this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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Lemmy.ca does about 2tb a week in traffic, 1tb of which is absorbed by Cloudflare caching images / static resources. We do have the server / network capacity to serve directly, but at the cost of reduced performance and higher latency for users. Our server is in Vancouver, if you're in Montreal you could expect images to load slower for you since they'd no longer be cached locally once one user viewed it. Another advantage is that if we ever do get DDOS'ed, it becomes possible to manage and deal with in a reasonable amount of time + energy.
I'm open to discussing dropping them, but we don't pay them anything as we're just on a free plan. We're just costing them a little money, we don't even register our domains through them.
Thank you for the great work you do! Here is a link with additional options to consider.
https://www.eucloud.tech/eu-alternatives-to/cloudflare
If you are only willing to consider a no-money option, it will be more difficult. Maybe consider approaching an alternative and asking if they will support a non-profit for a discount.
Another option is simply to drop Cloudflare without a replacement. You have raised some of the tradeoffs. Maybe people can live with those tradeoffs.
There is the consideration of Cloudflare tracking users from one domain to another. Pornhub is one site notorious for using Cloudflare.
https://www.ghostery.com/whotracksme/tracking-reach
There is also the consideration of Cloudflare possibly decrypting traffic and compromising passwords. At the start of a possible physical war, disrupting communication by overtaking user accounts could be a possible threat.