points by scrollaway 7 years ago

Just for everyone's clarity, you can use Cloudflare with AWS just fine.

A previous site I built (https://hearthstonejson.com/) is pushing on the order of 100TB / month in images and JSON data, with 96% cached requests and 99.9% cloudflare-cached bandwidth. Almost nothing comes out of S3 itself.

Cloudfront is the ridiculously-priced offering IMO. I don't really understand why people use it.

dpq 7 years ago

I'm afraid you are in for a nasty surprise: CloudFlare specifically forbids using it mostly as an image/video CDN unless you are on the Enterprise tier (clause 2.8 in the Terms). I found it out the hard way a couple of years ago when I was helping with maintenance of a pretty large image hosting website (we got to 1-2Pb/mo range). CF may not pay attention to you while you are small, but when they do, it's going to cost you.

  • ianai 7 years ago

    What’s the enterprise cost per month?

    • dpq 7 years ago

      Subject for negotiation. But it's going to be in the ballpark of many $k/mo

    • joshmn 7 years ago

      $Contact us

      • qes 7 years ago

        That. We ended up at $3500/month for ~200 TB/month. Reading this thread I might have negotiate harder when renewal time comes.

    • user5994461 7 years ago

      Pro is $200, enterprise is $2000.

      This is probably customized per client and could be more for big companies.

  • doliveira 7 years ago

    I wonder if that's just for specifically image hosting websites like your case. Parent comment and my previous experiences seem to imply that embedded media is okay.

    Even then, just a few terabytes of traffic will make Cloudfront reach the thousands.

  • MaxBarraclough 7 years ago

    > CloudFlare specifically forbids using it mostly as an image/video CDN unless you are on the Enterprise tier

    For those of us not in the know, what else would you use it for?

    • whatshisface 7 years ago

      I remember them billing themselves as free DDoS protection.

      • MaxBarraclough 7 years ago

        I don't follow. They're in the business of serving static content, right?

        • clhodapp 7 years ago

          They are willing to serve as your CDN if you don't make them front too much image or audio traffic and you don't make them front any video. Their free tier is for non-media-focused sites only.

          • therealdrag0 7 years ago

            Why don't they just limit it by bandwidth/hits? Is there anything special about media content that it should be considered differently?

            • MaxBarraclough 7 years ago

              Video might mean adaptive bitrate I suppose.

  • booleanbetrayal 7 years ago

    via https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/ -

    "2.8 Limitation on Non-HTML Caching The Service is offered primarily as a platform to cache and serve web pages and websites. Unless explicitly included as a part of a Paid Service purchased by you, you agree to use the Service solely for the purpose of serving web pages as viewed through a web browser or other application and the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) protocol or other equivalent technology. Use of the Service for the storage or caching of video (unless purchased separately as a Paid Service) or a disproportionate percentage of pictures, audio files, or other non-HTML content, is prohibited."

    ---

    "disproportionate percentage" seems wide open

  • kjar 7 years ago

    I wonder if image data URIs fly below the radar

module0000 7 years ago

>> Cloudfront is the ridiculously-priced offering IMO. I don't really understand why people use it.

Companies that get their highly regulated product(health insurance, hospitals, government contractors) "certified" for use in the AWS ecosystem. Once they do that, they are likely to use it for everything, and pass the cost on to the customer.