CloudFlare vs Netlify

Overview

CloudFlare

Stacks77.2K

Followers23.1K

Votes1.8K

Netlify

Stacks3.6K

Followers2.1K

Votes207

CloudFlare vs Netlify: What are the differences?

Introduction:

In this article, we will compare the key differences between CloudFlare and Netlify. Both CloudFlare and Netlify are popular web service providers that offer various features for website management and optimization. However, there are several distinct factors that differentiate these platforms from each other. Let's explore these differences below.

Pricing Model: CloudFlare follows a freemium pricing model, where they provide a free tier with limited features, and users can upgrade to different paid plans based on their requirements. On the other hand, Netlify offers a tiered pricing system based on usage, with different plans catering to small-scale projects as well as large enterprise solutions.
Content Delivery Network (CDN) Functionality: Both CloudFlare and Netlify have their own content delivery networks (CDNs), but they differ in their implementation. CloudFlare operates as a traditional CDN, where users can route their traffic through CloudFlare's network to improve website speed and performance. In contrast, Netlify's CDN is tightly integrated with its hosting platform and automatically deploys the website content globally, resulting in faster load times and reduced latency.
Static Site Generator Integration: Netlify is specifically designed for static website hosting and provides seamless integration with popular static site generators like Gatsby, Hugo, and Jekyll. It simplifies the deployment process by automatically building and publishing site updates whenever changes are made in the repository. CloudFlare, on the other hand, is primarily a security and performance platform and does not directly offer built-in integration with static site generators.
Serverless Functions Support: Netlify positions itself as a unified platform for managing both front-end and back-end development workflows. It includes built-in support for serverless functions, allowing developers to deploy serverless code alongside their static website. CloudFlare, although supporting serverless computing, is primarily focused on its CDN and security features and does not offer the same level of native serverless function support as Netlify.
Form Handling Capabilities: Netlify provides an easy way to handle form submissions on static websites by offering built-in form handling capabilities. The user can define their form directly in the HTML code and Netlify handles the data processing and storage. CloudFlare, on the other hand, does not have this built-in functionality and requires implementing a separate solution for handling form submissions.
Analytics and Monitoring Features: CloudFlare offers robust analytics and monitoring features, allowing users to gain insights into their website's performance, security events, and traffic metrics. It provides detailed reports and real-time data to monitor various aspects of the website. In comparison, Netlify primarily focuses on performance metrics related to website speed and CDN usage, with limited analytics and monitoring capabilities compared to CloudFlare.

In summary, CloudFlare and Netlify have their own unique strengths and offerings. While both platforms provide CDN functionality, Netlify stands out in its tight integration with static site generators and seamless deployment process. On the other hand, CloudFlare offers advanced analytics and monitoring features, along with a range of security options. The choice between the two would depend on the specific needs of the website and the desired balance between features, pricing, and ease of use.

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Advice on CloudFlare, Netlify

Howie

Full Stack Engineer at Yintrust

Aug 13, 2020

Decidedon

Netlify

We use Netlify to host static websites.

The reasons for choosing Netlify over GitHub Pages are as follows:

Netfily can bind multiple domain names, while GitHub Pages can only bind one domain name
With Netfily, the original repository can be private, while GitHub Pages free tier requires the original repository to be public

In addition, in order to use CDN, we use Netlify DNS.

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

CloudFlare	Netlify
Cloudflare speeds up and protects millions of websites, APIs, SaaS services, and other properties connected to the Internet.	Netlify is smart enough to process your site and make sure all assets gets optimized and served with perfect caching-headers from a cookie-less domain. We make sure your HTML is served straight from our CDN edge nodes without any round-trip to our backend servers and are the only ones to give you instant cache invalidation when you push a new deploy. Netlify is also the only static hosting service with integrated continuous deployment.
CDN;WAF (Web Application Firewall);DDOS Protection;	Global Network;Global Network;Instant Cache Validation;Atomic Deploys;API proxying;SSL for custom domains;Continuous Deployment;Link to Github or Bitbucket
Statistics
Stacks 77.2K	Stacks 3.6K
Followers 23.1K	Followers 2.1K
Votes 1.8K	Votes 207
Pros & Cons
Pros 426 Easy setup, great cdn 278 Free ssl 200 Easy setup 191 Security 181 Ssl Cons 2 No support for SSHFP records 2 Expensive when you exceed their fair usage limits	Pros 48 Easy deploy 43 Fastest static hosting and continuous deployments 23 Super simple deploys 23 Free SSL support 16 Easy Setup and Continous deployments Cons 7 It's expensive 1 Bandwidth limitation
Integrations
CodeGuard Google Analytics GoSquared Clicky UserVoice SnapEngage Blitz Pingdom	GitHub Bitbucket

What are some alternatives to CloudFlare, Netlify?

