Cloudways users, listen up! I have interesting news for you. Now, Cloudways is teaming up with Cloudflare to provide Enterprise grade DNS to its customers at unbelievably low costs. Here’s a detailed review of Cloudways Cloudflare Enterprise plan which they recently introduced at some affordable prices.
I have been using both Cloudways hosting and Cloudflare DNS for the past few years and both the services are the leaders in their domains. In today’s article, I’m going to discuss everything about their partnership and how you are going to benefit from it.
We will begin by understanding what these two companies are all about. Then we will move on to discuss the Enterprise-grade CDN, its significant advantages, and its pricing for Cloudways customers.
Excited to learn more about this partnership? Let’s dive right into our article!
Cloudways Cloudflare Enterprise Video
If you are a video person, you can check out my detailed video about the same in Hindi language. Enjoy!
What is Cloudways?
Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting provider that is built on top of unmanaged hosting providers like AWS, Digital Ocean, Linode, Vultr, and Google Cloud.
It offers lightning fast speeds and a reliable customer support, along with effortless scaling options. Cloudways is one of the most efficient cloud hosting platform and I have been using it on my personal blog kripeshadwani.com as well!
If you wish to know more about this hosting or are interesting in purchasing it, check out my detailed review on Cloudways hosting!
What is Cloudflare?
Cloudflare is one of the most popular DNS platform that offers many services like DNS management, superior speed, security features, and optimizations.
With its free plan, you can protect your websites with a free SSL certificate, manage your DNS, and get a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to speed up content delivery to various locations. To understand the process of setting up Cloudflare CDN on your website, check out this video.
It also has various paid plans with additional benefits. The Cloudflare Enterprise plan is the most expensive of all, costing around $1000/month to $5000/month! But here’s the interesting part.
With the partnership with Cloudways platform, you can get the same Enterprise plan with all its features just for $5/month for a website. Insane, right?
But what are the benefits of opting for the Cloudflare Enterprise plan? Let’s find out.
Advantages of Cloudflare Enterprise
100 GB Bandwidth
The Cloudflare Enterprise CDN offers a bandwidth of 100 GB per month to its users. I think it would suffice for most people. If you exceed the limit, you are charged merely $0.2 per 10 GB.
Argo Smart Routing
Cloudflare has over 200 data centers spread all around the globe. The Argo Smart Routing in an intelligent feature that routes your traffic through the best and fastest networks. This helps in maximizing speeds and reducing latency.
Tiered Caching
With the Cloudflare Enterprise plan, the regional Tier 1 Data Centers are used for delivering data to different parts of the globe. This helps in reducing static content requests on your server.
Managed WAF Protection
Cloudflare’s Web Application Firewall analyses over 32 million requests and millions of sites per second to identify the latest threats and blocks them before infecting your server.
Its intelligent firewall helps keep your website secure from Brute force attacks, DDoS attacks, Bot Attacks, and other threats. You can also configure Cloudways to enable extra security for your WordPress website, Magento e-store, etc.
PCI DSS Compliance
PCI DSS stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. This is helpful if you have an eCommerce store where you store the credit card information of your users.
The PCI DSS security standard validates that your systems are secure and users can trust you with their sensitive information.
Image Optimization through Polish and Mirage
The Cloudflare Enterprise version uses image optimization by Polish, which decreases image sizes by around 35%. Thus, you get a small, quicker, and optimized image improving website speeds and overall SEO.
It also uses Mirage to optimize images by promoting lazy loading. It identifies and optimized images according to the user’s browser type.
Cloudflare Enterprise Pricing
They have not disclosed the pricing for the Enterprise plan on their Pricing page. However, if you research a little, you’ll find that its pricing falls between $1000/month to $5000/month.
But with its integration with Cloudways, you can enjoy the same Enterprise plan on your web hosting for just $5/month.
The best part is that if you have more than one website, the bulk prices lower it down to merely $2/month! This is great for agencies, developers, and freelancers.
Also, if you were using Cloudways CDN by StackPath on your website, they let you switch to Cloudflare Enterprise CDN for just $3/month.
If you are looking for a different hosting provider, I would recommend Rocket.net hosting. It also comes with the Cloudflare Enterprise plan, but is a little expensive. The advantage with Cloudways is that you can choose to opt for the Cloudflare Enterprise plan. It’s not forced on your plan by default.
Cloudflare CDN Speed Test
For conducting the speed test, I have used my website https://kpcltest.xyz hosted on Cloudways hosting with Singapore servers. I have conducted speed tests in two different conditions:
- Cloudways with Cloudflare Free version
- Cloudways with Cloudflare Enterprise version
Now, let us check out the results.
