When it comes to your website, you want to make sure it looks great, offers the best user experience and is safe against malicious attacks, all while helping you to generate solid leads. So how can Cloudflare help with this process? We’ve answered some of the top questions surrounding Cloudflare to help you make an informed decision.
What is Cloudflare?
Cloudflare is a global network service designed to promote internet security, speed, and reliability. It acts as a barrier between your website’s server and the rest of the world, helping to block malicious traffic such as DDoS attacks taking down your site. The service analyses potential threats in visitor requests based on a range of characteristics such as their IP address, resources requested, request payload and efficiency, and customer-defined firewall rules. Suspicious activity is then blocked by Cloudflare, keeping your website safe from harm.
How will Cloudflare affect my website?
Cloudflare offers a number of benefits to your website. On top of providing an extra layer of security from a business point of view, free SSL certification is available which offers further peace of mind for users. Websites using HTTPS have a level of encryption that ensures any personal information entered through the website is safe from the hands of cybercriminals. This is especially useful for e-commerce websites, however, is still highly recommended for all website types. Not only does it provide extra security for your users, but HTTPS is also considered a ranking factor by Google, and websites using SSL certificates will benefit from a slight boost in ranking power.
Asset caching is another benefit bought to you by Cloudflare. By caching previous versions of your website, Cloudflare ensures something is always visible to your audience, regardless of trouble behind the scenes. In addition, caching helps to provide site speed improvements by eliminating the need for the user’s computer to contact the website’s server every time they visit a website. This improvement in site speed is another bonus for those looking to improve their SEO, with Google placing a heavy focus on page load times across desktop and mobile.
Setting up Cloudflare can sound quite daunting, however, moving to Cloudflare is perfectly straightforward and can provide huge benefits to your website’s performance and security.
Is Cloudflare free?
Cloudflare offers a number of pricing options depending on the size of your business and the support you need. However, at Verto, we provide our clients with the free Cloudflare service on top of their current paid hosting package. This means, transitioning your website to Cloudflare through us won’t cost you a penny more than you’re already paying for your hosting. You’ll be able to enjoy all the benefits of Cloudflare along with the in-depth technical support and 99.9% uptime we offer as part of our own services.
If you are yet to move your website to Cloudflare or would like to speak to one of our developers in more detail before making a decision, get in touch on 01536 411153 and we’d be more than happy to walk you through the process in more detail.
