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Xenforo + Cloudflare vs Xenforo + DNS Made Easy + BunnyCDN?

Discussion in 'Forum software usage' started by Jon1235, Feb 21, 2020.

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  1. Feb 21, 2020 #1
    Jon1235

    Jon1235 New Member

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    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?

    Edit: This is my first proper post here!
     
  2. Feb 21, 2020 #2
    eva2000

    eva2000 Administrator Staff Member

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  3. Feb 22, 2020 #3
    Rake-GH

    Rake-GH Active Member

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    If you just need CDN and ddos protection you can just use Cloudflare Free, there are lots of little useful features built right into the free plan that you can enable or disable.

    If you need load balancing, it's not free.

    I use cloudflare and love it.

    You can checkout this
    https://www.cdnoverview.com/cdn/compare/bunnycdn-vs-cloudflare/
     
  4. Feb 22, 2020 #4
    buik

    buik “The best traveler is one without a camera.”

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    Because $ 100's seems a lot for your site cost/benefit.
    To be able to give you a targeted answer. Could you give some more information.
    What do you want to achieve? What are your specs?

    Cloudflare is very simple. If you don't use high volume socket servers or load balancing.
    Start with the free plan and if this is not sufficient you can easily upgrade within a few seconds.
    That's not the problem.

    The fact to the matter is this, do you need Cloudflare, DNS Made Easy and/or BunnyCDN anyway?
    If I look at myself I would never use paid services (more than necessary) if the site doesn't pay out.

    Everyone is scared with TTFB and so on.
    110ms is decisive for an Amazon as number 1, where every ms counts or another top webshop but not for a forum or other non-profit.

    It is a strategy to scare people so that they think you will miss something.
    With this strategy users quickly take services that are not needed. Easily earned!

    Therefore again. What do you want to achieve implementing Cloudflare or DNS Made Easy + BunnyCDN?
     
    Last edited: Feb 22, 2020
  5. Feb 23, 2020 #5
    Jon1235

    Jon1235 New Member

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    Thanks for all the answers guys.

    I want a very fast site. It is pretty quick already, but I would like it to be more so. When I looked at Google Analytics, I noticed that different parts of the world had a very difference experience. The BunnyCDN has 39 POPs while Cloudflare has 200. That is a substantial difference. While DNSMadeEasy has the fastest DNS lookup time, Cloudflare is close behind.

    For Cloudflare, I would go for the $20pm option, not the one for $200 with railgun etc. That is way over my budget.

    @eva2000 Do you use the free version of Cloudflare or the $20pm option?
     
  6. Feb 23, 2020 #6
    buik

    buik “The best traveler is one without a camera.”

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    @eva2000 is using the business edition special for valuable partners :)
    I have experience with the free, pro, business and custom enterprise package.
    If there is something that @eva2000 (as he is the one) does not know then I am there for you;)
     
  7. Feb 23, 2020 #7
    eva2000

    eva2000 Administrator Staff Member

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    I have 90+ domains on Cloudflare and counting majority are on Cloudflare free plan, a few on pro plan and centminmod.com site and forums on Cloudflare business plan :)

    Latest site is my Centmin Mod Wordpress installed blog at https://servermanager.guide/ on Cloudflare free plan :D
     
  8. Feb 24, 2020 #8
    Rake-GH

    Rake-GH Active Member

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    BTW if you need more than 5 firewall rules on the free plan, you just go to tools and you can add unlimited rules. There are minor limitations but they don't matter for the most part
     
  9. Feb 24, 2020 #9
    buik

    buik “The best traveler is one without a camera.”

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    True If you ask me.
    In addition to your reply.

    I think the difference between free and pro is small. Perhaps even too small.
    If WAF and custom error pages is not needed and no socket server with high requests is running.
    Free is suitable.
     
  10. Feb 25, 2020 #10
    Jon1235

    Jon1235 New Member

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    I've been told you can get fast DNS and the CDN for free on Cloudflare. So I am wondering, is $20pm really worth just image compression and some of the security options?

    Also, since installing Cloudflare, I swear my site seems slower! The pageinsights tool seems to suggest it is. Or was it that redis cache I also added...

    Makes me wonder if you try to overoptimise you end up making your site slower!
     
  11. Feb 25, 2020 #11
    eva2000

    eva2000 Administrator Staff Member

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    do proper technical measurements for page speed starting with webpagetest.org testing see my guide at WebPerf - PageSpeed - How to use webpagetest.org for page load speed testing
     
  12. Feb 25, 2020 #12
    Jon1235

    Jon1235 New Member

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    This might sound naive of me but I would have thought implementing Cloudflare with its faster DNS, more POPs for CDN and image compression would automatically increase site speed. Why would it not?
     
  13. Feb 25, 2020 #13
    eva2000

    eva2000 Administrator Staff Member

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    Because majority of folks don't fully understand or read how to properly utilise Cloudflare as by default it only caches static assets and not dynamically generated HTML - you have to configure and tell Cloudflare to also cache dynamically generated HTML but that isn't for all situations (logged in member vs guest). See my post at Cloudflare - Origin Server Location & Argo and other Optimizations for Pagespeed Insights

    So geographical proximity of your origin server to majority of your visitors still matter.

     
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