You have to try Cloudflare! Here's why
Whether you are hosting your website or API, whether you need a good DNS provider or need a CDN for your sites, Cloudflare provides the best service when compared to most of the vendors. Plus, most of these can be done in their basic plan which is absolutely FREE! Yes, you heard it right. All of this for free, that too with Cloudflare's blazing fast DNS, CDN capabilities.
If you want to know whether Cloudflare is suitable for you or not, just try it out for free. All you have to do is migrate your DNS to Cloudflare. Additionally, Cloudflare will import most of the existing DNS records as well, so that your domain's DNS never goes down when you do Nameserver change. It happens so fast, you won't even notice the DNS change.
OK! You have moved your DNS to Cloudflare. What now? Since you are trying Cloudflare, you would have chosen the Free plan and below are the benefits you receive in free plan.
- Blazing fast DNS updates across all your zones in Cloudflare
- Free Universal SSL/TLS certificate signed by Cloudflare for all the websites proxied through Cloudflare
- CDN across the world with reduced latency to all websites
- Static content caching
- IPv6, HTTP/2, AMP, DNSSEC support
- DDoS protection against bots for layers 3-7
- WAF (limited rules) and Page rules (Limited rules)
- Cloudflare API access to manage literally anything from API calls
- Cloudflare site analytics/Zone analytics
Ain't it awesome! Plus all of this for free! If needed you can even opt for Pro plan at just $20/month and all above Limited rules would be increased to a standard limit which is pretty much enough to handle websites for a small enterprise as well.
There is one more service which Cloudflare introduced recently which is absolutely free and security focused. Cloudflare's Zero Trust Model was introduced to ensure all your services, websites, API's are securely exposed via Cloudflare's secure tunnels and Cloudflare's authentication prompts.
Using this Zero Trust model, you don't need to expose a single port on your server to internet. Using Cloudflared tunnel, all your traffic reaches Cloudflare's network securely and you can even add Authentication methods in Zero trust dashboard. so that only the authorized users are allowed. This would completely change how you expose all your services and now you can completely forget Port Forwarding. Run all your services in an internal network by creating a Cloudflared tunnel which would route all traffic to Cloudflare network to serve websites. No more exposed ports. No more port forwarding. No more VPN access to user who is out of the organization. Everything would be taken care by Cloudflare's Zero Trust service. Have look on its features here.
Basically, Cloudflare would ensure all your services are running as they were before, but providing you an extra layer of protection and allowing you to focus on developing and using your services rather than worrying about your security posture every now and then. Plus the benefits of having one of best CDN for your website, that too for free.
If it doesn't work for you, just change your DNS Name servers back to your previous provider. Cloudflare also ensures seam-less DNS migration back to your provider without any downtime. I mean, it doesn't hurt to try.