Cloudflare took down our website after trying to force us to pay 120k$ within 24h
robindev.substack.com
TL;DR: We've been on the Cloudflare Business plan ($250/month) for years. They suddenly contacted us and asked us to either pay them $120k up front for one year of Enterprise within 24 hours or they would take down all of our domains. While this escalated up our business we had 3 sales calls with them, trying to figure out what was happening and how to reach a reasonable contract in a week. When we told them we were also in talks with Fastly, they suddenly "purged" all our domains, causing huge downtime in our core business, sleepless nights migrating away from CF, irreparable loss in customer trust and weeks of ongoing downtime in our internal systems.

Also, interesting comment I found on HackerNews (HN):

This post was definitely demoted by HN. It stayed in the first position for less than 5 minutes and, as it quickly gathered upvotes, it jumped straight into 24th and quickly fell off the first page as it got 200 or so more points in less than an hour.

I’m 80% confident HN tried to hide this link. It’s the fastest downhill I’ve noticed on here, and I’ve been lurking and commenting for longer than 10 years.

  • @draughtcyclistEnglish
    61•7 months ago

    They absolutely should have outlined a traffic limit for the $250 a month plan. That’s on Cloudflare for allowing it.

    That said, if you make wildly excessive use of that loophole it probably shouldn’t surprise you if they do something like this. They called it “trust and safety” because it allows them to do anything they want under the guide of security.

    Really, they didn’t define their service clearly and wanted to fire them as a customer unless they paid up for what they felt they were owed.

    • @TheTetrapodEnglish
      75•7 months ago

      If something is marketed as “unlimited”, I don’t think there is such a thing as “wildly excessive use”. This isn’t a competitive eater going to an all-you-can-eat buffet and being mad about getting kicked out. It’s a business using a service in a way that’s seemingly in-line with what they paid for.

      • @[email protected]English
        4•7 months ago

        It’s the same definition of “unlimited” that Telcos use: you pay for unlimited but it really is XXgb of data per month, after that they either disconnect you or throttle your traffic at a glacial pace…

        • lazynoobletEnglish
          19•7 months ago

          And in both cases, that is bullshit. Just because it happens doesn’t mean we should accept it.

    • [email protected]English
      20•7 months ago

      A man walks into whorehouse at half past seven, inquires about prices, and learns that it’s 250 per night, per person for the room. “Everything they consent to is available to the customer” says the proprietor. Gladly he pays and climbs up the steps with his hand clasped tenderly, finally landing upon a plain pink cushion, whereupon he proceeds to fuck the absolute shit out of his companion for six full hours. The brothel quakes in rhythm with their dual shrieks of ecstasy for the full duration.

      As he begins dressing himself across from the nearly comatose prostitute, the proprietor returns, requesting two hundred and ninety dollars for the extended stay and sixty for the damage to her employee. It was at that moment that the man realized that the madame was a 70 foot tall crustacean from the Paleozoic era. He yells “goddamn Loch Ness monster, I ain’t giving you no three fifty!”