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Cloudflare took down our website

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Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#371

Post by Dylan16807 »

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #216
bluelightning2k wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was rushing to judgment until I heard this... pretty plausible. In support of your theory particular is I don't think enterprise sales "ragequits" a conversation when the customer is mid-evaluation based simply on the idea that they are considering multiple options. Why would they walk away at this point, let alone ban the customer. From the write-up I bet CloudFlare had it as a "60% to close" in their CRM at this…

> In support of your theory particular is I don't think enterprise sales "ragequits" a conversation when the customer is mid-evaluation based simply on the idea that they are considering multiple options. > Why would they walk away at this point, let alone ban the customer. It wasn't just that they were considering multiple options. Looking at the timeline, this was about a month after their initial soft gloves appro…

> But after a month of little to no progress while the account continues causing reputational harm and is unwilling to budge

I don't see an unwillingness to fix TOS issues anywhere. Just an unwillingness to buy the enterprise tier. Those should not be treated the same way!

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#372

Post by dariusj18 »

justinclift wrote: post #345
ecjhdnc2025 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't remember them blaming Google for their screw up. You're putting words into my mouth.

Um, you literally wrote: ... the CEO’s strategy was to turn up here and criticise Google for not deindexing quickly enough. Isn't that "them blaming Google for their screw up"?

No, it is deflection. Very common tactic used to make it appear that someone else is more responsible than oneself.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#373

Post by Dylan16807 »

ivraatiems wrote: post #310

This sort of situation is not time for an angry blog post. It's time for lawyers. OP needs to speak with counsel and find out whether they have a claim against Cloudflare for interfering with their business in this way. (If OP's business is so illegal they can't get a lawyer to help with that, that's another story, but it sure doesn't look that way.) Fundamentally, the OP might be involved in something scummy or at l…

What are lawyers going to do about the clause that says they can drop anyone any time?

Trying enforce "reasonable behavior" by suing is a massive money pit that might yield nothing at all.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#374

Post by Dylan16807 »

zb3 wrote: post #226
zamadatix wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, but if two bad entities fight I don't care about any of them, let them fight to death.

If we need to start labeling cloudflare as a "bad entity", then that's a big deal.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#375

Post by shkkmo »

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #258
shkkmo wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So this really should be seen as an act of goodwill rather than malice. It's called "extortion"

It's not extortion if you would have been banned off the platform flat out had you been a smaller account.

Threatening to ban someone unless they pay you is extortion.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#376

Post by johnklos »

remram wrote: post #325
chadsix wrote: post #21

This is a really important lesson here. Don't put your eggs in one basket, and if network delivery/etc. is core to your revenues and livelihood, don't trust a random third party host to look out for you. 10TB/80TB at 120k/yr, either way, Cloudflare is taking you for a ride. If you aren't self hosting, you're really doing it wrong.

What is "don't put your eggs in one basket" here? Your DNS has to point to something... and changing it will go through propagation delays, during which it will be down if you are banned suddenly. It's not like you can have your domain/DNS somewhere else and point to Cloudflare IPs (to not put DNS and CDN in same basket). Cloudflare does not allow that setup. You can't protect your website from your DNS provider or h…

> You can't protect your website from your DNS provider or hosting provider suddenly kicking you off. You are going to be offline for a couple of days.

Sure you can. Colocate in two or three places. You're your own DNS provider and your own hosting provider. If one of your colocation companies doesn't like what you're doing for whatever reason, you use the other two until you replace that provider.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#377

Post by luuurker »

HenryBemis wrote: post #339
luuurker wrote: post #118

The way Cloudflare approaches situations like this is not ideal for anyone. You start using the service and don't pay a lot, so you make plans around a certain level of expenses. Then out of the blue you receive an "urgent" email from a sales representative and suddenly you have to go from $20 or $250 to $thousands right away. Obviously it's not in CF's interest to keep a customer that doesn't pay enough, but droppin…

> but dropping a "bomb" on the customer Why on earth any company would jump from $250 to $10k per month unless they had a gun to their heads? Even if their revenue is to the millions/billions (which most likely is considering the nature of their business). They work for their own profit, not Cloudflare's.

No one wants to pay more, but if they do it in a way that makes their customer run to a direct competitor and not want to come back, then maybe there's something wrong with their approach.

We only have one side of the story here, but it's not the first time I've seen posts/comments about these emails from Cloudflare and the messy communication that follows. As a business customer, I really hope I don't have to deal with any of this.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#378

Post by csomar »

candiddevmike wrote: post #5

Sounds like OP is a casino and plays domain games to avoid regulatory interest. Recommend reading article carefully before reacting to the headline. Hopefully Cloudflare provides a perspective.

Except Cloudflare position here is not to ban them but they want to get paid for it. You are shaming the OP and his business but the reality is that Cloudflare has acted in a worse manner and that should be highlighted.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#379

Post by 0pteron »

aeyes wrote: post #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. U…

I've done 7TB/mo for many months in a row on the free tier, no issues so far.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#380

Post by csomar »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #173
aeyes wrote: post #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. U…

> From personal experience I know that 10TB per month is like 30k/year Is this true? We are at 3TB and growing so I'm slightly concerned

If you are doing any serious business you should have a plan B always ready (ie: fastly) and a downgraded state where you can operate without a CDN.
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