Until proven otherwise in your specific case, the better technology is just hosting directly on a VPS without Cloudflare. And if your 5$ VPS is maxed out, while serving any less than 10 requests per second, then you need to optimize your software before considering an upgrade.
Bandwidth is cheap at places that don't call themselves "cloud". You can even get unmetered. 10TB/month is usually enough, even with bots. If you're serving large files, put a simple bot test on the page before the files.
My single static webpage with no updates in 3 years is doing that, which is (one of the reasons) how I end up where that site (and many others in business and personally) is.
You're chasing a dream for a world that doesn't exist anymore.
Until proven otherwise in your specific case, the better technology is just hosting directly on a VPS without Cloudflare. And if your 5$ VPS is maxed out, while serving any less than 10 requests per second, then you need to optimize your software before considering an upgrade.
Okay but the bots are loose and you have a bandwidth cap on most VPSs.
Because you have no CDN, all the bots are coming directly to you.
Because that's no CDN or distributed WAF, they're hammering your box.
Because your IP is directly exposed, you're also showing up on Shodan.
Your server may have enough CPU and RAM to handle the load, but does your monthly bandwidth allocation with your provider?
Many are finding previous bandwidth limits (starting around 10TB/month) are no longer enough.
Bandwidth is cheap at places that don't call themselves "cloud". You can even get unmetered. 10TB/month is usually enough, even with bots. If you're serving large files, put a simple bot test on the page before the files.
> 10TB/month is usually enough, even with bots.
My single static webpage with no updates in 3 years is doing that, which is (one of the reasons) how I end up where that site (and many others in business and personally) is.
You're chasing a dream for a world that doesn't exist anymore.
no sorry I don't actually believe your single static webpage is doing 10TB/month. That's about 500 RPS average.