> BunnyCDN was pretty consistently returning my blog post a few hundred milliseconds faster than Cloudflare
Makes me think that author's CF was misconfigured. Unless you're in a zone with really bad interconnects, like Brazil, or African locations, multiple hundreds of milliseconds shouldn't be possible as the baseline, much less as the difference in the saved latency. (I'm assuming the author talks about a single blog post request)
There is a long-standing dispute between Cloudflare and Germany's biggest ISP, Telekom, which results in terrible peering for Cloudflare free traffic for Telekom customers here. Sites on the Cloudflare Pro plan are not affected by this somehow.
If the author is a Telekom customer, then they would absolutely see 100ms+ improvements.
Bunny.net explicitly names third parties handling user data, while Cloudflare’s policy is more vague, referring only to "third-party service providers" without listing specific companies.
I like the bunny policy more. It is more transparent.
> bunny.net is fully committed to complying with the GDPR. We have overhauled our user Privacy & Data policy and taken steps to ensure no personally identifiable data is stored from your users that access your services through bunny.net by anonymizing any data that could be used to directly or indirectly identify a user. [..]
Looks like they share personal data of Bunny customers but not the users of the customer's services.
BunnyCDN has a great product offering, particularly if you've used Backblaze B2 as "ultra-cheap" object storage, the BunnyCDN product is very competitive pricing-wise, and the CDN configures seamlessly with it. And you can set up a cheap image transform proxy on any of your CDNs.
R2 is cheaper though if you storage cost is less than your bandwidth cost, and B2 has a feature to automatically expire items which depending on your design might make it more efficient.
Cloudflare sales folks are notorious for randomly emailing you and forcing you to suddenly buy 1k+ usd plans out of nothing suddenly.
Be wary of that scenario, it happens quite often if you observe cloudflare’s reddit sub. I think most folks are ok paying for stuff , aws being 10x more expensive wouldnt be so successful if people didnt like paying.
But predictability is important, and cloudflare salesmen can tend to be a bit unpredictable and unprofessional and extensively attempt to use all sorts of pressure tactics to reach their sales quota, so be careful.
I’m saying it as someone who extensively uses Cloudflare Workers and pay for their monthly subscriptions.
Might be worth adding that Bunny offers DNS services as well.
I've started switching a few sites from Cloudflare to Bunny and the experience has been great so far. Bunny offers custom name servers as well, so if you can setup glue records with your domain registrar, it's easy enough to have custom nameservers, DNS and CDN hosted with Bunny. Cheap as chips and great performance so far.
I'm looking for a decent alternative to ReCaptcha or Turnstile but haven't found one yet that has easy integration (form builders etc.)
My move away from US providers isn't in protest - it's just risk avoidance. The unpredictable nature of the current administration reduces the attractiveness of using US based providers.
What a pleasant post! Always cool to see new options popping up to make the web a little bit less centralized (the stranglehold that Cloudflare holds, admittedly in part due to them having both lots of features and good execution)
Crucially Bunny offers prepaid plans. No risk of sudden six digit bills. So glad they’re adding many more services under this pricing plan in their recently announced Magic Containers roadmap.
Agreed. I've been using it for all DNS and CDN for over two years now. Great company, great support, great performance, great API. Everything. Love it. I'm a big fan.
It will be fascinating to see if the protectionist foreign policy that's been adopted by the US will lead to an improvement in the quality of services available elsewhere.
Previously, the friction of using a service with slightly rougher edges would have tipped the scales against it. Now, it seems we have a kind of patriotism emerging in our purchase decisions.
Ultimately, it should give us all more choice through strengthened competition.
Bunny doesn’t have a ton of rough edges to begin with, but I do have some easily addressed pet peeves here and there.
I’ve heard of a few US tech businesses voting for stability with their wallets and shifting to foreign service providers because of the instability here in the states. Some regulated industries will not have that luxury of course.
