Actually, Imgur uses CloudFlare. And we're happy to have them as a customer.....

=======

$ dig imgur.com

; <<>> DiG 9.6-ESV-R4-P3 <<>> imgur.com ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 41976 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 3

;; QUESTION SECTION: ;imgur.com. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION: imgur.com. 286 IN A 108.162.206.103 imgur.com. 286 IN A 108.162.205.103

;; AUTHORITY SECTION: imgur.com. 23823 IN NS noah.ns.cloudflare.com. imgur.com. 23823 IN NS sue.ns.cloudflare.com.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION: sue.ns.cloudflare.com. 40407 IN A 173.245.58.145 sue.ns.cloudflare.com. 40407 IN AAAA 2400:cb00:2049:1::adf5:3a91 noah.ns.cloudflare.com. 72084 IN AAAA 2400:cb00:2049:1::adf5:3b85

I dont know why my comment was deleted, so here it is again:

Here is the issue with cloudflare- They are overselling, plain and simple.

If I was a large image host, like imgur- Whats to stop me from going to cloudflare and ditching my $100k+ current CDN bill for $20/month? (actually, I have seen cloudflare error pages on imgur, so that might already be the case)

So the question is, how can you trust a company that is willing to lose 100k a month to keep a free user? If said image host declines a SLA, is CF OK with that or will the image host soon be kicked off?

So, lets say CF does not kick them off the service and just eats the cost- all this means is that its a business designed in the common "get it big at any cost" model VC's push. But this is not scalable, its fake and backed with investor money.

There are many ways to grow business's insanely quick but I never put much faith in the ones that do so in a way that seems propped up on investor cash. Its not hard to get traffic when your business modeel is giving away other peoples money through services.

This seems like it just hoping for a exit to a akami or cisco style company who hopes to convert these free users to paid and end up writing the whole purchase off years later.

-----------

Responding to your post- Yes, I said imgur was using cloudflare. My post is about "How does that make business sense, if they chose to be on a $20/month plan"

At some point, you'll be so big that most large ISPs will want you to install cache nodes inside their network. You - as them - will both save cash because you can relie less and expensive transit traffic and the ISPs customers are more happy with the service. So - all in all, the ISP usually ends up with most of the bill, but that's okey for them, as their users want to access this content anyway.

This is not some scheme to "get rich fast", they have just figured out what all other CDNs do, and found a way to game the system to become more relevant quickly.

Thanks for the concern. I think you'd be surprised by our operating margins.

Pray tell

While CloudFlare has some features that might be available on other CDNs, don't use them, if you're worried you'll ever have to leave the platform. It is really simple to migrate between CDNs with feature parity -- DNS CNAME. The article is putting CloudFlare up against CloudFront; the article is positioning CloudFront bills as exorbitant; their is no reason one can't move back to CloudFront and start paying bills again, in the event CloudFlare raises prices.