Delivering Cloudflare Hosting via the Cloudways Cloudflare Enterprise Add-on

Key Takeaways

• Access enterprise-grade Cloudflare features like an intelligent WAF and a 100 GB CDN for a fraction of the standard cost, starting at just $4.99 per month.
• Shift the heavy lifting to the global edge network using Edge Page Caching and Argo Smart Routing to drastically reduce server load and speed up page load times.
• Protect your origin server and visitors with automated DDoS mitigation, global rate limiting, and Turnstile CAPTCHA without needing any complex manual configurations.

Cloudways has always prioritized performance and security on our managed hosting platform. When we first partnered with Cloudflare, the goal was simple: make enterprise-grade security and speed accessible to agencies, web professionals, and SMBs without the massive price tag.

Since then, we have continued to expand what this integration can do. By baking features like Edge Page Caching, smart routing, and in-depth analytics right into the dashboard, websites hosted with us are seeing up to a 66% improvement in page load times and a 30% boost in overall performance.

Let’s take a look at exactly how the Cloudflare Enterprise Add-on works and the specific features it brings to your web applications.

Brief Overview of Cloudflare

Cloudflare is often thought of as just a DNS platform, but it is actually a massive global connectivity cloud. It operates a vast edge network designed to accelerate content delivery worldwide while adding a heavy layer of advanced security.

The standard free plan gives users basic DNS management, a free SSL certificate, and a regular CDN. That works fine for smaller sites, but businesses dealing with high traffic volumes, complex security threats, and strict uptime requirements need a lot more power.

This is where the Cloudflare Enterprise plan comes into play. If you go directly to Cloudflare, signing an Enterprise contract typically starts at $3,000 to $5,000 per month.

But through our partnership, we offer those exact same premium features directly from your Cloudways dashboard. Better yet, our Cloudflare Enterprise pricing allows you to get this level of protection starting at just $4.99 a month per website.

Why Cloudways Partnered With Cloudflare

We originally started looking for a reliable alternative to our previous CDN add-on because users experienced bottlenecks during critical periods like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. At the same time, we received consistent feedback from customers who needed heightened security for their applications.

After a thorough evaluation and successful beta testing, we decided to partner with Cloudflare.

Their track record in the industry is undeniable. Recently, Cloudflare was named a Leader in Web Application Firewall Solutions by a top industry research firm. This recognition, along with their proven ability to stop severe DDoS attacks and deliver rock-solid performance, reinforced our decision to bring their enterprise network to our platform.

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Cloudways’ Cloudflare Add-on Features

When visitors land on your site, they expect it to load right away. But if your main server has to process every single image, script, and security threat on its own, it’s going to slow down.

The Cloudflare Enterprise Add-on fixes this by stepping in before traffic ever reaches your server. By combining a massive global network with features like edge page caching, it catches bad traffic and serves your content from the data center closest to your visitor.

Here is a breakdown of the specific features included with the add-on:

Speed Enhancements

• 100 GB Enterprise CDN: Cloudflare’s Enterprise CDN uses over 330 data centers to serve static content from the location closest to your visitors. This drastically reduces latency and accelerates load times worldwide for any PHP application.
• Edge Page Cache: Instead of fetching data from your server every time, Cloudflare stores and serves cached versions of your entire website directly from its global edge servers. This minimizes the time to first byte (TTFB). Note that this specific feature is heavily optimized for WordPress and WooCommerce applications.
• Prioritized Routing: Enterprise customers get their traffic routed on dedicated IP ranges. This ensures your traffic is prioritized over regular Cloudflare traffic for more consistent speed during traffic surges.
• Argo Smart Routing: Argo Smart Routing analyzes global internet traffic in real time. It finds the fastest and least congested routes, effectively avoiding packet loss and outages.
• Argo Tiered Caching: This feature reduces the load on your origin server by allowing nearby data centers to share cached static content. If a user in Dubai visits a server located in Canada, Cloudflare will check nearby data centers in the Middle East or South Asia before reaching out to the origin server.
• HTTP/3 Support: Cloudflare fully supports HTTP/3, the latest web protocol that delivers faster and more secure connections compared to older versions, especially on mobile networks.

