Cloudflare Pages: Deploy & Host Jamstack Sites

Cloudflare is introducing a new service today known as Cloudflare Pages. This offering is a direct competitor to platforms like Netlify and Vercel, both of which are cloud hosting providers specializing in building and deploying websites utilizing JAMstack frameworks.

This announcement may seem familiar, as details regarding the forthcoming product were previously revealed by reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong through analysis of Cloudflare’s code. This information was previously reported on a few weeks ago.

“Jane’s post on Twitter essentially unveiled the news a bit prematurely, which we actually found quite impressive,” stated Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare.

Now, Cloudflare Pages is officially available. It functions with a seamless connection to your Git repository and integrates with established JAMstack frameworks. Whenever you update your website’s code in your Git repository, Cloudflare automatically initiates the building and deployment process across its network.

For those unfamiliar, JAMstack is a widely adopted approach to website development and deployment, particularly suited for scalability. It allows you to leverage global edge networks with a strong emphasis on performance optimization.

A JAMstack framework enables the separation of your website’s frontend and backend components. Each modification to your site triggers a complete rebuild of the frontend. Your pages are then converted into highly optimized static files, which can be hosted and cached on a worldwide edge network, resulting in page load times measured in milliseconds.

JAMstack websites are not limited to being entirely static. They can incorporate APIs from service providers like Stripe. For example, payment functionalities are loaded directly from Stripe’s servers when a page is displayed in a user’s browser. Furthermore, you can develop custom microservices that load on demand and scale efficiently.

Regarding Cloudflare Pages, it currently supports integration with repositories hosted on GitHub. After configuring your site, you can preview each code commit directly from the Cloudflare interface – each commit receives a unique URL and a dedicated preview environment.

Collaboration is facilitated by allowing you to invite other Cloudflare users to your Pages project. Once you are satisfied with the preview, you can deploy the changes to the live production branch.

Cloudflare’s development of Pages began after receiving feedback from users who identified as non-DevOps professionals. “Individuals with creative backgrounds inquired whether we were interested in creating a website builder,” Prince explained, referencing platforms like Wix and Squarespace as examples.

Simultaneously, Cloudflare observed the increasing popularity of the JAMstack approach. “Many customers of Netlify and Vercel were actually utilizing Cloudflare in conjunction with their Netlify or Vercel sites,” he noted. This configuration is inefficient in terms of both cost and performance due to the stacking of multiple Content Delivery Networks (CDNs).

Given Cloudflare’s extensive global server network, hosting JAMstack websites on its edge network is a cost-effective solution – it’s less expensive than caching content served by Netlify. This enables a generous free tier offering unlimited bandwidth and requests.

“We deliberately scheduled this release to coincide with this time of year. Our intention was to provide a gift to the developer community,” Prince stated.

The company anticipates significant interest in today’s launch, projecting an addition of a thousand new users per day until January. Following this initial period, the service will be made available to the general public.

Cloudflare believes Pages will be a compelling choice for JAMstack projects due to its free tier and robust infrastructure. The company also anticipates that users will explore other Cloudflare services in the future.

For example, if you require functionality beyond static websites, Cloudflare provides a serverless platform called Cloudflare Workers. You can deploy code to Workers and integrate it with your Pages site. With Workers KV and Durable Objects, you can also build applications that extend beyond stateless functions.

Likewise, as you begin using Pages, you may find value in Cloudflare’s advanced security features and other products. Cloudflare has consistently relied on attracting a broad base of developers to drive future customer acquisition, and Pages represents another step in this strategy.