GitHub Pages

Public webpages hosted directly from your GitHub repository. Just edit, push, and your changes are live.

Amazon CloudFront

Amazon CloudFront can be used to deliver your entire website, including dynamic, static, streaming, and interactive content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for your content are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance.

KeyCDN

KeyCDN offers super fast and secure content delivery for minimal loading time. In addition to the CDN, it also offers advanced image processing and many other features such as live logs and Let's Encrypt SSL.

DomainRacer

It is a blazing fast hosting solution that provides Customer Satisfaction driven Web Hosting services since 2016.

Fastly

Fastly's real-time content delivery network gives you total control over your content, unprecedented access to performance analytics, and the ability to instantly update content in 150 milliseconds.

MaxCDN

The MaxCDN Content Delivery Network efficiently delivers your site’s static file through hundreds of servers instead of slogging through a single host. This "smart route" technology distributes your content to your visitors via the city closest to them.

Vercel

A cloud platform for serverless deployment. It enables developers to host websites and web services that deploy instantly, scale automatically, and require no supervision, all with minimal configuration.

Surge

Surge makes it easy for developers to deploy projects to a production-quality CDN through Grunt, Gulp, npm.

Webflow

Webflow is a responsive design tool that lets you design, build, and publish websites in an intuitive interface. Clean code included!

jsDelivr

jsDelivr is a free CDN for open source developers, with advanced features for javascript projects with access to NPM and Github It uses multiple CDN providers, resulting in the best possible uptime and performance.

Related Comparisons

CloudFlare vs Netlify: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Pricing Model: CloudFlare follows a freemium pricing model, where they provide a free tier with limited features, and users can upgrade to different paid plans based on their requirements. On the other hand, Netlify offers a tiered pricing system based on usage, with different plans catering to small-scale projects as well as large enterprise solutions.
Content Delivery Network (CDN) Functionality: Both CloudFlare and Netlify have their own content delivery networks (CDNs), but they differ in their implementation. CloudFlare operates as a traditional CDN, where users can route their traffic through CloudFlare's network to improve website speed and performance. In contrast, Netlify's CDN is tightly integrated with its hosting platform and automatically deploys the website content globally, resulting in faster load times and reduced latency.
Static Site Generator Integration: Netlify is specifically designed for static website hosting and provides seamless integration with popular static site generators like Gatsby, Hugo, and Jekyll. It simplifies the deployment process by automatically building and publishing site updates whenever changes are made in the repository. CloudFlare, on the other hand, is primarily a security and performance platform and does not directly offer built-in integration with static site generators.
Serverless Functions Support: Netlify positions itself as a unified platform for managing both front-end and back-end development workflows. It includes built-in support for serverless functions, allowing developers to deploy serverless code alongside their static website. CloudFlare, although supporting serverless computing, is primarily focused on its CDN and security features and does not offer the same level of native serverless function support as Netlify.
Form Handling Capabilities: Netlify provides an easy way to handle form submissions on static websites by offering built-in form handling capabilities. The user can define their form directly in the HTML code and Netlify handles the data processing and storage. CloudFlare, on the other hand, does not have this built-in functionality and requires implementing a separate solution for handling form submissions.
Analytics and Monitoring Features: CloudFlare offers robust analytics and monitoring features, allowing users to gain insights into their website's performance, security events, and traffic metrics. It provides detailed reports and real-time data to monitor various aspects of the website. In comparison, Netlify primarily focuses on performance metrics related to website speed and CDN usage, with limited analytics and monitoring capabilities compared to CloudFlare.

CloudFlare vs Netlify

Overview