Here is a new service I have been testing out — CloudFlare. It gives you DNS, a global CDN, hacker/spammer/threat blocking, and some basic analytics, for free. If you run a web business you know you can spend thousands of dollars a month on that stuff.

The catch? If you want some additional features to speed up & protect your site it costs money. As far as they are advertising right now, there their free plan continues for unlimited domains and bandwidth. Even if it doesn’t last forever, that’s a pretty good deal.

Besides some VC funding, this makes sense for them because of all of the data CloudFlare gets from having more sites in their system. More data = identifying threats quicker.

I’ve noticed startups with varying levels of freemium plans. Some have low thresholds of use, other are gimped so badly they look like interactive advertisements.

Setting up a few sites on here was pretty easy. CloudFlare attempts to copy your existing DNS setting so you don’t have to manually enter them. I say attempts because it got the DNS setting for Webpublishingblog wrong (other sites so far have been ok.)

If your paying a lot for some clunky 1999 era DNS system or an expensive CDN, check it out. Here is a screenshot of their analytics page: