(Xenforo + Cloudflare) vs (Xenforo + DNS Made Easy + BunnyCDN)

[Jon12345]

Currently, I have my Xenforo board setup using BunnyCDN. After a bit of research, I thought I would test my DNS speed using SolveDNS's DNS Speed Test.

To my horror, I averaged out at 110ms! Looking at some charts, I found that DNSMadeEasy has a 2.65ms lookup time and CloudFlare 5.43. So, I figure I need to have one of those two.

BunnyCDN is cheap, but it has a lot less POPs than CloudFlare. But there is something about CloudFlare that puts me off. I think it is my lack of understanding because it clearly has all sorts of things that it does. My site has 1.5M posts, so its a reasonably large board, and if I went the CloudFlare route, I am not sure what package I would need and I see some of them run into the $100's. Eek!

What would you recommend for me to use with my Xenforo forum? Cloudflare or DNS Made Easy + BunnyCDN?

 

[Anatoliy]

BunnyCDN is cheap

you can use Cloudflare's CDN for free. it's cheaper than cheap. )

 

[rdn]

XenForo + Cloudflare on Pro Plan + Dedicated Certificate = $25 USD monthly.
Don't try Argo, not worth the price.

 

[Sam9]

I'd strongly suggest Cloudflare.

You don't need a pro plan or dedicated cert for Cloudflare, the free plan would be suitable for the vast majority of setups.

 

[Jon12345]

@rdn Doesn't it come with free SSL certificate?

From what I see, the $20pm pro plan has the following benefits for speed: CDN with many more pops than BunnyCDN; image compression; fast DNS.

Am I missing anything?

I found the mobile stuff they talk about a bit confusing so not sure if the $20pm package helps speed up page load times for mobile users or not.

 

[rdn]

@rdn Doesn't it come with free SSL certificate?

Yeah shared with other free domain users (that could be use for spam and you'll be affected with blacklisting or warning from browsers).

Pro plan is definitely worth.
Search for an article "Cloudflare free vs pro plan" benefits for more info.

 

[Jon12345]

Great, thanks for the advice. I've got litespeed + cache setup, I've got Redis setup, I've got a CDN setup. Now I want fast DNS and better CDN and image compression, so Cloudflare might be the missing piece of the puzzle.

 

[Sam9]

Yeah shared with other free domain users (that could be use for spam and you'll be affected with blacklisting or warning from browsers).

Do you have a source for that? I've never heard of any browser blocking Cloudflare's SNI certs due to spam or any other noisy neighbour activity. You could suffer from blacklisting based on IP addresses, although this is a non issue for the vast majority of people, and upgrading to a Pro plan wouldn't help with that anyway.

Pro plan is definitely worth.

The main benefits are the extra edge and firewall rule allowances, which aren't needed for the majority of sites.

 

[rdn]

Do you have a source for that? I've never heard of any browser blocking Cloudflare's SNI certs due to spam or any other noisy neighbour activity.

I experienced it several times for smaller sites.

 

[Sam9]

I experienced it several times for smaller sites.

I don't know how, as the blacklists Firefox, Chrome and Edge check against are URL/domain based, and nothing to do with SNI certs.

https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/v4 (Chrome & Firefox)
https://www.stopbadware.org/ (Firefox)
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/17443/microsoft-edge-smartscreen-faq (Edge)