Cloudflare

Cloudflare is a US company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, that operates a large global network providing security, performance and developer services for websites, applications and corporate networks. Its services sit in front of customer infrastructure, where they absorb attacks, cache content and route traffic. Cloudflare says its network proxies roughly 20% of the web.

Its product lines include content delivery and DNS, DDoS protection and web application firewall, Zero Trust access and secure web gateway services, and a developer platform. The developer platform includes Workers, Pages, R2 object storage and other storage products. Cloudflare also offers domain registration at cost, free web analytics and email routing. Indian startups and developers commonly use its free and self-serve plans, while enterprises buy annual contracts through Cloudflare's sales team and partners.

Most self-serve plans are billed in US dollars online, and enterprise contracts are negotiated. Cloudflare's network includes data centres in multiple Indian cities, so traffic for Indian users can be served within the country. The company lists an office in Bengaluru, located in Indiranagar.

Matthew Prince, Michelle Zatlyn and Lee Holloway founded Cloudflare in 2009, building on Project Honey Pot, which Prince and Holloway created in 2004. The company launched publicly at TechCrunch Disrupt in September 2010 and listed on the NYSE under the ticker NET on 13 September 2019. Cloudflare says its network spans 335 cities in more than 125 countries and averages more than 115 million HTTP requests per second. For Indian buyers, the practical implications are that basic protection and CDN can be adopted at no cost, and that more advanced security, compliance and Zero Trust features sit in the paid Pro, Business and Enterprise tiers.