Though that makes little sense in the context of a CDN. I think Bunny uses US providers like Zenlayer for their egress there, so they’re just a middle man in my understanding. I don’t think there’s any EU provider that runs their own CDN hardware infrastructure in the US.
I rarely do pure CDN setups for cloudflare because the edge workers platform is just too good not to run everything there that is possible. BunnyCDN and most other edge worker offerings are a joke in comparison. Given that workerd is apache 2.0 licensed its strange no other offering goes into that direction.
I use Bunny for my real estate model viewer where each visitor must download hundred of pictures
example https://icade-leblancmesnil.hive-maquette3d.fr/maquette/f5
Bunny was the best solution to serve those images fast at scale and for really cheap.
For website hosting, it's okay but not great. We encountered issues when we tried to cache a lot of images. Their CDN storage seems really low compared to Cloudflare and Cloudfront. It results in a really bad hit ratio the moment we try to deliver a lot of images.
As it happens, just yesterday I began the process of switching from Azure Front Door (Azure's CDN offering) to CloudFlare and found that process significantly more painful than I expected.
The first annoyance is that CloudFlare requires that you use their DNS servers, seems unnecessary to someone who isn't worried about being DDoS'ed, but okay, fine, I'll move one of my secondary domains (a .net) over to them.
I export my DNS Zone from Azure, try import it to CloudFlare and it can't understand the format since it's apparently not a proper BIND format. It's less than a dozen records so I just manually capture them, even though I find the UI for capturing DNS records clunkier than I would expect it to be.
Then I want to update my domain's NS records to point to CloudFlare's servers. My domain is currently an "App Service Domain" which is essentially Azure's DNS registrar offering (they're actually re-selling Wild West Domains services, which I think is GoDaddy) and it turns out it's not possible to update the NS records on Azure. At this point I figure the easiest thing to do is transfer the domain to CloudFlare as the registrar.
This is where CloudFlare has a total stuff up in their systems. Under the "Transfer Domains" section of their dashboard, it would only show "You currently have no domains available for transfer. Follow these instructions to initiate a transfer with the current registrar".
I look at the linked document, manage to get an auth code from Azure for a domain transfer. Still, the "Transfer Domains" screen shows the same thing. I check everything I can, I've captured the domain information on my CloudFlare account (showing a status of "Invalid nameservers", as expected), I check who.is and there is no indication that the domain is locked in any way, still, the "Transfer Domains" doesn't show my domain. I ask ChatGPT and it mentions it can sometimes take a few hours to show, 4 hours later it's still not showing.
I open a ticket and after a bit of back and forth they say the problem is that the "domain is not active", I tell them that to my knowledge everything is active with my domain and I ask them to tell me where I can see this status showing where the domain is "not active" and they tell me it's the status for the domain on the CloudFlare dashboard. Which (presumably) is due to my not having updated the NS records to point to CloudFlare, which I actually mentioned in an earlier email to them is not possible with Azure as the registrar, which is why I was trying to transfer my domain to CloudFlare!
In summary, it's impossible to onboard to CloudFlare if your domain is presently registered with Azure, their "smart" UI doesn't make it possible. I have had to transfer it to our Namecheap account which (as I would have expected on CloudFlare), simply allowed me to enter my domain name and the auth code on their "transfer your domain" page and now the transfer is in progress.
As a related aside, the reason I'm moving from Azure Front Door to CloudFlare is because despite a months long support ticket with Azure, they are not interested in solving the problem of cold cache downloads through their CDN being ridiculously slow, like < 2MB/s (< 16Mbps). I did a test by provisioning a VM with Azure in the South Africa North data center, then via Front Door requested a file hosted with Blob Storage also in the South Africa North data center, and the initial download was < 2MB/s while immediately after it was > 100MB/s (i.e. once the cache was no longer cold). The cold cache speed is less bad (but still not great) if you're doing a set up with everything in West Europe but we've had complaints from European customers in some countries of slow speeds even with West Europe as the source of the data, so I can only surmise that Azure Front Door is just generally terrible at serving files which are not yet cached.
