I Love Cloudflare But It Sucks That They Do This

I recently had a bad experience with Cloudflare, due to some annoyances with how they handle plan renewals. I was previously a Cloudflare Pro customer paying $240 per year, but I have now cancelled completely and I no longer use Cloudflare.

Soin this videoI discuss exactly what my concerns with Cloudflare are, and why I feel like some of their recent approaches are a bit too anti-consumer for my liking.

If you prefer text over video, please read on for the guide/transcript version of this video.

Video Transcript And Guide

Hey everyone, on Saturday the 29th of June 2024,Cloudflare“randomly” took $235 out of my bank account with no warning:

Well, it wasn’t really “random” I guess because I DID sign up to a paid Cloudflare service just over a year ago BUT I had no prior notice of this upcoming payment AND Cloudflare’s support made clear that this is an INTENTIONAL strategy by Cloudflare. They told me that Cloudflare’s CDN plans‘always renew automatically without ANY sort of renewal notification’, and that Cloudflare are not responsible for their customers keeping track of subscription deadlines.

While I kinda get that, what concerns me is that publicly Cloudflare are trying to claim that everything went to plan –with their CEO telling me on Twitterthat I was charged according to the invoice. The problem, as I pointed out to Matthew Prince, is that the invoice was only sent AFTER my bank account was charged. The first thing I knew about this was when I was out with my family on a weekend, and I had a notification on my phone, from my bank, that Cloudflare had taken a $235 payment.

Now I should say that ultimately I took out a yearly Pro plan with Cloudflare, and according to the “self-service subscription agreement” I am ENTIRELY responsible for keeping track of WHEN this renews. Equally this agreement says that Cloudflare will provide NO refunds, even if I cancel on the first day of a 365 day subscription – they do not generally give a prorated refund (or anything like that). They would keep the whole year’s fee. I’m aware that I failed to properly keep track of the renewal date – for some reason I thought the subscription was due to renew in August – so Cloudflare “won” here. I was TECHNICALLY in the wrong, and Cloudflare were technically in the right.

But the reason I’m doing this video, other than the fact that THAT’S not really a consumer-friendly approach, is that I have always been a BIG fan of Cloudflare – their technology makes the internet faster and safer, so kudos to them. Seriously. Some of the technology that they provide is AMAZING. But recently it feels to me that some of Cloudflare’s approaches are shifting away from what made them a popular, successful company  in the early days.

For example, at the start of this year,Cloudflare came under fire for firing a member of staffin a manner that their CEO later described as “painful to watch” and not being humane enough. And while letting staff go WILL unfortunately happen at any company, but especially one with thousands of staff, it is good that Cloudflare owned up to their shortcomings here.

Equally, just a couple of months ago,Cloudflare came under fire again for telling a $250 per month customerthat they now needed to IMMEDIATELY pay $120,000, otherwise all their sites would be removed from Cloudflare.

Now I DO get that there’s two sides to every story, and in many cases Cloudflare are legally prevented from publicly discussing these cases due to data protection laws. So Cloudflare will often inevitably come across as the bad guy in these cases. But in my own experience with this $235 charge, Cloudflare just seemed like a low quality, anti-consumer company to me.

For example after receiving the charge, I raised a support ticket and also Tweeted their CEO on Twitter and as I mentioned earlier, Matthew Prince seemed to suggest that I was invoiced and clearly aware of this upcoming payment before being charged.

That was not the case. In the support ticket itself, the first reply was from a manager who repeated their CEO’s line – effectively saying that I was charged in-line with the invoice. They did however (thankfully) say that they would give me a refund, which I appreciated, although I also continued pointed out that the invoice only came AFTER the bank charge. They didn’t issue me the promised refund though, but instead one of Cloudflare’s developers stepped in to explain that Cloudflare definitely DO send notifications for upcoming subscription payments (and things like that), and they’ll investigate what happened. They later confirmed that no such emails were sent, for some unknown reason.

However the following day, someone in Cloudflare’s billing team came in and contradicted them, saying that this is actually expected behaviour, and that Cloudflare’s policies shift the responsibility of keeping track of deadlines onto the customer. Which again, I get. It doesn’t seem like a consumer-friendly approach to me, but legally they’re in the right and I was in the wrong. Anywhoo, this staff member was the third person who promised me a refund. I did what they asked me to do, but I never heard back. So I chased them, and a FOURTH member of staff stepped in. They made clear that Cloudflare are not responsible for being aware of renewal deadlines and that they do not send renewal notifications (again, I was wrong not to keep track of this better). They did issue the refund though – which is something that the previous three staff members failed to follow through on, so that’s good at least – but it wasn’t really a great support experience, with so many different members of staff jumping in and contradicting each other.

And I DO appreciate the refund, but that’s mainly because what I’ve seen of Cloudflare means that I don’t want to be a customer of theirs anymore. They seem quite chaotic and disorganized, in my opinion, with two staff members (including their own CEO) effectively saying “we charged you according to the invoice” (but then they freely admit that the invoice came later, AFTER I was charged) and also three staff members (including their CEO) promising me a refund but not following through on this, requiring me to chase again and again, and then ultimately deal with a fourth member of staff who did give me a refund.

I have used dozens of hosting companies over the last two decades, and every single one has sent renewal reminders every single time. Every single one, other than Cloudflare, I should say. I personally find it terrible that Cloudflare doesn’t do this, but what about you? Am I just ranting unnecessarily? I’d love to hear your thoughts down in the comments.

Tristan has been interested in computer hardware and software since he was 10 years old. He has built loads of computers over the years, along with installing, modifying and writing software (he’s a backend software developer ‘by trade’).Tristan also has an academic background in technology (in Math and Computer Science), so he enjoys drilling into the deeper aspects of technology.Tristan is also an avid PC gamer, with FFX and Rocket League being his favorite games.