Cloudflare is turning its attention to the startup market, and for good reason. Cloudflare for Startups is a program designed to help startups access a wide range of Cloudflare services so they can put their best foot forward as they try to get off the ground. But what makes Cloudflare perfect for startups? We’ve compiled five reasons.
Existing Clients
Cloudflare for Startups isn’t a difficult transition for startups to make—many are using Cloudflare for WAF, CDN, DNS and other services. With the perks offered through the Cloudflare for Startups program, many find massive savings, not only for the services that they already subscribe to, but for new ones as well.
Funding for Cloudflare Services
As a part of its startup program, Cloudflare offers $250,000 in credits for a variety of services. These credits expire within a year of joining the Cloudflare for Startups program, but over the course of that year, they can be used to try out a variety of services that they would not have otherwise been able to on a startup’s budget. There are limits to what the credits can be used for, but they give startups a head start on building their Cloudflare environments.
Speed
Cloudflare’s edge computing provides speed—speed startups need to stay ahead of the competition. Its edge computing services, like Workers, Workers AI, and R2 are easy to set up, simple to scale, and can be bundled into services clients are already using. Set-up is simple, and scalability is built in to allow growth and development.
AI
Cloudflare offers a variety of AI services, making it appealing to the large number of AI startups that have cropped up since the 2022 release of ChatGPT. Because Cloudflare works on the edge, its AI services offer speed and convenience.
AI Gateway
AI Gateway helps users gain control and visibility over AI applications by unlocking insights and analytics. Through the AI Gateway, clients decide how the AI application scales through caching, rate limiting, request retries, model fallback and other features.
Vectorize
Vectorize allows workers to build full-stack, AI-powered applications with Cloudflare Workers. It makes querying embeddings faster, simpler and more affordable, helping to power AI applications. Vectorize is often paired with R2 to store data and with WorkersAI to build AI/ML applications.
Workers AI
Workers AI provides a serverless way for clients to run AI models, prioritizing scale, performance and reliability. Users can build their own model or use 50+ open-source models, all while paying for only what they use.
Scalable storage
Cloudflare R2 provides global object storage on the edge, helping clients create flexible, multi-cloud architectures. R2 is S3-compatible and its automated migration services help clients migrate from existing providers easily. One of the reasons it stands out to startups is the fact that it has no egress charges or vendor lock-in. The fact that it is storage on the edge provides speed and simplicity that startups desperately need. With R2, Startups can create multi-cloud architecture and easily move data between cloud providers while optimizing content storage and delivery.
