Can I use Cloudflare on Flywheel?

Updated on April 30th, 2020

Yes! Cloudflare is fully compatible with all Flywheel sites. If you’d like to take advantage of Cloudflare’s features, you can do so quickly and easily thanks to their simple setup. Be sure to check out our guide to getting started with Cloudflare on Flywheel for details on how to get up and running.

So what is Cloudflare anyway? Cloudflare is a third-party service that acts as a go-between from your site’s server to your users. Cloudflare adds various features related to speed, security and performance along the way. Both free and paid plans are available, but some features are restricted to paid tiers.

To use Cloudflare, you enable your domain to use their nameservers, which makes Cloudflare the source for your domain’s DNS records and details. This means traffic will pass through Cloudflare on its way to your site’s server. You’ll set up your DNS records in Cloudflare’s dashboard rather than through your registrar, as we otherwise recommend.

There are a few reasons you might want to use Cloudflare: if your registrar doesn’t have nameservers for you to use; if you’re interested in a higher level of caching and/or security; or if you need an easy SSL solution for allowing HTTPS connections to a secondary domain on your site, for example.

Note

We do not recommend enabling Cloudflare’s “Always Use HTTPS” setting, and instead recommend using “Force HTTPS” in the Advanced tab of the Flywheel dashboard.

Note

Once “Force HTTPS” is enabled on the site’s Flywheel Dashboard, we recommend enabling the “Full” SSL option in the “SSL/TLS” section of the Cloudflare dashboard. We strongly recommend not using the “Flexible” setting for domains set to “Primary” on the Flywheel dashboard, as this can cause a redirect loop. For more details on these settings, see this Cloudflare support guide.

Note

Cloudflare caches content fairly aggressively, which can cause delays in new content showing, so we recommend enabling their Development Mode setting when making changes to your site. It may also be helpful to install the Cloudflare plugin to manage Cloudflare’s caching of your site.

Note

Cloudflare acts as a reverse proxy, which means that when using Cloudflare, DNS detection tools such as our DNS Health Checker won’t provide accurate results.

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