I agree. I contacted Cloudflare sales for a small order of just a 100k or so per year, and they totally ghosted me after my first round of questions. No quote, no contact, nada. I gave up and went to Fastly. You may say my order was too tiny but even Akamai gave a response; they just didn’t have any turn key product that suited my needs.
Yeah, CloudFlare was unique among the companies in this space that we contacted. The others' sales folks all gave way more shits, even at fairly big companies where I'm certain we wouldn't be a notably-large account. They were also by far the least-interested in tailoring their plan. "Oh you don't want to pay for this giant pile of stuff you don't need? Hm. Well. Too bad." Seemed like they wanted all-or-nothing, for enterprise plans, which leaves a big gap in their offerings between the top self-serve and the bottom end of enterprise—seems like a pretty major gap in their funnel, letting all those accounts just leave if they exceed self-serve but can't justify the very-expensive minimum enterprise plan, but I guess it's working for them?
Re: Small SaaS banned by Cloudflare after 4 years of being paying customer
#240The comments here have mainly focused on the issue of instant suspension - which is obviously deeply concerning - but I also feel like there is a huge issue at Cloudflare regarding their Enterprise pricing model. Cloudflare's sales team and Enterprise pricing model are one of the least effective sales organisations I have encountered in this space. Given the technical nature of their product, it's extremely hard to e…
> Cloudflare's sales team and Enterprise pricing model are one of the least effective sales organisations I have encountered in this space. I have seen this everywhere. Any large software company seems to operate with 2 completely different heads when it comes to technical sales support. The "best" experience I've had was with GitHub Enterprise sales, but mostly because they just gave me access to the docs/binaries w…
I've had the exact opposite experience with GitHub enterprise sales. It took 3 months to get them to add a new user block to our existing sub.
Sometimes I think it's amazing they're able to even generate revenue as poor as that experience was. It's a shame we like the product (mostly) so much...