Cloudflare vs DNSimple
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Cloudflare and DNSimple.
Quick Verdict
4.3/5
Cloudflare
0 reviews
4.0/5
DNSimple
0 reviews
Cloudflare is rated higher (4.3 vs 4.0). Global network that speeds up and protects websites with CDN caching, DDoS protection, free SSL and DNS. Free plan; Pro costs $20/month billed annually ($25 monthly). DNSimple is a developer-focused DNS service with one-click service integrations (e.g., set up GitHub Pages with one click), excellent API, and Let's Encrypt automation. Great DX.
Cloudflare Global CDN and DDoS protection with object storage | DNSimple Developer-friendly DNS with one-click templates | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.3 (0 reviews)✓ | 4.0 (0 reviews) |
| Pricing model | freemium | freemium |
| Starting price | From $20/mo | From $0.5/mo✓ |
| Best for | Websites and SaaS front ends that want a free or flat-priced global CDN with DDoS protection and TLS included — and can accept proxying all traffic through one vendor. | Developers and small engineering teams who treat DNS as code and want a registrar, managed Anycast DNS, and automated certificates behind one well-documented API with itemized billing. |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ✓ | |
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ||
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | Global — 300+ cities | — |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tiers3 compatibleddos protectioneu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenterapi accessipv6terraform provider | api access |
| Visit Cloudflare → | Visit DNSimple → | |
Cloudflare
Pros
- + Unmetered bandwidth and requests on every plan, including Free
- + Free managed WAF ruleset, Universal SSL and unmetered DDoS protection by default
- + 330+ city network with Anycast routing and no region pricing
- + Flat per-domain pricing is easy to budget; no egress surprises
- + Terraform provider and full API for configuration as code
Cons
- - No uptime SLA below the Business plan
- - Per-domain billing gets expensive for domain portfolios
- - Advanced WAF tuning and rate limiting are plan-gated
- - Proxy architecture is a concentration risk during network-level incidents
- - Large feature surface means caching misconfigurations can go unnoticed
DNSimple
Pros
- + Developer experience: full REST API on every plan, scoped tokens, webhooks, one-click service templates, alias records
- + Transparent itemized pricing — zones, queries, seats and add-ons all published, with the pricing calculator on the homepage
- + Honest SLA ladder printed on the pricing page (none / 99% / 100% option) instead of a single marketing number
- + Registrar + DNS + automated Let's Encrypt (wildcard on Teams) in one account, with WHOIS privacy included
- + Anycast DNS with DNSSEC, CAA records, and multi-layer DDoS defense on every plan; secondary DNS support
- + Long, credible track record (since 2010) and 4.6/5 aggregated from 65 G2/Trustpilot reviews
Cons
- - Per-zone billing ($0.50/zone/month) gets expensive at portfolio scale; no free production tier beyond modest Solo use
- - Smaller Anycast footprint than Cloudflare or Route 53; no latency-based or geo traffic steering
- - Solo plan is subset product: 100 records/zone, root+www certificates only, no SLA, no HTTPS redirects
- - Teams seats are $29/month each — cost scales linearly with headcount
- - Features like regional records, reverse DNS, POOL records and vanity nameservers are tier-gated
- - Real incident history includes a major network-wide DDoS outage (December 2014)
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