I have been using Cloudflare pages for some time, only for small sites[0]. Today I also moved my main blog[1] to it. Both pages are small, so this is not a serious review.<p>I moved from Netlify. The main reasons are DNS and analytics. I already manage all my DNS with Cloudflare, and having everything in the same place is very convenient. Regarding analytics, Cloudflare provides some very basic analytics, which I think are convenient, in Netlify you need to include your own analytics script or use the paid version. I also noticed pages loaded noticeably faster in Cloudflare Pages.<p>On the other hand, Netlify is specialized in the kind of sites you would host with Cloudflare Pages, so the overall product is more polished towards that. Also, the site build (at least using Hugo) is a lot faster in Netlify. Instant rollbacks in Netlify are <i>wonderful</i>.<p>Overall, I really like both products a lot and I would not recommend one over the other. It's also important to consider the limits[2-5] of each one. In the free versions, Cloudflare limits by number of builds, Netlify limits the total build minutes. Netlify has a bandwidth limit, Cloudflare does not mention any bandwidth limit.<p>[0] <a href="https://litements.exampl.io/" rel="nofollow">https://litements.exampl.io/</a>
[1] <a href="https://ricardoanderegg.com/" rel="nofollow">https://ricardoanderegg.com/</a>
[2] <a href="https://www.netlify.com/tos/" rel="nofollow">https://www.netlify.com/tos/</a>
[3] <a href="https://www.netlify.com/pricing/" rel="nofollow">https://www.netlify.com/pricing/</a>
[4] <a href="https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/platform/limits" rel="nofollow">https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/platform/limits</a>
[5] <a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/plans/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cloudflare.com/plans/</a>
Been using it for a few weeks on one of my side projects. Overall pleased but did encounter some problems:<p>- Builds randomly fail to deploy and without notification (had to push a random commit to master to trigger a new build)<p>- If using custom domain, there's no way to redirect myproject.pages.dev to myproject.com so I had to use a <link rel="canonical"> on the off chance Google finds my pages link. I also had to use a page rule to redirect all traffic to www<p>- I'm not exactly sure how (if it's even possible) to set up a staging environment so that every push to master doesn't automatically deploy to production<p>- All the cache-control headers are "max-age=0, must-revalidate". I had to create another page rule to edit this to 1 year max age for assets that already have contenthash appended to their file names
Please give a useful technical description of what Cloudflare Pages is within the first 2 paragraphs. Even the section titled 'What is Cloudflare Pages' is entirely unhelpful marketing drivel:<p>> Cloudflare Pages radically simplifies the process of developing and deploying sites by taking care of all the tedious parts of web development. Now, developers can focus on the fun and creative parts instead.
This is a showstopper for me right now and is keeping me on Netlify:<p>Pages cannot serve files located in a .well-known
folder. (<a href="https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/platform/known-issues" rel="nofollow">https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/platform/known-issue...</a>)<p>Otherwise, a fantastic product and a great addition to the ecosystem. The traditional hosting industry (think cpanel etc) <i>hates</i> this btw, so good job!
I've been using it for some time (arewefastyet.rs and a personal blog) and I've been pleased with it so far. It replaced my use of a $5 droplet. Less hassle around deployment and $5 cheaper. The killer feature is probably the previews - the private links allow me to get feedback without pushing to the main site.<p>It's not perfect, but I'm sure they can fix the quirks soon. My main one was git clone failing and not understanding why("Failed: an internal error occurred"). The other is that I want a way for the pages.dev site alone to be invisible from search engines but couldn't figure out a way to do that with robots.txt. Lastly I wanted to share this feedback during the beta program, but I couldn't find a way other than creating a twitter account and hitting up the PM. Fortunately, this thread saved me from having to do that.
I like that it's easier and easier to host HTML content "for free" on the web.<p>However, I'm a bit concerned when I look at the size, breadth and growth of cloudfare (ie, cloudfare absorbing the web). As a way to lessen these concerns, I would really, really like it if they were to offer cloudfare pages as an IPFS (or gnunet, hypercore, etc) gateway too.<p>Modify your pages and publish it on IPFS, have the changes propagated on cloudfare: that would be nice :)
Support for simple redirect rules via the `_redirects` file prompted me to switch my personal site over.<p>I have found Cloudflare Pages to be really, really fast. Much faster than Netlify, although they still win based on UI polish & features.
