Cloudflare offers a content distribution network that protects and accelerates your website without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of code. When your website is hosted by DreamHost and protected by Cloudflare, all of your web traffic is routed through its intelligent global network with over 100 data centers. Sites that use Cloudflare see significant performance improvements and are hardened against online threats like denial of service attacks.
Cloudflare has been a partner of DreamHost’s for years, and our users have been able to take advantage of their advanced content distribution network all this time at no extra cost.
Related: How to Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) with WordPress
New Update
Today the Cloudflare experience at DreamHost gets even better!
Any domain that uses a TLS/SSL certificate, like Let’s Encrypt, will now be able to use the basic free Cloudflare plan. (TLS is the new name for SSL.) It also means that Universal SSL is now supported, meaning when your visitors connect to the Cloudflare Edge (any of their points of presence), it will be done through TLS/SSL. (In order for Universal SSL to be enabled, your domain must support ‘www’, which is also selected on the domain settings page.)
This is especially important for our managed WordPress hosting service, DreamPress, as all new DreamPress customers have a Let’s Encrypt certificate pre-installed when their accounts are created.
Both of these two configurations are supported:
Your domain does not have a TLS/SSL certificate.
Your visitor <– SSL –> Cloudflare <– no SSL –> Your website
Your domain does have a TLS/SSL certificate, like Let’s Encrypt.
Your visitor <– SSL –> Cloudflare <– SSL –> Your website
Beginning now, this will only affect new domains hosted by DreamHost with Cloudflare enabled. Domains with or without a TLS/SSL certificate will work fine with the basic plan. In a few weeks, once we’ve ensured the new update is working well on new domains, we enable this retroactively for all DreamHost domains using Cloudflare.
The difference between the CloudFlare Basic and Plus plans is shown below:
| Cloudflare Basic | Cloudflare Plus |
| Global CDN Web content optimization using RockLoader and AutoMinify Security protection SSL support IPv6 compatibility Site analytics (24-hour delay) Optional Railgun optimization (for sites with dynamic content) | All Basic plan features Faster website performance and advanced image optimization (better mobile performance) through access to CloudFlare’s Polish, Mirage, and Lazy Loading features Site analytics (1-hour delay) 10 custom URL rules |
Enjoy better performance and secure protection for your website with Cloudflare!