It has just seemed like people are big fans of the "free, unlimited" plans here. I use a provider that is pay-per-usage personally, which seems more sustainable.

Support is part of the cost that is rolled into that pay-per-usage fee IMO.

I've worked at multiple places that unfortunately paid for CF services (and support), and have consistently had trouble with them. And that doesn't include just general CF service instability for end users.

Ditto. We got locked into a long-term Cloudflare contract and regretted it immensely. So much stuff that’s beta quality, broken promises, terrible support. Looks great on the surface, until you need to actually rely upon it.