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by jgrahamc 3422 days ago
It's not bandwidth that is restricted by our terms of service it's...

SECTION 10: LIMITATION ON NON-HTML CACHING

You acknowledge that Cloudflare’s Service is offered as a platform to cache and serve web pages and websites and is not offered for other purposes, such as remote storage. Accordingly, you understand and agree to use the Service solely for the purpose of hosting and serving web pages as viewed through a web browser or other application and the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) protocol or other equivalent technology. Cloudflare’s Service is also a shared web caching service, which means a number of customers’ websites are cached from the same server. To ensure that Cloudflare’s Service is reliable and available for the greatest number of users, a customer’s usage cannot adversely affect the performance of other customers’ sites. Additionally, the purpose of Cloudflare’s Service is to proxy web content, not store data. Using an account primarily as an online storage space, including the storage or caching of a disproportionate percentage of pictures, movies, audio files, or other non-HTML content, is prohibited. You further agree that if, at Cloudflare’s sole discretion, you are deemed to have violated this section, or if Cloudflare, in its sole discretion, deems it necessary due to excessive burden or potential adverse impact on Cloudflare’s systems, potential adverse impact on other users, server processing power, server memory, abuse controls, or other reasons, Cloudflare may suspend or terminate your account without notice to or liability to you.

2 comments

  You further agree that if [...] if Cloudflare, in its
  sole discretion, deems it necessary due to [...]
  other reasons, Cloudflare may suspend or terminate
  your account without notice to or liability to you.
I gotta say, that statement isn't very helpful in letting people know what to avoid doing.
these clauses are pretty common for this type of contract. it allows the service provider to not have to worry about whether or not their contract allows them to kick an abusive customer off their platform.
This is a pity, as Cloudflare could serve a much larger niche otherwise. I suppose there's no such thing as "free". Oh well...