Advanced Security

• Priority DDoS Protection: Cloudflare offers enterprise-grade mitigation against various types of DDoS attacks on layers 3, 4, and 7. This prevents the devastating consequences of downtime and lost revenue.
• Intelligent Web Application Firewall (WAF): The Cloudflare WAF utilizes threat intelligence and machine learning to protect web applications from real-time attacks like SQL injections. It includes managed rulesets that offer immediate protection. Cloudflare also regularly pushes updates like One-Click Defense to rapidly patch zero-day vulnerabilities.
• Wildcard SSL Support: The add-on provides automatic SSL certificates to secure your root domain and all subdomains. A wildcard SSL is issued for a year, renews automatically, and ensures PCI DSS compliance.
• Reserved IPs: Your site gets reserved Cloudflare IPs instead of being mixed with other websites on the free plan. Using a dedicated IP vs a shared IP protects your domain reputation and prevents association with spammy sites.
• Global Rate Limiting: Rate limiting protects your website and APIs from abuse by restricting how often users or bots can hit a resource. This stops brute-force login attempts and sudden traffic spikes.
• Under Attack Mode: If you face a severe threat, you can toggle Under Attack Mode. This adds an extra protection layer where suspicious traffic is challenged and only verified users can access your site.
• Cloudflare Turnstile: Turnstile is a highly effective CAPTCHA alternative. Instead of forcing visitors to click on traffic lights, it runs invisible background checks to confirm human behavior and block bots without frustrating your users.

Content Optimization & Analytics

• Image Optimization with Polish: Cloudflare Polish automatically strips image metadata and applies lossless or lossy compression. It also generates and caches WebP versions to deliver significantly smaller, faster-loading images. This modern approach streamlines delivery across all devices, fully replacing legacy mobile features like Cloudflare Mirage.
• Brotli Compression: This compression algorithm reduces file sizes for text-based resources like HTML, CSS, and JS much more efficiently than standard gzip.
• PCI DSS Compliance: Cloudflare helps businesses meet payment card industry security standards. This is an absolute necessity if you host eCommerce platforms and need to install Magento securely.
• Scrape Shield: This feature automatically displays obfuscated email addresses on your website to prevent harvesting by spam bots. It makes no visible changes to the address for your human visitors.
• Early Hints: Cloudflare’s edge network will cache and let browsers preload linked resources like menus and buttons before the full page response is ready.
• Cloudflare Analytics & Control: The add-on includes comprehensive cache and security analytics. You can track the number of requests served, monitor security events, set up specific Cloudflare Page Rules, and easily troubleshoot origin connection issues like Error 521.

How to Activate & Manage Cloudflare on Cloudways

Cloudflare Enterprise is an optional add-on, meaning you decide exactly which applications need the extra protection.

Activating it on your server only takes a few clicks and a quick domain validation. Once that is done, all the core performance and security features kick in automatically. There is no complex configuration required on your end.

If you are ready to get started, here is a quick walkthrough to get everything running.

Activate Cloudflare Enterprise Network

• Log in to your Cloudways Platform using your credentials.
• From the top menu bar, open Servers.

• Choose the server where your application is deployed.
• Click www and choose your application name.

• Under Application Management, select Cloudflare.

• Enter your domain name and click Enable.

• View the CNAME Record for DNS information.

• Copy the CNAME Record (Name/Host and Hostname).

• Visit your DNS registrar and add the CNAME record:
  • Type: CNAME
  • Name/Host: @ (or use root domain)
  • Hostname/Value/Target: secure.cloudways.cloud
  • TTL: Automatic/Default or select your choice
• After configuring the CNAME record for the root domain, add another one for www:
  • Type: CNAME
  • Name/Host: www
  • Hostname/Value/Target: secure.cloudways.cloud
  • TTL: Automatic/Default or select your choice

• Wait for up to 24 hours for DNS changes to propagate.
• Go back to Cloudways and click Done. The status will show “Domain not live,” which simply indicates ongoing DNS verification. You will receive an email when the integration is successful and the status changes to “Active.” If not, click Refresh after receiving the email.

• Once Cloudflare is fully integrated with your domain, the status will change to Active.

Manage the Cloudflare Enterprise Add-on

Once active, managing your domains is straightforward right from the dashboard. Let’s look at a few common tasks you might need to handle.

If you need to add more domains to your setup:

• Go to the Domains tab.
• Click on Add Domains.

• Enter the additional domain you want to protect and click Enable.

When you want to transfer a domain to a different application:

• Under the Domains tab, find the domain you want to transfer.
• Click the three-dot menu (⋮) and select Transfer.

