Hosting & infrastructure
Cloudflare
Cloudflare runs websites and apps on a global network: hosting, CDN, DNS, security and serverless functions in one place. How I use it.
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Cloudflare is a global network that sits between your website and its visitors. It hosts sites and apps close to users around the world, protects them from attacks and manages domains and DNS.
Strengths: what it’s good at
- Speed worldwide: pages are served from data centres near each visitor.
- Security: DDoS protection, a web application firewall, bot management and HTTPS by default.
- DNS and domains: fast DNS with DNSSEC, and email routing and settings in the same place.
- Serverless: Workers and Pages run sites and functions without managing servers, with storage and databases nearby.
- Deploy from Git: every push to the main branch goes live automatically, with preview links for branches.
Limits: what to consider
Serverless platforms have their own limits on runtime, memory and supported libraries, so some backends fit better on a classic server.
Use: when I choose it
For hosting static and server-rendered sites built with Astro and similar frameworks, for DNS, domain security and email authentication, and as a protective layer in front of existing servers. This site runs on Cloudflare.