- I can't believe this.
Cloudways, my favorite web hosting platform,
just dropped a bombshell.
Cloudways and Cloudflare are teaming up
to offer enterprise-level DNS service
for as low as $2 a month.
This is absolutely gonna change the hosting
and DNS game.
So why is this such a big deal?
If you've been following my channel a while,
you know I'm a huge fan
of Cloudways and Cloudflare.
And while these two names may sound similar,
they're two distinctly different companies.
Cloudways is a web hosting platform,
offering hosting instances from DigitalOcean.
Vultr, AWS and other hosting providers.
Cloudflare is a DNS management system
that offers industry-leading security,
caching and a content delivery network.
I've been preaching the benefits
of Cloudflare for years.
It's a free way to manage external DNS,
get free SSL
and get additional speed and security benefits.
The Cloudflare free plan is great.
I recommend it for most sites
but there's a lot more to Cloudflare
(Christian chuckling)
for a lot more money.
So how much does it cost
to upgrade from Cloudflare's free plan?
Well, the Pro plan is $20 a month,
the Business plan is $200 a month
and the Enterprise plan is who knows how much.
Probably thousands of dollars per month.
In fact, I was reading on Reddit
and several users said that Cloudflare Enterprise
can range between 2 and $5,000 a month.
Today Cloudways announced a partnership
with Cloudflare where you can get Cloudflare Enterprise
for $5 per site per month with bulk discounts available.
Wait a minute, but Cloudflare Enterprise
is at least $2,000 a month
and Cloudflare Pro is already $20 a month.
$5 a month?
How is this possible?
This, this...
What?
- Christian, rein it in.
- Oh, sorry.
So what's the deal with Cloudflare Enterprise?
In a nutshell, you get industry-leading speed
and security benefits.
You get a CDN cache with unique IPs
and prioritized routing,
priority DDoS protection
and an enhanced web application firewall
with PCI compliance.
If you're an e-commerce store,
PCI compliance is a big deal.
This is the security standard
that all major card merchants use
so if you're accepting card numbers
on your website, as long as it's PCI compliant,
you can't be held liable
if a card number gets stolen or hacked in some way.
Cloudflare Enterprise also includes
image optimization with Polish.
This reduces image sizes by 35% on average.
This improves load time on your website
and can also improve your SEO.
There's a lot more to Cloudflare Enterprise
but the basic idea
is that you get all of Cloudflare
for way less than it normally would cost.
Cloudflare Enterprise caches and serves websites
from the closest possible geographic location
to the site viewer.
It also optimizes page content
and not only that, Cloudflare Enterprise customers
take priority in the Cloudflare network
over all other customers.
Getting all of this for $5 a month per website
is absolutely insane.
Cloudways offers bulk discounts as well.
You can get Cloudflare Enterprise
for as low as $2 per site per month with 25 sites or more.
And if you were previously using the Cloudways CDN powered
by StackPath, they're letting you start
using Cloudflare Enterprise
at $3 per site per month
instead of $5 per site per month.
All Cloudflare Enterprise plans
include 100 gigs of bandwidth
and additional bandwidth is only two cents per 10 gigabytes.
I think most people are gonna be fine
with 100 gigs of bandwidth on their website
but let's say you needed 1,000 gigabytes of bandwidth.
With the overages calculated,
you would only be billed an extra $1.80
for using a terabyte of bandwidth
in a given month.
One downside I can see to Cloudflare Enterprise
via Cloudways is that I don't know
how customer support works.
With Cloudflare Enterprise, typically you'd be able
to pick up the phone
and call your dedicated account manager any hour of the day.
After all, you're usually paying thousands
of dollars a month for Cloudflare Enterprise.
But with whatever arrangement they have with Cloudways,
somehow you're able to get it for $5 per site per month,
which is insane but as part of that,
I can't imagine you could even call Cloudflare.
I'm not totally sure.
I don't know how this works yet
and there's more that we need to discover
but even if you're able to email Cloudflare,
that would be a win.
If not, I'm sure Cloudways can probably play cup and string
and you can reach out to Cloudways support
and say I'm having an issue with my Cloudflare Enterprise
and they can probably get it handled for you.
It's not the same level of support
as normal Cloudflare Enterprise
but then again, you are saving literally thousands
of dollars per month.
I also wonder how tight the integration is
between Cloudflare and Cloudways.
Is it just a button in the Cloudways panel
that goes to the Cloudflare website
and billing is done via Cloudways?
Is it a full-on integration
where I can edit DNS records in Cloudflare
through the Cloudways panel?
I don't know.
These are things that I don't have answers to yet.
I'm gonna have to play around with it and see.
Hey, Editing Christian here
and I was able to gain access
to the Cloudflare Enterprise integration within Cloudways
and as you can see,
this answers the question no,
you actually cannot access the Cloudflare panel.
All of the services are provided right here
in the Cloudways dashboard.
If I go to overview,
we have a rundown of settings here.
But now we know that everything
has to be managed through here.
So that's definitely the gotcha
is that it's not full access to Cloudflare Enterprise
and the entire Cloudflare panel.
It's sort of a watered down version
but you absolutely are getting the Enterprise CDN
and other Enterprise features,
and I have noticed a significant speed improvement
on my website since activating it.
Regardless of how this integration looks,
Cloudways understands the needs of their customers
and is working with partners
to bring new features that benefit both existing customers
and bring in new customers.
So what do you think of the Cloudways announcement?
Are you gonna subscribe to Cloudflare Enterprise?
And if you're not already a Cloudways customer,
would you migrate your data
just for this Cloudflare Enterprise pricing?
Drop a comment below with your thoughts
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With that said, I'll catch you guys next time.