Cloudflare Pages Review and Features

Written by Thom Krupa

Last update: 6/7/2024

Feature		Cloudflare Pages
Infrastructure What runs under-the-hood.		Cloudflare
Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
Continuous deployment Imagine an automatic update system for your website. This feature automatically deploys any changes you make to your code (usually from Git) to your live website.
Automated builds from Git An easy integration with popular Git repository hostings like Github, GitLab and Bitbucket.
Instant rollbacks to any version Easy way to promote any previous build to production without the need to revert commits or data changes.
Site previews for every push New build with a unique URL for every commit and pull request.
Compatible with all Static Site Generators
Notifications Events triggered on successful, canceled, or failed build.		Emails, pagerDuty, webhooks
Team Management Create team account and invite your teammates to the project.
Custom domains Bring your own domain and connect to the project.
Automatic HTTPS SSL certificate generated automatically.
Rewrites & Redirects HTTP 301 or 302 redirects from one URL to another. Rewrites work similar to reverse proxy and allow to send user to different URL without modifying the original URL.
Password Protection An easy way to restrict access to the website for users who don't have password. Useful if you work on a new site and want to keep it in secret.
Skew Protection Skew Protection ensures client and server versions stay synchronized during deployments, preventing compatibility issues.
Free Tier
Websites Number of projects you can have in Free Tier on one account.		Unlimited
Build Minutes The amount of time your build scripts can run per month.		500 builds* /month *not minutes
Concurrent builds How many builds can be run at the same time?		1
Bandwidth The amount of data that is transferred to or from the CDN.		Unlimited
Team Members The number of users (team members) that can be added to the CMS.		5
Build Time Per Deployment Build have to finish within the limited time. If not it will fail due to timeout.		20 minutes
Build Memory Limit (in MiB) The amount of memory that is allocated by system to build process. Some operations like image processing are expensive and might require more memory. For Node.js it is `max-old-space-size` setting.		N/A
Paid Plans
Max team members before switch to custom pricing		Unlimited
Git contributors have to be Team Members In order to triger build, Git contributor has to be a paid team member.
Serverless
Serverless Functions (API) Small pieces of code that run on-demand without managing servers, typically used for API endpoints.		JavaScript
Edge Functions Serverless functions that run closer to the user, reducing latency and improving performance.		Cloudflare Workers
Background Functions Code that runs in the background on the platform to perform tasks that don't require immediate user interaction.
CRON Jobs Schedule tasks to run automatically at specific times or intervals. Useful for automating repetitive website maintenance tasks.
Developer Experience
CLI Command Line Interface tools that allow developers to perform tasks and manage the tool via the command line.		`wrangler`
Extensions Additional plugins or add-ons that can enhance the functionality of the platform.
Environment Variables Secret configuration settings for your website that change based on where it's deployed (dev, staging, production).		N/A
Build Logs Track the progress and results of website builds for troubleshooting
Build Canceling Ability to stop a build process that is currently running. This frees up resources and lets you make changes to your website faster by stopping builds you don't need anymore.
Platform Built-in Products
Analytics Tools for tracking and analyzing website traffic.		CDN-side and client-side
Authentication Services for managing user logins and authentication.		Zero trust
Database Managed database services.		Cloudflare D1
Asset Optimizations Tools for optimizing images, CSS, JS, etc.		bundling, minifying, compressing images
A/B Testing Lets you test different versions of your site by directing traffic to each variant, helping you optimize user experience based on performance metrics.
Form Handling Services for managing form submissions.
Data Storage Solutions for storing and managing data.		Cloudflare R2
Push Notifications This allows your website to send real-time alerts or updates to visitors who have opted-in.
Machine Learning
Security & Compliance Offerings
Two-factor authentication Adds an extra layer of security when logging in.
Team Logs Tracks user activity within the platform for better accountability.
SOC2 Service Organization Control 2 compliance for managing customer data.
ISO27001 International standard for information security management.
GDPR Compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation for handling personal data.
Sustainability
Carbon Neutral
Carbon-free Energy
Integrations
Integrations Connecting your deployment platform with external services like headless content, commerce, databases, and more.
Custom build-system integrations Allows you to connect your own build tools and processes with the deployment platform.		N/A
Support with self-hosted instances of git
API mesh API Mesh allows you to combine multiple APIs into a single unified API, simplifying data fetching and integration across different services and backends.		N/A
Deploy Preview feedback integrations Enables team members and stakeholders to comment directly on preview deployments.		N/A
Edge Functions integrations
High Performance Build Memory and CPU		N/A
Native Build Plugins		N/A

World-class CDN

Cloudflare is known best as an impressive and one of the fastest global content delivery networks (CDN). With more than 200 data centers around the world, Cloudflare CDN is one of the biggest free networks.

For years Cloudflare has been investing in the Internet, improving its security, offering a free CDN, DNS, DDoS attack mitigation, SSL, and many other products like Argo.

Cloudflare has spotted an opportunity in static site evolution. New products like Workers and Pages feel like a natural way of growing the Cloudflare product portfolio.

Zero cold start edge functions

A common issue of serverless functions like AWS Lambda is a cold start. The time that function needs to execute for the first time. Cloudflare Workers essentially run instantly, because of 0ms cold start, they can be used as an entry point for your website. That enables endless dynamic enhancements for static files.

HTMLRewrite class is a part of Workers Runtime API. Imagine a jQuery-like API to modify HTML response directly on the CDN with no server involved. Based on HTTP headers like Cookie, you can change content, styles, or scripts included on the page.

CI/CD with no user, sites, and bandwidth limits

Pages are the most recent Cloudflare product, and essentially it is a CI/CD. Connect Github repo, configure build script and automatically deploy a website.

Currently, it's a beta, and you can start for free with a quite generous plan: unlimited sites, users, and bandwidth.

Server-side analytics

Server-side analytics are based on CDN logs and are not affected by ad-blockers. It's a secure, privacy-friendly way of collecting essential data like unique requests. Bonus: all of it available through GraphQL Analytics API if you want to create a custom dashboard.

Conclusion

Cloudflare Pages is one of the most interesting solutions for Jamstack projects. Thanks to Workers, you can run JS straight on the Edge, modify HTML response, or use it for auth. Pages are still in beta and quite new. So it might be a perfect moment to test it out on your personal projects and gradually introduce it to your company.