[unchaotic]

They've got a very compelling free tier to get you roped in. Works great as a CDN, integrated SSL, great interface, DDoS protection / firewall, page rules - there are just a few of the useful features.

Is there a more comprehensive free tier anywhere else ?

P.S. I'm not saying they are the best choice. They are simply too convenient & comprehensive to get started. With a single click your site can "claim" to be HTTPS even though the upstream connection "may not" be encrypted.

[joepie91_]

Right, but this is the pretty much precisely the problem. It's just the Nth generation of "just centralize the internet through us and we'll take care of everything for you", but this time marketed at startups. All the usual problems with centralization still apply.

(It's still not really "DDoS protection", by the way. They just don't offer that on their free plan.)

[manigandham]

The internet is already very centralized far beyond a single CDN company. All you need to do is look at the number of backbone providers and ISPs serving the vast majority of people in the world.

CloudFlare being a CDN has very little lock-in and is incredibly easy to move away from, so it speaks to how much value they deliver with their product that they have so many customers.

[giovannibajo1]

It only matters because they have no competitors, otherwise you'd say the same applies to AWS hosting the origin servers, and the databases of those very startups likely to use Cloudflare.

In the end, if there were true competitors, it probably wouldn't matter much, they would be just one popular service that handed your data like many others

[manigandham]

They also have plenty of competitors, the CDN space has more companies than the ISP space so the internet is already more centralized at a much deeper level. This a silly claim by the OP.

[aorth]

DNS!

[api]

Amazon Route 53 is better.

[PuffinBlue]

It isn't free, it's more complex to set up and it uses some of its own terminology like 'Hosted Zones' that need to be understood. Just 3 ways in which it's not better.

It's probably better if you define the comparison in terms of flexibility/control etc etc, but simply stating it's 'better' doesn't really add anything to the conversation.

[api]

We host a big domain there and it's like five bucks a month. Of course we don't use the more expensive features just basic DNS and the API.