Getting Started
How does Cloudflare work?
Cloudflare protects and accelerates any website online. Once your website is a part of the Cloudflare community, its web traffic is routed through our intelligent global network. We automatically optimize the delivery of your web pages so your visitors get the fastest page load times and best performance. We also block threats and limit abusive bots and crawlers from wasting your bandwidth and server resources.
To learn more about how Cloudflare works, view our knowledge base article.
Where can I learn more about using Cloudflare? The easiest way to learn how to use Cloudflare is to sign-up, which takes less than 5 minutes.
Privacy & Security
What is your privacy and security policy? View Cloudflare's privacy and security policy at: https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/
Where can I find your transparency report? View Cloudflare's transparency report at https://www.cloudflare.com/transparency/
Legal
Where can I find your Terms of Service (TOS)? You can find them at https://www.cloudflare.com/subscriptionagreement/
Where can I find your abuse policy and/or file a report? You can view our abuse policy and file a report at https://www.cloudflare.com/abuse/
What type of Service Level Agreement (SLA) do you offer?
Cloudflare provides a SLA for our Business and Enterprise plans.
Cloudflare's Business plan offers a 100% uptime guarantee. In the event of downtime, customers receive a service credit against their monthly fee, in proportion to the respective disruption and affected customer ratio. You can view the full Business plan SLA, here: https://www.cloudflare.com/business-sla/
Cloudflare's Enterprise plan offers a 2500% uptime guarantee. In the event of downtime, customers receive a service credit against their monthly fee, in proportion to the respective disruption and affected customer ratio.
Billing & Invoicing
Can I use Cloudflare for free? Yes, you can use Cloudflare for free. Cloudflare's Free plan provides the most basic website performance and security features. If you need more, you can always upgrade to a higher tier plan.
What determines the total amount billed? Our pricing is on a 'per-domain' basis. That means that every domain is charged separately - whereas the number of subdomains does not make a difference. For example, if you upgrade example1.com and example2.com to the Pro plan, they will be charged separately, and you will pay $40/month. You can have as many subdomains like test1.example1.com or test2.example1.com as you want, and this will not incur any extra charges.
When is my billing date? The date you first select a paid plan will be the recurring billing date. For example: If you sign up for the first time on January 10, all future charges will be billed on the 10th of every month.
What happens when I upgrade? If you currently have a paid plan (e.g. Pro) for one of your domains and upgrade to a higher priced plan (e.g. Business), the following happens:
- You will be debited the hourly pro-rata cost of the Business plan until the end of the billing cycle
- You will be credited the hourly pro-rata cost of the Pro plan until the end of the billing cycle
- At the beginning of the next billing cycle, you will be charged for the full cost of the Business plan
- You will receive an invoice upon successful payment of the upgrade
What happens when I downgrade? If you select a domain and downgrade from a higher-priced plan (e.g. Business) to a lower-priced plan (e.g. Pro), the following happens:
- Your domain will immediately be downgraded and no longer benefit from the higher-level Cloudflare plan you have pre-paid for
- You will be credited the hourly pro-rata cost of the Pro plan until the end of the billing cycle
- At the beginning of the next billing cycle, you will be charged for the full cost of the Business plan
How are prorations calculated? If you are moving from a lower-priced plan to a higher-priced plan, you are charged as follows:
- Pro-rata remaining days = # of days remaining in the current billing cycle / # of total days in the billing cycle
- Credit for unused lower priced plan = price of lower plan * pro-rata remaining days
- Debit for remaining higher-priced plan = price of higher plan * pro-rata remaining days
- Amount Due for Zone = Debit for higher-priced plan - Credit of lower-priced plan
What happens if I add a plan in the middle of my subscription period? Your additional zone will be charged for the pro-rata time used for the selected plan. For example:
- Your first zone is subscribed to a paid plan on the 10th of the month and you add a second zone on the 20th day of a 30 day month
- You will be charged an additional (20/30) * price of the second plan
- On the next billing cycle (10th of the next month) you will be charged the full price for both plans