Cloudflare is a popular cloud-based service that delivers services like Content Delivery Network, DNS, SSL, website protection, page caching, and acceleration.

Cloudflare is a global network of distributed servers designed to make everything you connect to the Internet secure, private, fast, and reliable. The network is spread over 100+ countries (that's more than half the countries in the world), covering more than 200 unique locations.

When a visitor visits a website without Cloudflare, the request goes to that server where the website is hosted. Unfortunately, when there are so many requests from many visitors simultaneously, the server gets overloaded if there are no appropriate optimizations set up, consequently making your website slower.

This is where Cloudflare comes into action. Cloudflare sits between your website visitors and the server, acting as a proxy. Now website visitors don't communicate with the server anymore; instead, it communicates with the Cloudflare network. Cloudflare already holds your website content because it has cached segments of data from your website and stored it in multiple locations worldwide on Cloudflare servers. Cloudflare will serve your website to visitors based on their geographical locations from the nearest data center. It often results in the website loading much faster than if the request was made directly to your server.

As a result, Cloudflare reduces the number of requests to your server while allowing many visitors to access your website. At the same time, all the data passing through the Cloudflare servers is monitored to proactively block malicious traffic, filter out bad actors (like bots), and keep your website safe from any potential attacks.

For instance, a website is hosted in the United Kingdom, and visitor visits your website from Canada. Therefore, the request must take some time due to distance and network latency factors. With Cloudflare distributed networks worldwide, a visitor from Canada does not have to request a website from the United Kingdom server; instead, the visitor will connect with the nearest Cloudflare server in Canada.

The Cloudflare Enterprise add-on is for mission-critical applications that are critical to your business. By integrating the Cloudflare Enterprise add-on with your application, you access 200+ unique locations for the Global Content Delivery Network, an intelligent website firewall, and many performances and security features. Whether you are a small, medium, or large-sized business, the Enterprise plan is the right choice.

That's it! We hope this article was helpful. If you need any help, then feel free to search your query on Cloudways Support Center or contact us via chat (Need a Hand > Send us a Message). Alternatively, you can also create a support ticket.