I think that you have to look at how CloudFlare is billing itself. It's a simple solution for people who want to have a faster website. It's easier to implement than most other caching or CDN and that $20 plan is likely limited to sites under X amount of traffic.
The company is only sitting on around $2 mm in funding (if memory serves me) so it's either making a decent sum of money from people who find value in that accidental CDN or it's going to fizzle out quickly due to lack of funds.
The thing that you have to keep in mind is that (likely) the vast majority of its customers aren't on the same level of technological prowess that you have. CloudFlare is aimed at people who run sites and just want them to be easier to run while working better and being safer. There's a lot of money to be had from a service that can fulfill that request.
Oh, and as for the expensive PR-spin, this is the first time I've heard from CloudFlare in 8 months, even after specifically asking them to get in touch with me. If I'm not mistaken, the company has done very little PR. They've gotten attention in a way that many people seem to have forgotten -- by having a good product.
Nice to see you on HN; I was wondering if you had any comment in regard to the huge surge in attention (mostly great reviews, from what I've seen) thanks to LulzSec using your service?
Like many others, I hadn't heard of CloudFlare until it started showing up all over Twitter (and the Internet in general) in relation to LulzSec.
I'm glad you guys got some nice exposure, and I might start using your service myself soon!
Given the choice, I may not have picked Public Enemy Number One as the poster child for CloudFlare's service. It does, however, remind me of the old Range Rover commercial talking about the great London bank heist. "The robbers thought of everything," the commercial concluded. "That's why, for their getaway vehicle, they chose a Range Rover."
regarding "limited to sites under 'x' amount of traffic", I just inquired to CloudFlare on that exact question yesterday and received this response:
"Some of the biggest sites on CloudFlare do well over 10M page views per day."
Given the current plans are FREE and $20/mo, it would see that there is not a limit at this point.
I also inquired regarding the Enterprise services and was told it is strictly a matter of additional features being made available, not related to traffic or usage.
The company is only sitting on around $2 mm in funding (if memory serves me) so it's either making a decent sum of money from people who find value in that accidental CDN or it's going to fizzle out quickly due to lack of funds.
The thing that you have to keep in mind is that (likely) the vast majority of its customers aren't on the same level of technological prowess that you have. CloudFlare is aimed at people who run sites and just want them to be easier to run while working better and being safer. There's a lot of money to be had from a service that can fulfill that request.
Oh, and as for the expensive PR-spin, this is the first time I've heard from CloudFlare in 8 months, even after specifically asking them to get in touch with me. If I'm not mistaken, the company has done very little PR. They've gotten attention in a way that many people seem to have forgotten -- by having a good product.