With the free version of Cloudflare, I got a speed of 1.41 sec in the Bangalore location. Whereas, in the New York location, the speeds were 2.5 sec, which is not bad!
Now, when I tested the speeds with the Cloudflare Enterprise version, the speeds reduced to 1.23 sec in Bangalore.
Whereas, I saw a large difference in the speeds in New York, dropping to 1.92 sec.
So, the main difference that you’ll notice in the Free and Enterprise versions is with the global speeds. Speeds on your data center would not display any major changes.
Cloudflare CDN Latency Test
Latency refers to the time it takes for data to travel from one server to another. I performed detailed Latency tests on both the free and Enterprise plans of Cloudflare. Let’s look at the results.
With the Cloudflare free CDN, you will find that the latency is quite high in regions like US (11.57 ms), Mexico (21.47 ms), etc. The locations marked in red show high latency.
When I switched to the Enterprise CDN, the speeds dramatically reduced to 1.74 ms in the US, 0.93 ms in Washington, D.C., etc. The latency is quite low in all the locations except for Dubai (78.53 ms).
Overall, with the Enterprise CDN, I found over 95% improvement in speed, which is truly impressive!
How to Integrate Cloudflare with your application?
Now that you know all the benefits of Cloudflare, you must wonder how you can start using it on your website, right?
Cloudways has a detailed article explaining how you can integrate Cloudflare with your hosting service.
If you want a video walk-through of the entire Cloudflare integration process, I have added it on my Cloudways training program. You can check that out as well!
Cloudflare Enterprise Dashboard and Interface
Now, once you activate the Cloudflare Enterprise on your Cloudways hosting, the Cloudflare option can be found under Application Management in your dashboard.
It has a quite simple and straightforward dashboard. Beginners won’t have any problem with accessing the Cloudflare interface.
There are no overly complex functions. It lets you connect domains with Cloudflare, check the bandwidth consumption on your account, and enable, disable, or purge cache. The Full Page Cache feature is under development at the moment.
Who Should Use Cloudways Cloudflare Enterprise?
Freelancers, developers, and agencies would benefit the most from Cloudflare Enterprise. They can easily claim additional volume discounts and manage a large number of websites for as low as $2/website per month!
In turn, they can charge way higher from their clients for availing these premium services. The clients would happily pay sizeable sums of money for these advanced services.
Additionally, it would also be helpful for websites receiving high traffic or having an international audience. The Cloudflare CDN can share some load from their hosting and thus improve speeds across all locations.
However, if you are just starting out and don’t have a large audience base, or if your audience is limited to a specific country, say India, you won’t be needing the Enterprise version at the moment. The free version would do the job for you.
Conclusion
Cloudways Cloudflare Enterprise looks like a really impressive addition! You get the benefits of both speed and security at an attractive price of $5/month for a website. It is ideal for websites with high traffic or international audiences.
Anyway, I hope you found this article informative. Have you used Cloudflare protection on your website? Would you be using the Cloudflare Enterprise integration with Cloudways? Let me know in the comments box below.
You can also check out my Cloudways Hosting Review if you are planning to get Cloudways hosting for your website.
This is Kripesh signing off. You can subscribe to my weekly newsletter to stay updated with my latest videos, articles, and discount deals running on digital products. I will be back with more informative content soon. Cheers and keep learning!
We moved our server using CF Argo to use the Cloudways / CF Enterprise intergration and found our TTFB speeds increase significantly (400% higher). I figured that there was a chance that it was breaking our Argo setup. I moved two more servers (one using pro and the other using CF free plan) and found our TTFB all were far slower when using the so called enterprise DNS offered by Cloudways. I put this forward to Cloudways and did not get a satisfactory response as to why. I highly recommend everyone runs a test with keycdn performance before and after integrating. I just tested your server and it appears to be getting terrible scores like I was. https://tools.keycdn.com/performance?url=https://kpcltest.xyz/
Thanks for sharing your experience.
My website is not using cloudflare Enterprise anymore.
It’s a test website so I activated it just for the testing.
Someone wants to use CloudFlare Enterprise because of its extended features. stop promoting website speed (as many factors influence this).
So the question is:
what features does Cloudways offer to its users ?
Cloudflare Enterprise CDN definitely helps in speed and better security.
To know what exact features cloudways offer here’s the detailed review
https://kripeshadwani.com/cloudways-review/