Updated October 2026
Quick answer: Cloudflare is a popular content delivery network (CDN) and security service, but it isn’t always a good idea. Its main downsides are that it adds another company your website depends on (a Cloudflare outage can take your site offline), it can block genuine visitors, it makes troubleshooting harder, it may duplicate what good hosting already provides, and all your traffic is decrypted on its network. For many Australian business websites on quality local hosting, it adds more complexity than benefit.
Cloudflare launched in 2009 and now sits in front of millions of websites, from personal blogs to global enterprises. It offers a CDN, DNS, protection against DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks, a web application firewall, SSL/TLS encryption and performance features, with a free plan and several paid tiers.
It’s a good product. But it’s often switched on by default, recommended without much thought, or added on top of hosting that already does the same job. Here’s what to consider first.
The downsides of Cloudflare
1. You depend on another company
With Cloudflare in front of your site, every visitor passes through Cloudflare’s network. If Cloudflare has a problem, your website can go down even though your server is fine. That isn’t theoretical: in November 2025, a Cloudflare outage took thousands of well-known websites offline for several hours.
2. It can block real visitors
Cloudflare’s security features sometimes challenge or block genuine people, especially those on VPNs, some mobile networks, corporate and government networks, or overseas connections. Visitors see a challenge page or an error and simply leave, and you may never know. Tuning the rules takes time and expertise.
3. Troubleshooting gets harder
When something goes wrong, there’s an extra layer to investigate. Is the problem with your website, your host or Cloudflare? Caching at Cloudflare’s end can also mean visitors see old versions of pages after you’ve made changes. See why your WordPress site suddenly looks weird.
4. It may duplicate what your hosting already does
Good hosting already includes firewalls, DDoS protection, caching, free SSL certificates and fast DNS. Adding Cloudflare on top can give you two layers doing the same job, with little performance gain and more to go wrong.
5. It doesn’t always make Australian sites faster
A CDN helps most when visitors are spread around the world. If your audience is mainly in Australia and your site is hosted in Australia, the speed benefit is often small, and routing traffic through another network can occasionally make things slower. See is a CDN really necessary for your website?
6. Privacy and data handling
Cloudflare decrypts your website traffic on its servers to inspect and cache it. For most sites this is fine, but organisations handling sensitive information (health, legal, government or financial data) should check it meets their privacy obligations under the Australian Privacy Act and any sector rules.
7. Costs and features creep
The free plan is limited. Many of the features that make Cloudflare genuinely useful for businesses (advanced firewall rules, image optimisation, better support) sit on paid plans, which add up.
8. Control of your DNS
Cloudflare usually works by taking over your domain’s DNS. That’s another account and set of settings to manage, and a common source of confusion when websites or email move. See website hosting vs DNS hosting.
When Cloudflare does make sense
To be fair to Cloudflare, it’s a strong choice when:
- Your visitors are spread across many countries.
- You’re a frequent target of large DDoS attacks.
- Your hosting doesn’t include a good firewall, CDN or DDoS protection.
- Your site is being hammered by aggressive bots, including AI crawlers, and you need fine-grained control over which ones get through.
- You need specific edge features, such as Cloudflare Workers.
Cloudflare alternatives
Other CDN and edge security providers include Akamai, Fastly and Amazon CloudFront. For many Australian organisations, though, the best alternative is quality Australian hosting that already includes firewall protection, caching and SSL.
Itomic’s view
We don’t add Cloudflare by default. Our servers already include most of the protection and performance features people use it for, at no extra cost, and an extra layer can create problems of its own. Where it earns its place, we use it: we’ve moved several client sites behind Cloudflare to control aggressive bot and AI crawler traffic. We’re happy to review your situation.
Frequently asked questions
Is Cloudflare bad for SEO?
Not usually. But if its security settings block search engine crawlers, or if it causes errors and outages, your rankings can suffer.
Is Cloudflare’s free plan enough?
For a personal site, often yes. Business sites usually need paid features, or better hosting instead.
Why am I seeing a Cloudflare error on a website?
Errors such as 520, 521 or 522 usually mean Cloudflare couldn’t reach the website’s server, or a problem at Cloudflare itself. If it’s your site, contact your host.
Want hosting that doesn’t need extra layers?
Itomic provides Australian website hosting with firewall protection, SSL and performance built in, plus proactive security and patching. Talk to us about your website.
