Cloudways Cloudflare Enterprise add-on
Best for: Cloudflare Enterprise through Cloudways is good value for stores and busy sites: full-page edge caching, image optimisation and Enterprise-grade DDoS protection for $4.99 a domain, falling to $1.99 at 25 domains, against Cloudflare's own Enterprise contracts that are negotiated per customer. The trade-offs are that you manage it only through Cloudways' panel, not a Cloudflare dashboard, and the free trial turns into a paid subscription unless you remove the domain.
- Enterprise-tier Cloudflare features for $4.99 a month per domain, with volume pricing down to $1.99
- Full-page edge caching for WordPress, which Cloudflare's free plan does not do out of the box
- Image optimisation with Polish, Brotli compression, HTTP/3 and mobile image handling with Mirage included
- Each domain gets a free trial of 30 days or 100 GB, whichever ends first
- No separate Cloudflare account to manage, and analytics appear in the Cloudways dashboard
- The trial converts to a paid subscription automatically, and each domain can only trial once
- Settings are limited to what Cloudways exposes, with no full Cloudflare dashboard
- Bandwidth above 100 GB per domain costs $0.02 per GB
- Adding the same domain twice by mistake means paying twice
- Small, mostly static sites get much of the benefit from Cloudflare's free plan
Cloudways Cloudflare Enterprise review: is $4.99 worth it?
Cloudways Cloudflare Enterprise add-on reviewed: $4.99 per domain, a 30-day trial that converts to paid, what it adds over Cloudflare's free plan, and set-up.
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The Cloudflare Enterprise add-on on Cloudways costs $4.99 a month per domain for your first four domains and falls to $1.99 per domain once you have 25 or more. Each domain includes 100 GB of bandwidth a month, then $0.02 per GB, and gets a free trial of 30 days or 100 GB first. It puts your site behind Cloudflare's Enterprise network with full-page edge caching, image optimisation and stronger DDoS protection, managed from the Cloudways dashboard rather than a Cloudflare account.
Cloudflare's own Enterprise plan is a negotiated contract and is usually out of reach for small businesses. Cloudways resells access to it per domain. This review covers what you get, how it compares to Cloudflare's free plan, how the trial turns into a charge, and how to set it up without the common mistakes.
What the Cloudways Cloudflare Enterprise add-on includes
According to Cloudways, the add-on includes Cloudflare's Enterprise CDN across more than 200 locations, a web application firewall, priority DDoS protection, Polish image optimisation, Mirage for mobile images, Brotli compression, HTTP/3, PCI DSS compliance and routing reserved for Cloudways customers' IP addresses. For WordPress, the important part is full-page edge caching: whole HTML pages are cached at Cloudflare's edge, near the visitor, instead of only images, scripts and stylesheets.
Cloudways published a load test of its own: a static WordPress site on a 4 GB DigitalOcean server, ramped up to 1,000 concurrent visitors. With server caching alone it served 147,300 requests with 8,700 errors; with the Enterprise CDN in front, 264,178 requests with 7 errors. It is a vendor test on a simple site, but the mechanism is sound: pages served from the edge never reach your server.
How it compares with Cloudflare's free plan
Many Cloudways customers already use Cloudflare's free plan, and it is a fair question whether the add-on is worth paying for.
| Feature | Cloudflare free plan | Cloudflare Enterprise via Cloudways |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $0 | $4.99 per domain, less at volume |
| Static file caching | Yes | Yes |
| Full-page HTML caching for WordPress | Only with custom rules or a paid Cloudflare add-on | Yes, configured for you |
| Image optimisation (Polish) | No | Yes |
| Web application firewall | Basic managed rules | Enterprise WAF |
| Dashboard | Full Cloudflare dashboard | Cloudways panel only |
| DNS hosting | Yes, at Cloudflare | No; you point a CNAME from your own DNS |
The free plan's advantage is control: the full Cloudflare dashboard, page rules, DNS hosting and your own settings. The add-on's advantage is that the hard parts, especially caching HTML safely around WooCommerce carts and logged-in users, are already done. For a mostly static blog with modest traffic, the free plan is enough. For a store, a membership site or a site with visitors on several continents, the add-on usually earns its $4.99.
Price tiers and the trial that becomes a charge
Pricing is per domain and depends on how many domains you have on the add-on across your account: $4.99 each for one to four, $3.99 for five to nine, $2.99 for ten to 24, and $1.99 for 25 or more. A root domain covers its www version. Charges are pro-rated, so a domain added mid-month pays for the remaining days.
Every new domain starts on a free trial that ends after 30 days or 100 GB of bandwidth, whichever comes first. You agree when you enable it that the domain will move to the paid plan automatically at the end. Cloudways emails you when 80% of the trial bandwidth is used and five days before the 30 days run out. Each domain can use the trial once; removing it and adding it again later starts a paid subscription straight away. If you are only testing, put a reminder in your calendar for day 25.
Setting it up and running it
How to set it up
- Make sure the site is live on Cloudways first, with the domain added to the application.
- Enable the add-on. Either open the application and choose Cloudflare, or go to Integrations, then Cloudflare. Add your root domain (it covers www) or a subdomain, and confirm the trial.
- Change your DNS. At your DNS provider, remove the existing A and CNAME records for the domain, then add a CNAME for @ pointing to secure.cloudways.cloud. If your provider will not accept a CNAME on the root domain, Cloudways gives two A records instead: 162.159.136.54 and 162.159.137.54. Point www to secure.cloudways.cloud as a CNAME too.
- Wait for activation. The domain shows "Domain not live" until Cloudways sees the records, which can take up to 24 hours, then changes to "Active" and you get an email.
Two mistakes cost money. Adding the same domain twice creates two subscriptions, and secondary domains that point at the same application should use an A record to the server rather than being added again. And forgetting to remove the add-on from a domain you no longer use keeps the charge running. Our domain and SSL guide covers the DNS side in more detail.
Running it day to day
Once active, the add-on's page in the Cloudways dashboard shows bandwidth use and analytics, lets you purge the cache, and has toggles for the features Cloudways exposes. The Breeze caching plugin can purge Cloudflare's cache automatically when you publish or update content. If you need to troubleshoot whether a problem is at the edge or on the server, there is an option to bypass Cloudflare temporarily.
Because it is managed through Cloudways, you cannot write your own firewall rules, workers or page rules as you would in a Cloudflare dashboard. For most sites that is fine. For a developer who relies on custom Cloudflare configuration, it is a reason to stay on a Cloudflare account of your own.
SSL needs no extra work: Cloudflare provides encryption between visitors and the edge, and Cloudways notes that an origin certificate is optional, though keeping your Let's Encrypt certificate on the server is sensible. On Cloudways Autonomous, the add-on is included in every plan and cannot be switched off.
Who should pay for it
- WooCommerce and membership sites: yes. Edge caching that understands carts and logins, plus the WAF, for less than a coffee a month. Our Cloudways for WooCommerce guide covers the rest of a store setup.
- Agencies with many client domains: yes, at $2.99 or $1.99 a domain once you pass ten or twenty-five.
- Sites with an international audience: yes. Serving pages from the nearest edge location matters most when your server is far from your visitors.
- A small, mostly static blog: probably not. Cloudflare's free plan covers it, with more control.
- Developers with custom Cloudflare rules: no, unless you can live without your own dashboard.
For the server side of performance, our guide to speeding up WordPress on Cloudways covers caching, Redis and PHP settings, and our Cloudways security guide explains how the add-on's WAF fits with the server's own firewall.
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