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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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What's wrong with using cloudflared? (lemmy.world)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

39 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I read a comment on here some time ago where the person said they were using cloudflared to expose some of their self-hosted stuff to the Internet so they can access it remotely.

I am currently using it to expose my RSS feed reader, and it works out fine. I also like the simplicity of Cloudflare's other offerings.

Any thoughts on why cloudflared is not a good idea? What alternatives would you suggest? How easy/difficult are they to setup?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

In addition to the above, most of the percieved advantages of CF are non-existent on the free tier that most people use. Their "DDoS protection" just means they'll drop your tunnel like a hot potato, and their "attack mitigation" on the free tier is a low-effort web app firewall (WAF) that you can replace with a much better and fully customizable self-hosted version.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They explicitly use free DDoS protection as a way to get you in the door, and upsell you on other things. Have you seen them "drop your tunnel like a hot potato"?

Now obviously if their network is at capacity they would prioritise paying customers, but I've never heard of there being an issue with DDoS protection for free users. But I have heard stories of sites enabling Cloudflare while being DDoSed and it resolving the problem.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Any stories you've heard about websites enabling CF to survive DDoS were not on the free tier, guaranteed.

Please re-read the description for the free tier. Here's what "DDoS protection" means on free tier:

Customers are not charged for attack traffic ever, period. There’s no penalty for spikes due to attack traffic, requiring no chargeback by the customer.

Will they use some of their capacity to minimize the DDoS effects for their infrastructure? Sure, I mean they have to whether they like or not, since the DNS points at their servers. But will they keep the website going for Joe Freeloader? Don't count on that. The terms are carefully worded to avoid promising anything of the sort.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

They also say "Cloudflare DDoS protection secures websites and applications while ensuring the performance of legitimate traffic is not compromised.", with a tick to indicate this is included in the Free tier.

You are honestly the first person I've heard complain about Cloudflare failing to protect against DDoS attacks. However, I have no doubt that not having Cloudflare, I would fare no better. So still seems worthwhile to me.