kiolNov 20

People using Cloudflare, are you still happy with it? Would you consider any self-hosted alternative?

https://discuss.online/post/30840678

People using Cloudflare, are you still happy with it? Would you consider any self-hosted alternative? - Discuss Online

cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/30840627 [https://discuss.online/post/30840627] > Genuine question, so please don’t be mean to whoever responds. Better to learn than to judge. > > Curious if people who are on Cloudflare are considering any selfhosted alternatives? If not, interested to hear what is a deal breaker in regards to using a service besides Cloudflare. I do hear a lot of praise for Cloudflare when facing DDOS, and always happy to learn more!

Show threadgoferking (he/him)Nov 21
There’s not a way to self host what cloudflare does though
Show threadkiol
What about Pangolin? Or, are you thinking of other aspects?
Nov 21 at 12:37amWeb
Show threadNinjasftwNov 21
That’s only one very small component of what cloudflare does.
We were affected by the recent issues and spent some time working out alternatives to all the features we use. It was daunting…
Show threadgoferking (he/him)Nov 21

Cloudflare is a massive cdn, so it’s point is to front end traffic not just doing routing.

The problem is to get anything close to cloudflare you’d need massive scale and networking ability.

Like self hosting containers or vms. There’s a point you have to go to the cloud

Show threadforbiddenlakeNov 21

You might want to be more specific, cloud flare has a lot of different products, and you’re getting answers with differing assumptions.

For the self hosted focus, I use tail scale already, and when (not if) that company gets shitty, I will switch to head scale, or a competitor, or straight wire guard (plus firewall etc).

But I also run web sites on cf, and there’s no real alternative, definitely not for free. I don’t have hundreds of millions to spend on the CDN part, for starters.

Show threadCameronDevNov 21

I have a lot more faith in tailscale holding the fort against enshitification. They at least seem to have planned their business plan around free tier for advertising, and minimising the cost of the free tier traffic. Can’t predict the future of course, but from a business model POV, they appear to be well setup.

Headscales main issue is that they rely on the tailscale app, and if the app got paywalled or locked to tailscale, that would kill headscale overnight.

I am very happy with headscale so far though, bit fiddly, but once setup it works very well.

Show threadAwait8987Jan 9
Any company funded by venture capital is coming for your money eventually, whatever they say in the short term.
Show threadCameronDevJan 9

You’re not wrong, but the only difference (and time will tell if its sufficient), is that they intentionally and explicitly use the free tier for advertisement, so killing that kills their reputation overnight.

But if all else fails and they try to enshitify, their apps are BSD licenced on github, and headscale is adequate, so the free tier would just shift to headscale and carry on.