Both Netlify and Cloudflare Pages are excellent platforms for deploying static sites. After testing both for my personal blog and projects, I chose Cloudflare — here’s why it won me over.
🧰 What You’ll Need
- A domain (managed in Cloudflare recommended)
- A static site generator (Hugo, Astro, etc.)
- GitHub or GitLab repository for CI/CD
⚙️ Why Cloudflare?
🔗 Built-in DNS Integration
My domains were already managed through Cloudflare DNS, which means full control with fast propagation, CNAME flattening, and tight integration. Keeping everything under one roof reduces friction.
Netlify adds a layer of abstraction I don’t need — I want direct DNS access, and with Cloudflare, it’s all there.
⚙️ Rules & Workers
Cloudflare Rules and Workers are seriously powerful. I can create redirects, rewrites, or edge functions without deploying a backend.
Example: I use a Redirect Rule to handle legacy links from sohwatt.com and direct them to new paths on alwynsoh.com. No code needed.
💨 Multi-Site Routing
Deploying my Hugo blog to /blog and a second site to /gallery is dead simple with Cloudflare’s routing. Having Pages deploy from GitHub with preview builds just works.
Netlify’s _redirects file and netlify.toml started to get messy for my multi-repo setup.
🆚 Cloudflare Pages vs Netlify
| Feature | Cloudflare Pages | Netlify |
|---|---|---|
| DNS Integration | ✅ Native, full control | ⚠️ Abstracted |
| Deploy Previews | ✅ Built-in | ✅ Supported |
| Edge Functions | ✅ Workers | ⚠️ Beta |
| Redirects | ✅ Rules UI + Workers | ⚠️ _redirects file |
| Multi-Repo Routing | ✅ Easy | ❌ Complex |
| Pricing | 🆓 Generous free tier | 🆓 Free, stricter limits |
✅ Wrap Up
If you want plug-and-play, Netlify is fine. But if you’re already using Cloudflare for DNS and edge rules, Cloudflare Pages is a no-brainer — it’s faster, cheaper, and part of your infrastructure.
If this guide helped you decide, consider buying me a coffee:
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