Cloudflare hikes prices by a quarter, blames the accountants

Cloudflare has announced what it claims are its first ever price rises. As of January 15, 2023, new customers for the company's Pro Plan will be charged $25 a month, up from $20. New signups for the Business Plan will be charged $250 each month, up from $200. Current customers won't cop the extra charges until May 14, 2023. …

[LosD]

Not reeeeeeeaaaally a price hike, unless you want to stay on a monthly cycle.

[SVD_NL]

Basically the same as what Microsoft did last year. They increased yearly MS365 licences a little bit, but monthly ones an additional 15%.

[Anonymous Coward]

Least they're quite transparent. We've had a few providers that tell us we're being increased M2M from the next bill. No explanation why other than 'In line with the industry and rising costs'.

[wallyhall]

Agreed (re transparency). And, at the risk of sounding like a fanboi, still cheap as chips.

I voluntarily help and run a number of non-profit websites, and my advice to anyone who runs a website anywhere (where there is a tight budget involved) - use Cloudflare. Just do it.

Even their free tier is remarkable, it’s just a no brainer in most circumstances (in my opinion - anyone reason I should change my stance?).

The Cloudflare Tunnel feature in particular, all but eradicates the need to allow direct traffic to your hosting, and the caching makes even the most underwhelming infrastructure appear fast and responsive.

For any profitable business who relies on their website being available, snappy, and secure …, 25USD a month is unlikely to be breaking the bank balance.

[spireite]

Vendor lock-in?

Honestly, it could have been worse.

On the plus side, unlike the permanent shackles of M365 where most companies wouldn't allow it to be ripped from their cold dead hands - even if MS tripled the price - you can vote with your feet on this one.

Minus side? Price is up - but in the current environment what hasn't?

And, they are more transparent than most - so we should give kudos for that at least.

[David Austin]

The Great Mismatch

Cloud Providers: The great thing about cloud is it's elastic and will scale up and down to match your needs and budgets!

Also Cloud providers: oh btw annual bill upfront is cool, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The Great Mismatch

What can't scale to your needs?

[spireite]

Re: The Great Mismatch

The price does scale... upwards

[Lil Endian]

Re: The Great Mismatch

I like Cloudflare's services: important and effective.

Yet, they're a profit making org.

"We invest up front in building out our network or developing a new feature, but then only get paid monthly by our customers."

In a free market you take a risk with ROI. You're asking customers to pay for your investment, not share holders.

[Mike Pellatt]

Re: The Great Mismatch

At least it's better than BT, (successfully) asking the taxpayer to do that for them. As well as the customer, subsequently (differential Openreach pricing in copper-only areas).

[Lil Endian]

Re: The Great Mismatch

Too true.

I can't condone "too big to fail" in a free market leading to bail-outs. If tax funds are required, you've been (re)nationalised, in full or in part.

[Greg Fawcett]

I'm awaiting confirmation (24 hours and counting) from Cloudflare support, but it looks like this is the end of earlybird discounts too. In which case our bill will go from $45 to $140 a month, even if we pay annually.

Given we only signed up so we could provide an HTTPS interface to our Appengine apps, and Appengine has does HTTPS directly for years now, we'll be cancelling our account if we can't keep our earlybird discount.

[ElRegioLPL]

You do know HTTPS is free on Cloudflare don't you?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you pay for a cert today you're in the wrong place.