TL;DR: The Must-Have For Every Website

Scaling is tough and pricey, but Cloudflare is here to save the day. They make your site faster and cheaper with their awesome tools. If I had to pick one recommendation, it’s Cloudflare.

CDN - Cache Them All!

With Cloudflare CDN, we hit 50% cache on our requests, slashing server data by 23%. This alone saved us a bundle on egress fees.

But we didn’t stop there. We cranked up the caching even more, and that move kept our cloud bill from spiraling out of control.

Super Bot Fight Mode and WAF (Web Application Firewall)

With a simple flip of the switch, we slashed the useless scraper requests (like SEO bots and its automated cronies) from 25% to 5%.

And of course, we didn’t stop there. We fine-tuned it further, blocking out even more of those pesky, pointless scrapers.

Cloudflare Argo

For those of us running on Singapore servers, flipping the Argo switch made a noticeable dent in our TTFB (time to first byte) for requests coming from non-Singapore locations.

Take this: Argo’s smart routing handled 44.7% of our requests, shaving off 37.4% from the response time.

But hold your horses. Argo charges for egress. So, if your app spews out a ton of data and the speed bump is barely a nudge, it might not be worth the extra coin.

Other Optimizations

The Pro subscription offers a range of improvements that, while difficult to measure directly, significantly enhance your site’s performance and user experience:

Image Optimization

  1. Polish: Your images load faster + WebP support for clients that can handle it

  2. Mirage: Enhance load times for pages with images on mobile devices using slow network connections

Content Optimization

  1. Early Hints - Cloudflare preloads assets so browsers start fetching resources before your server even says “200 OK”

  2. Rocket Loader - Your JavaScript, including third-party stuff, loads asynchronously. That means your content paints quicker, visitors stay happier, and search engines smile upon you

Protocols

  1. Enhanced HTTP/2 Prioritization - Optimize order of resource delivery

  2. 0-RTT Connection Resumption - Better performance for clients who have previously connected to the website

Others

  1. Automatic Signed Exchanges (SXGs) - Boost your Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and SEO + Chromium browsers will prefetch your site right from the search results