I just created a new Pages project and deployed it in under 10 minutes.<p>@rita3ko, it'll be nice if we could change the linked GitHub repository without having to delete and recreate a project.<p>I'm currently trying it on the staging version of a site from my personal GitHub account, but I'll be moving it to an organisation account soon.<p>Edit: a button or webhook to trigger a build would be great too. I just changed the production branch from my "main" to "develop" branch, but there's no way to rebuild it short of pushing a new commit.
great launch Rita and team!<p>> Device-based resizing: To make users’ experiences even smoother, especially on less reliable mobile devices, we want to make sure we’re not sending large images that will only get previewed on a small screen. Our new optimization will appropriately resize the image based on whether the device is mobile or desktop.<p>wait, what? i feel like this needs more details... can we opt out of it if necessary? (say on a per image, or sitewide, or cookie based, basis) it sounds very nice but the loss of control seems concerning?
I've been using Cloudflare Pages for a few of my sites. Been getting issues on one of them for the past few weeks and getting "Failed: an internal error occurred" on the deployment step. I've asked for support and also tweeted [1] but to no avail.<p>I eventually moved it back to GitHub Pages. My other sites seems okay tho'.<p>[1] <a href="https://twitter.com/cheeaun/status/1378709230765580293" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/cheeaun/status/1378709230765580293</a>
Congrats on releasing! Cloudflare Tunnel secure localhost public URL looks like a very powerful feature. Is Cloudflare working on a full "Cloud IDE" in-house? It appears all the parts are there, even for just a cloud shell ;)
It’s an interesting product but it’s very barebones. Netlify is a whole company vested in making the same thing as this “side project” by CloudFlare and therefore has a lot more interesting features than just serving static files.
I personally ended up moving mostly everything to AWS. AWS Amplify now simplifies hosting static websites on S3. Automatic builds from GitHub, previews of PR. Route53 is there too. So I can keep all the DNS records, static website, builds in one place. And if I will need to add some server logic - lambdas and more is there too.<p>I even build an mac/ios app to track analytics from my AWS Amplify websites <a href="https://www.outcoldman.com/en/archive/2021/03/14/cloudanalytics-app-for-aws-amplify/" rel="nofollow">https://www.outcoldman.com/en/archive/2021/03/14/cloudanalyt...</a><p>I have found about the AWS Amplify after switching to Hugo - <a href="https://gohugo.io/hosting-and-deployment/hosting-on-aws-amplify/" rel="nofollow">https://gohugo.io/hosting-and-deployment/hosting-on-aws-ampl...</a>
I’m not really sure the answer to this but Cloudflare’s beta programs in general are a bit frustrating.<p>For example, Durable Objects came out a year ago, was impossible to get into (check community forums and Discord, lots of people eager to just tinker concept who couldn’t).<p>Now, that super interesting technology that supposed to shake things up a bit, has almost ZERO code samples after a FULL year after announcement. I’m not exaggerating. Check GitHub search.<p>I write this comment because I could have sworn Pages came out of beta already...<p>Either way, looking forward to deeper tool integration. The idea of your front end and back end application getting to a point of single commit is attractive.<p>Edit: Not a FULL year, 6 months or so. See note below
This seems like a good recent feature comparison for Netlify, Firebase, Github, Gitlab, CloudFlare, etc:<p><a href="https://jace.pro/post/2020-12-17-cloudflare-pages-netlify-zeit-github-pages-and-gitlab-pages-where-to-host/" rel="nofollow">https://jace.pro/post/2020-12-17-cloudflare-pages-netlify-ze...</a>
A good reminder that static web app hosting is a race to the bottom and filled with options. Do not envy the companies competing in this space.<p>I think Cloudflare has a ways to go before frontend devs really think of them as anything more than just DNS hosting but this looks very promising and a very smart move on their part. Looking forward to trying it!
> Getting started with Cloudflare Pages is as easy as connecting your repository and selecting your framework and build commands.<p>> Once you’re set up, the only magic words you’ll need are `git commit` and `git push`. We’ll take care of building and deploying your sites for you, so you won’t ever have to leave your current workflow.<p>> Supporting static sites is just the beginning of the journey for Cloudflare Pages. With redirects support, we’re starting to introduce the first bit of dynamic functionality to Pages, but our ambitions extend far beyond.<p>> Our long term goal with Pages is to make full-stack application development as breezy an experience as static site development is today. We want to make Pages the deployment target for your static assets, and the APIs that make them dynamic. With Workers and Durable Objects, we believe we have just the toolset to build upon.<p>> We’ll be starting by allowing you to deploy a Worker function by including it in your /api or /functions directory. Over time, we’ll be introducing new ways for you to deploy Durable Objects or utilize the KV namespaces in the same way.<p>> Imagine, your entire application — frontend, APIs, storage, data — all deployed with a single commit, easily testable in staging, and a single merge to deploy to production.<p>What sets it apart from Heroku ?