For a service I am working on, I was considering paid CDN, but they were all cost prohibitive for what I expected the usage to be. So I wrote my own CDN(2k lines of code with peer state synchronisation). But Bunny always seemed to be the best bang for the buck. I think they are from Slovenia, so that is a plus in my book.
What makes it worse? In my experience it is a better CDN than Cloudflare (other than that it cost money and CF can be free and that is lacks websocket support). WAF seems a bit better at CF (but not sure the app should rely on a cloud WAF for security).
It's not about not liking Trump. The fear is that the trade war against Europe might make it so expensive everyone has to switch to a non-American service. This is a way to be prepared for that. There is also the fear if USA goes to an actual war against Europe, then it is not safe to use any american technology that phones home.
viraptor|11 months ago
> BunnyCDN was pretty consistently returning my blog post a few hundred milliseconds faster than Cloudflare
Makes me think that author's CF was misconfigured. Unless you're in a zone with really bad interconnects, like Brazil, or African locations, multiple hundreds of milliseconds shouldn't be possible as the baseline, much less as the difference in the saved latency. (I'm assuming the author talks about a single blog post request)
So, don't expect a 100ms+ improvement.
fspoettel|11 months ago
If the author is a Telekom customer, then they would absolutely see 100ms+ improvements.
MortyWaves|11 months ago
salviati|11 months ago
0x073|11 months ago
https://bunny.net/privacy/
Tableau will receive your personal, billing and account consumption details.
MixPanel will receive your personal account details as well as information.
Active Campaign will receive your personal, billing, and account consumption information.
salviati|11 months ago
I like the bunny policy more. It is more transparent.
rustc|11 months ago
> How does bunny.net comply with GDPR?
> bunny.net is fully committed to complying with the GDPR. We have overhauled our user Privacy & Data policy and taken steps to ensure no personally identifiable data is stored from your users that access your services through bunny.net by anonymizing any data that could be used to directly or indirectly identify a user. [..]
Looks like they share personal data of Bunny customers but not the users of the customer's services.
mixermachine|11 months ago
futhey|11 months ago
R2 is cheaper though if you storage cost is less than your bandwidth cost, and B2 has a feature to automatically expire items which depending on your design might make it more efficient.
teitoklien|11 months ago
Be wary of that scenario, it happens quite often if you observe cloudflare’s reddit sub. I think most folks are ok paying for stuff , aws being 10x more expensive wouldnt be so successful if people didnt like paying.
But predictability is important, and cloudflare salesmen can tend to be a bit unpredictable and unprofessional and extensively attempt to use all sorts of pressure tactics to reach their sales quota, so be careful.
I’m saying it as someone who extensively uses Cloudflare Workers and pay for their monthly subscriptions.
yani|11 months ago
kolp|11 months ago
I've started switching a few sites from Cloudflare to Bunny and the experience has been great so far. Bunny offers custom name servers as well, so if you can setup glue records with your domain registrar, it's easy enough to have custom nameservers, DNS and CDN hosted with Bunny. Cheap as chips and great performance so far.
I'm looking for a decent alternative to ReCaptcha or Turnstile but haven't found one yet that has easy integration (form builders etc.)
My move away from US providers isn't in protest - it's just risk avoidance. The unpredictable nature of the current administration reduces the attractiveness of using US based providers.
KronisLV|11 months ago
wahnfrieden|11 months ago
whitefang|11 months ago
sivers|11 months ago
tcldr|11 months ago
Previously, the friction of using a service with slightly rougher edges would have tipped the scales against it. Now, it seems we have a kind of patriotism emerging in our purchase decisions.
Ultimately, it should give us all more choice through strengthened competition.
TheNewsIsHere|11 months ago
Bunny doesn’t have a ton of rough edges to begin with, but I do have some easily addressed pet peeves here and there.