• Choose the destination application and hit Transfer. Your traffic will now move to the new application.

Or, for example, if you want to delete a domain, then:

• Go to the Domains tab.
• Find the domain you want to remove.
• Click the three-dot menu (⋮) and choose Delete Domain.

• Next, click Unsubscribe.

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Comparing Cloudflare Free vs Enterprise Add-on

Many people start with Cloudflare’s free tier because it offers a solid baseline of protection. But as your site grows, the free features simply aren’t enough to handle serious traffic or sophisticated bots.

If you go straight to Cloudflare, stepping up means paying $20 a month for Pro or $200 a month for Business. An actual Enterprise contract is custom priced and usually starts in the thousands.

With the Cloudways add-on, you bypass those high costs entirely. Here is a quick look at how the basic free plan stacks up against the Enterprise features available directly on your server.

Feature	Cloudflare Free	Cloudflare Enterprise (Cloudways Add-on)
CDN Network	Standard	100 GB Enterprise CDN
Traffic Routing	Standard	Argo Smart Routing & Tiered Caching
IP Addresses	Shared across free network	Reserved specifically for Cloudways
DDoS Protection	Basic	Priority Layer 3, 4, & 7 Protection
Firewall	Basic WAF	Intelligent WAF with Managed Rulesets
Edge Page Caching	No	Yes
Image Optimization	No	Yes (Cloudflare Polish)
Bot Protection	Basic	Advanced (Turnstile & Global Rate Limiting)
Compliance	No	PCI DSS Compliant

Cloudflare Enterprise Add-on Pricing

At a starting price of $4.99 per domain, adding this level of infrastructure makes sense for almost any project. But if you manage multiple sites, the cost drops even further.

We built volume discounts right into the pricing model. As you protect more domains, the price drops down to just $1.99 per domain. This means your costs stay incredibly low even if you activate the add-on for hundreds of applications.

For agencies and developers, this pricing structure is a massive advantage. Whether you are hosting standard client sites or looking to add a CDN to Drupal, you can roll out premium performance across the board while generating a healthy recurring revenue.

Customer Reviews of Cloudways’ Cloudflare Add-on

To give you a better idea of how this looks in practice, here is what a few agencies and web professionals have experienced after enabling the add-on for their own projects:

“Achieved 80% Faster Optimization with Cloudflare Enterprise Add-on”

“By using Cloudflare Enterprise add-on, the process of optimizing websites to achieve higher Google Page Speed rankings has become 80% faster as it is easier to improve load times. Customer satisfaction has soared and we can now consistently offer lightning-fast, reliable websites that exceed industry standards.”

Daniel Oliveira, Founder at Viral Methods

“Cloudflare Enterprise reduced crawl errors and boosted global performance in 1-click”

“One of the most noticeable benefits was a drop in crawl errors on Google Search Console, even on sites without indexing issues after enabling Cloudflare Enterprise add-on. Global performance also improved. It feels like a performance and security upgrade in one click.”

Tawfeek AlHadad, SEO Expert & Blogger (Case Study)

“Cloudflare Enterprise notably enhanced the speed and performance of our websites”

“Cloudflare Enterprise add-on has been invaluable. The CDN is a fantastic addition that has notably enhanced the speed and performance of the websites we manage. This improves the user experience for our clients’ websites and saves us considerable time manually optimizing site performance.”

Ciaran Connolly, Founder at ProfileTree

“Cloudflare Enterprise powerful security protects our client’s valuable online assets”

“Cloudflare Enterprise add-on enhances the security of our clients’ websites by actively detecting and blocking malicious bots and potential phishing attacks. With this powerful security measure in place, we can ensure that our clients’ valuable online assets remain protected from unauthorized access and data breaches.”

Great Opomu, Chief WordPress Officer at WPFlat

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Conclusion

Since partnering with Cloudflare, our focus has been simple: make enterprise-level speed and security accessible without the massive price tag or complicated setups. This commitment to performance is why Cloudways is often cited as a top hosting provider for businesses that need both power and simplicity.

By bringing tools like edge page caching, smart routing, and a powerful WAF right into the Cloudways dashboard, you can protect and optimize your sites in just a few clicks.

We are always looking for ways to improve this integration based on what you actually need. If you have any feedback or feature requests, feel free to share them with us.

If you haven’t tried the add-on yet, you can enable it on your application today and see the performance difference for yourself.