[Cloudflare] Is this really free? Highly recommended cloud solutions
Speaking of Cloudflare (founded in San Francisco in 2009), your first impression might be that it’s a magical shield specializing in CDN web acceleration and blocking DDoS attacks.
But actually, its cloud services are highly recommended for solo developers and small studios! Ranging from static websites and API services to databases, its pricing is exceptionally generous compared to the big three cloud platforms (Azure, Google, Amazon). DNS network traffic is free, and the free-tier allowances are incredibly spacious. In an era where anyone can build an APP using AI, it serves as a wonderful and cozy home for beginners to host their applications.
Most importantly, these free plans have been around for years without a history of suddenly trapping users or randomly raising prices, which makes using them particularly reassuring. Don’t worry if you don’t know where to start—Yaoyao has specially organized a list of essential free tools for you. Let’s see how to migrate your projects to the cloud painlessly!
Highly Recommended Services, Take Notes!
🌐 Network & Security Basics
DNS
The most fundamental and wonderful service of Cloudflare!
Free Tier Features:
- Unlimited traffic and requests!
- Applicable to all websites
Awesome Included Features:
- Free SSL certificates (saves so much trouble!)
- Proxy traffic, hiding the real IP of your host, giving full security 🔒
- Traffic analytics
Rules (WAF - Web Application Firewall)
Although this is a service under DNS, Yaoyao must point it out specifically! Because currently, most WAFs on other cloud platforms are quite expensive, Cloudflare is one of the few platforms that is extremely generous with traffic defense. Even many developers using the big three cloud platforms will deliberately put a layer of Cloudflare WAF in front of their services! Learning to use Rules is very important; it’s the foundation for protecting our hard work.
Free Tier Features:
- Unlimited traffic and requests
- Five custom rules
Turnstile
On many websites, do you often see this ⬇️ used to prevent crazy bot comments or attacks?
When we develop a comment board or other highly interactive APPs, this is a fantastic helper! Unlike traditional CAPTCHAs where you painfully search for traffic lights or crosswalks, it focuses on “Privacy-First” and automated verification, making the user experience much, much better!
Free Tier Features:
- 1 million verification requests per month
- Seamlessly integrates into any web form, keeping malicious traffic out 🚫
Tunnel
For developers or ops folks who love tinkering, Cloudflare Tunnel is simply a godsend! It establishes a secure channel between your local server (including your home NAS or your laptop) and Cloudflare. You don’t need to touch your hardware/software firewall’s open Ports at all, nor worry about exposing your real Public IP. You can expose internal services externally, which is super convenient for testing Webhooks or debugging remotely!
Free Tier Features:
- Included in the Cloudflare Zero Trust free plan (supports up to 50 free users)
- Unlimited traffic, multiple tunnels can be created
🛠️ Modern Development Core
Worker
Cloudflare Workers is a super cool Edge Computing service! You can run JavaScript, TypeScript, or WebAssembly directly on nodes spread across the globe, achieving ultra-low latency APIs.
Free Tier Features:
- 100,000 requests per day
- 10 milliseconds of CPU compute time per request
- For lightweight APIs or gateways responsible for forwarding and filtering requests, this quota is full of sincerity!
Pages (Page)
If you have a static website (like React, Vue) or a static-first framework (like Astro, Next.js) to deploy, Pages is the right choice! It perfectly integrates with GitHub / GitLab. Just push your code, and it will automatically build and publish for you, coming with a powerful CDN!
Free Tier Features:
- 500 builds per month
- Unlimited bandwidth and requests
- An unlimited number of projects and custom domains can be bound
D1
D1 is Cloudflare’s Serverless SQL database, built on top of the familiar SQLite. It natively integrates with Workers, so you don’t need to worry about database connections or server management. You can read and write directly at the edge nodes, greatly reducing our operational burden.
Free Tier Features:
- 5 million reads / 100,000 writes per day
- Up to 5 GB of storage space
- Super useful for storing blog content, environment configurations, or small project data!
R2
Need to store images, static assets, or backup data? R2 is a perfect object storage service compatible with the S3 API. On other platforms, reading data usually incurs a painful “Egress fee”, but R2’s main selling point is “No Egress Fees”, which is absolutely amazing! 😍
Free Tier Features:
- 10 GB of storage space per month
- 1 million write operations / 10 million read operations per month
Besides the above, Cloudflare has many other powerful and useful services (such as AI-related services, video streaming, etc.). Yaoyao will introduce them in separate articles later on! Stay tuned!
Pitfalls to Avoid: Things to Note
Secure Your Architecture, Which Means Securing Your Wallet
The most recommended initial architecture combination is: DNS + Rules + Worker/Pages.
On any cloud platform, the best thing about Serverless services is that you don’t have to worry about physical machines or underlying configurations in the early stages; you pay for what you use, super friendly for small APPs. But the scariest part is facing DDoS attacks by bad actors. A single spike could make your credit card bill “erupt” 😭! So before going live, remember to set up Rate Limit or WAF rules upstream to protect your system and keep your wallet from getting a shock!
Beware of Vendor Lock-in with Tech Stack Choices
This is an inevitable lesson when playing with Serverless architecture. Usually, code written for a specific platform (e.g., SDKs specifically for Cloudflare) might need to be rewritten if you want to migrate elsewhere in the future. So during initial tech selection, you must consider portability!
For example, when writing an API Server, you can place a standardized framework (like Hono) in the middle. This way, your program doesn’t just run on Workers, but can later be bundled into a Container for deployment. Or when using R2, deliberately communicate using the standardized S3 API. Even if the platform undergoes changes, we can quickly switch, keeping a backup plan ready.
Data Backups Are Essential!
Everyone must remember, “The cloud is not a magical box guaranteed never to break”. Regular backups are absolutely the cornerstone of development and maintenance! Especially for critical data stored in D1 or R2, it’s best to set up automated backups to an offsite platform (like your home NAS or AWS Glacier). Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, and you’ll have peace of mind.
References
Conclusion
Cloudflare has long outgrown being just a CDN provider that does DNS or blocks attacks. The free ecosystem they’ve built for developers—covering build, compute, and storage—is incredibly generous. For Side Projects in their starting phase, making good use of these tools not only saves a ton of money but also lifts the heavy burden of operations off your shoulders, letting you focus on what really matters — creating product value! 🌟
Hope these little notes open up some new inspiration for you, helping your new project find a stable, economical, and secure home. The Wenlu family cares about your development experience ❤️
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