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Cloudflare took down our website

robindev.substack.com

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Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#101
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, sure, they’re probably doing some sketchy regulatory dodging or whatever. Which part of this can Cloudflare solve by having them pay $120k/year to them?

Over-charging is a legal way to effectively deny service. When I'm offered jobs I don't want, I sometimes tell them my salary is 3x what I really need.

I feel like you would probably consult with a lawyer before saying you’d do assassinations for 3x your salary needs ;)

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#102

This doesn't pass the sniff test. From the actions Cloudflare took and their communication, it's very clear that there was something about the way their services were used that they were unhappy about. The post doesn't include what that problem was, but I have a very hard time believing that the author was not in the know and just got their account nuked without any further commentary, especially after being in a num…

So CF is ok with shady for 10k but not for .25k?

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#103

I have been hearing stories from developers/entrepeneurs about Cloudflare being very weird to deal with: "We'd like to talk to you about an enterprise plan." "No thanks, I'm fine with the free plan." "Based on your traffic, we'd like to talk to you about an enteprrise plan." "Is there a traffic limit on the free plan?" "No, there is no limit. But based on your traffic, we require you to get an enteprirse plan." [Give…

I wonder why they don’t just have clear limits - seems like it would make it easier to grok.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#104

I have been hearing stories from developers/entrepeneurs about Cloudflare being very weird to deal with: "We'd like to talk to you about an enterprise plan." "No thanks, I'm fine with the free plan." "Based on your traffic, we'd like to talk to you about an enteprrise plan." "Is there a traffic limit on the free plan?" "No, there is no limit. But based on your traffic, we require you to get an enteprirse plan." [Give…

Sounds like auth0…

But they have explicit limits?

https://auth0.com/pricing

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#105

I have been hearing stories from developers/entrepeneurs about Cloudflare being very weird to deal with: "We'd like to talk to you about an enterprise plan." "No thanks, I'm fine with the free plan." "Based on your traffic, we'd like to talk to you about an enteprrise plan." "Is there a traffic limit on the free plan?" "No, there is no limit. But based on your traffic, we require you to get an enteprirse plan." [Give…

We had a similar experience. Stuff suddenly started breaking for 10% of our traffic, support dragged their feet for weeks wrt any sort of insight as to what was going on, and then the answer was “you’re over an undocumented limit, try the enterprise plan”.

Fwiw this was some years ago and we moved most of our stuff away from them in response. I didn't get the feeling that this was malicious from their side, more like growing pains / mediocre support people / etc. But the end result was the same as you describe, except we chose not to pay up.

EDIT: more context: I shared this story on HN once before, jgrahamc responded with “please email me”, we did but it didn't move the needle. This further convinced me that CF just has a lot of stuff going on and something weird about our traffic made them error out. My suspicion is that the enterprise plan was supposed to make it internally defensible to pour more engineering resources into our case, but they were never explicit about that which made us worry enough to not do it.

I think that a large reputable business like CF should be clearer about stuff like this. That said, as someone running an API business, I also hold some sympathy for “customer does something weird an unexpected, it’s hitting a limit we didn't even know we had, srsly now what?”. The answer to that should be “work together with the customer to get to the bottom of things, customer might need to make changes too”. They didn't do that, which disappointed us, but I can relate to the situation nonetheless.

We’re still a CF customer, just not for this part of our offering.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#106

>I'm a SysOps engineer at a fairly large online casino. So they did a good thing taking it down, no?? Addiction as a businessmodel is not that cool

Sidestepping the whole ethical conversation and just taking it as a good action for the hosting provider to do it still fails the sniff test as Cloudflare (according to this story at least) didn't seek to take it down rather sought to make more off of it.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#108
From personal experience I know that 10TB per month is like 30k/year and SSL for SaaS is around 40k/year on the enterprise plan. No idea about pricing for having your own IP.

I have no idea why Cloudflare would ask you to use these two features. SSL for SaaS is only useful if you want to add domains and certificates via API.

I have had my fair share of negative experience with Cloudflare but this is next level bad. Unfortunately companies can chose who they want to do business with but it shouldn't be like this.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#109
post #45
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is more that the author is an unreliable narrator and you need to apply a little salt to the rest of the story. Cloudflare absolutely shouldn't be taking bribes to permit regulatory evasion. But if they are, I want more evidence than a substack post.

It was the opposite? To comply with regulation.

and...

> if a country DNS-blocks our main domain, a secondary domain may still be available

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