I’ve heard of a few US tech businesses voting for stability with their wallets and shifting to foreign service providers because of the instability here in the states. Some regulated industries will not have that luxury of course.
creativenolo|11 months ago
throwaway63467|11 months ago
jFriedensreich|11 months ago
dezmou|11 months ago
johne20|11 months ago
neonsunset|11 months ago
victorbjorklund|11 months ago
adityapatadia|11 months ago
chrisweekly|11 months ago
hybrid_study|11 months ago
wyomingplease|11 months ago
spiderfarmer|11 months ago
Kye|11 months ago
jonathanlydall|11 months ago
The first annoyance is that CloudFlare requires that you use their DNS servers, seems unnecessary to someone who isn't worried about being DDoS'ed, but okay, fine, I'll move one of my secondary domains (a .net) over to them.
I export my DNS Zone from Azure, try import it to CloudFlare and it can't understand the format since it's apparently not a proper BIND format. It's less than a dozen records so I just manually capture them, even though I find the UI for capturing DNS records clunkier than I would expect it to be.
Then I want to update my domain's NS records to point to CloudFlare's servers. My domain is currently an "App Service Domain" which is essentially Azure's DNS registrar offering (they're actually re-selling Wild West Domains services, which I think is GoDaddy) and it turns out it's not possible to update the NS records on Azure. At this point I figure the easiest thing to do is transfer the domain to CloudFlare as the registrar.
This is where CloudFlare has a total stuff up in their systems. Under the "Transfer Domains" section of their dashboard, it would only show "You currently have no domains available for transfer. Follow these instructions to initiate a transfer with the current registrar".
I look at the linked document, manage to get an auth code from Azure for a domain transfer. Still, the "Transfer Domains" screen shows the same thing. I check everything I can, I've captured the domain information on my CloudFlare account (showing a status of "Invalid nameservers", as expected), I check who.is and there is no indication that the domain is locked in any way, still, the "Transfer Domains" doesn't show my domain. I ask ChatGPT and it mentions it can sometimes take a few hours to show, 4 hours later it's still not showing.
I open a ticket and after a bit of back and forth they say the problem is that the "domain is not active", I tell them that to my knowledge everything is active with my domain and I ask them to tell me where I can see this status showing where the domain is "not active" and they tell me it's the status for the domain on the CloudFlare dashboard. Which (presumably) is due to my not having updated the NS records to point to CloudFlare, which I actually mentioned in an earlier email to them is not possible with Azure as the registrar, which is why I was trying to transfer my domain to CloudFlare!
In summary, it's impossible to onboard to CloudFlare if your domain is presently registered with Azure, their "smart" UI doesn't make it possible. I have had to transfer it to our Namecheap account which (as I would have expected on CloudFlare), simply allowed me to enter my domain name and the auth code on their "transfer your domain" page and now the transfer is in progress.
As a related aside, the reason I'm moving from Azure Front Door to CloudFlare is because despite a months long support ticket with Azure, they are not interested in solving the problem of cold cache downloads through their CDN being ridiculously slow, like < 2MB/s (< 16Mbps). I did a test by provisioning a VM with Azure in the South Africa North data center, then via Front Door requested a file hosted with Blob Storage also in the South Africa North data center, and the initial download was < 2MB/s while immediately after it was > 100MB/s (i.e. once the cache was no longer cold). The cold cache speed is less bad (but still not great) if you're doing a set up with everything in West Europe but we've had complaints from European customers in some countries of slow speeds even with West Europe as the source of the data, so I can only surmise that Azure Front Door is just generally terrible at serving files which are not yet cached.
mxschumacher|11 months ago
MrJohz|11 months ago
Feel free to ask any questions.
indulona|11 months ago
waltercool|11 months ago
[deleted]
unknown|11 months ago
[deleted]
noobahoi|11 months ago
RockRobotRock|11 months ago
I might not be brave enough to stop using CF, but people who do benefit everyone.
victorbjorklund|11 months ago
o_m|11 months ago
sleepyhead|11 months ago