Cloudflare Email Service: private beta

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 8:25 PM UTC

drnick1 wrote: post #101

maz1b wrote: post #26

It's unfortunate that email hosting and email infrastructure can really be done only well by major players. The days of people running and maintaining their own are pretty much long gone. Fwiw, not a knock against CF. I like their products, mostly simple, fair pricing, etc. Just a bit unfortunate commentary on the state of email infra on the internet.

I run my own email server and you couldn't pay me to use a commercial provider like Google instead. The privacy benefits are huge and there is no one to restrict my storage or change my "terms and conditions" overnight. The days of people running their own servers are gone because of the shortsightedness and laziness of IT managers. They though the "cloud" would be easier and cheaper, and they are now trapped.

Post by bkettle » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 8:27 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #237

gruez wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what's the counterfactual? People use cloudflare because they want protection from ddos attacks and bots. If cloudflare didn't exist there would probably be similar measures.

Businesses want to protect the continuity of their business operations , and to that end they buy such protection as a service, from a business that managed to MitM half the Internet in order to provide such service. Point being, it's a commercial subverting the Internet from inside, reshaping it to better serve the interests of commerce. It is indeed protection, but it's accomplished by reducing variance . 99% of le…

Post by tavavex » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 8:29 PM UTC

eikenberry wrote: post #252

parliament32 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For registering/authenticating to service, SMS mostly. Same deal in Russia in my experience, basically every website/service signup asks for your mobile number and just texts verification codes.

So smart-phone is required for everything there? No computer flows for website access? "We" definitely don't want that... but many others do as it takes control away from people.

Post by paulgb » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 8:30 PM UTC

zenmac wrote: post #249

egorfine wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the internet was worse without Cloudflare It had much more freedom. Currently it's up to Cloudflare to decide whether you will read that article or not. Tomorrow some stupid law will mandate certain ideas to be hidden from children[1] and Cloudflare will happily comply. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children

For example, recently certain big corp ask me to verify something. I clicked on the link in the E-Mail and it was suck on Cloudflare the click button over and over again. No matter how many times I clicked. Do I need to find another internet access now?

Post by Gormo » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 8:34 PM UTC

azemetre wrote: post #81

stingraycharles wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, the internet was worse without Cloudflare, so as long as they provide a good service for their customers, I’m fine with it. This is one of those. Google is in a perfect position to compete but they don’t, so it’s not like Cloudflare is a monopoly or something. At least they’re not selling ads using your data.

If Cloudflare is so vital to the internet, it should be nationalized for the public benefit as having a private entity with so much control over the internet is not a good thing. Corporatized control of the internet should not be encouraged.