Anyone from Cloudflare here? Are there any plans for dotnet and/or deno support? I have asked this in Discord but I haven't received any answers.
I set up my blog on CF pages about a month ago. I guess I chose a domain and did the github flow and that was it, everything clicked and worked on the first try. Haven't had to open the UI since.<p>I have been using CF for a few years now (dns, caching) but the services they've recently launched have been especially impressive (pages, stream).
[unrelated/offtopic]:<p>Because cf devs may be listening listening, can you please change the css on your blog to this:<p><pre><code> @media only screen and (min-width: 960px)</code></pre>
nav {
position: sticky;
top: -0.5px;
background: #FFF;
}<p>Namely, `top: 0;` to `top: -0.5px`. On Retina screens it shows a small gap above the nav.
We’ve been using Cloudflare pages for Jellyfin’s experimental client[0] and it’s been really nice having automatic deployments on each PR and automatic master builds.<p>[0] <a href="https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-vue" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-vue</a>
I'm not familiar with jamstack/pages at all, but I get the shivers when I see this magic "_redirects" file in the root of your output directory. This is just bad design. It should not be in the output / public directory, in case someone misconfigures something.
I end up hosting a lot of static sites on Firebase. I've tried several other ways of hosting static content but usually end up back at Firebase as it's simple and cheap. It does have some quirks though, so I'm interested in trying this out to see how it compares.
Is there any reason now to use Cloudflare "full site caching" (cache everything via Page Rules) instead of this new Cloudflare Pages offering for static sites?<p>I know in the past, I at least would have my entire static site fully cached with Cloudflare using Page Rules.<p>What do I lose if I moved over to Cloudflare Pages? E.g. slower site performance, etc?<p><a href="https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/360021023712-Best-Practices-Speed-up-your-Site-with-Custom-Caching-via-Cloudflare-Page-Rules" rel="nofollow">https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/36002102371...</a><p>EDIT:<p>Follow-up question, what happens if I use Cloudflare Pages and then setup a Page Rule to "cache everything" from Pages?
Dumb question ...<p>The pricing of Pages is $0/20/$200.<p>If someone already has an existing Cloudflare account on the: Free ($0) / Pro ($20) / Business ($200) tier - do they get Pages included in their existing plan ... or is Pages an incremental cost?
I have a specific need and I'm wondering if any of these static site hosts offer a solution.<p>I have a static site I made for a friend's business and all they need is the ability to switch out a PDF on the site periodically. The approach I've done so far is to have a simple sinatra app that is password protected and gives them an upload form that replaces the pdf on the server. Do any of these hosts offer an asset manager that would let my friend manage images or pdfs via a simplified admin interface and then rebuild the site with the new assets?
I've migrated my blog [1] and another landing page from Netlify to Cloudflare Pages so far and have been pretty happy with it!<p>@rita3ko I would love the ability to disable automatic preview builds. My "production" branch which Cloudflare Pages deploys from has a /public directory which I ship, but my other branches are not structured the same and therefore cause build failures. I just don't need preview builds for my use case.<p>[1]: <a href="https://jakedeichert.com" rel="nofollow">https://jakedeichert.com</a>
Cloudflare folks: do you have plans to support subdomains? I've been using AWS CloudFront and am pretty happy with it, but the performance claims made by CloudFlare were intriguing enough for me to give it a try.<p>I tried adding something like blog.domain.tld, and it failed with: "Please ensure you are providing the root domain and not any subdomains (e.g., example.com, not subdomain.example.com)"<p>Many people would use this service with a subdomain, this is kind of a deal-breaker.
Reading the comments is making me much more interested in Netlify, which I didn't know about. I've been hosting a static site using github pages, and Cloudflare pages looks really interesting.
I'm not going to rely on Cloudflare Pages personally... It's concerning to see they let free traffic in regions be broken for over 8 hours _without_ redirecting traffic to another working PoP as well[0].<p>0: <a href="https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/incidents/qjwxv73chh5b" rel="nofollow">https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/incidents/qjwxv73chh5b</a>
Gentle reminder when receiving something for free, it's useful to keep in mind what the other party is receiving from you in return, and in this case, from all your users through your consent. I'm not sure what CloudFlare gain from offering this, but traffic data would seem the most obvious angle.<p>So I guess from my perspective, I'd treat this with roughly the same scepticism as a free hosting service provided by Google Analytics, at least until the bigger picture is made a little more clear.