Cloudflare for Small Businesses: Security and Speed on a Budget
- Lee Robins
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
Cybersecurity threats don’t just target large organisations that spend a small fortune on their IT infrastructure; they also target small businesses with limited budgets and limited IT knowledge.
The good news is that you don’t need to spend a fortune or employ an in-house team of experts to protect your website. Cloudflare offers enterprise-grade security and lightning-fast performance, all at a price that won’t break the bank and as a Cloudflare partner, Owtanet can help you achieve this.
According to UK government statistics 43%, which roughly equates to approximately 612,000 businesses, identified a cyber breach or attack in 2025 (1), meaning that all businesses, no matter how small your business is, need to make sure they have protection in place.
Why do hackers go after SMB?
You may think that hackers only go after large companies? After all what's in it for them to attack an indie ecommerce site selling custom t-shirts? The answer is they are easy prey. Quite often small online businesses lack security measures and have no dedicated IT staff. Attackers often use automated tools to scan the web for vulnerabilities. One simple attack can damage a small business, leaving devastating effects.
Some of the attacks which SMBs face can include:
Phishing: Fake emails tricking employees into giving out passwords (we explore ways to prevent phishing in another blog)
Ransomware: Hackers encrypt your data and demand payments
DDoS attacks: Flooding your site with traffic to take it offline
Credential stuffing: Using stolen passwords from other breaches to access your accounts.
We have successfully set up Cloudflare for a range of clients, including a major tool distributor, a multi-channel cookware retailer, an action sports goods supplier and a luxury boat manufacturer. Not only were we able to save them money, but they can rest assured that Cloudflare is set up correctly, protecting their online business.
How can Cloudflare help?
Whilst there are some technical aspects of Cloudflare, the overall principle of how it works is quite simple. You start by routing your DNS servers to Cloudflare as a reverse proxy, and when a visitor goes to your website, Cloudflare then sends this to your server. Think of it like a PO box, you still get the post, however, nobody knows where you live.
This has many benefits, which includes:
Security
One of the biggest benefits which we have talked a lot about in this blog is security. By using Cloudflare and setting up a reverse proxy, the website never needs to reveal its IP address from its original servers, which makes it much harder for malicious traffic like DDoS attacks to succeed. Instead, attackers will only be able to target Cloudflare's content delivery network, which has more resources to be able to defeat the attack.
Cloudflare identifies and blocks bots by using global threat intelligence and behavioural analysis, which prevents malicious traffic like bots, hackers and spam before it even reaches your site. This can prevent fake orders, spam, comments, and stolen customer data, as well as reduce the load on your server, making sure it stays fast for your visitors.
Cloudflare also offers free SSL certificates for secure browsing, increasing customers' trust in your website without needing to configure the certificate yourself. This is also essential for SEO and compliance.
Think of Cloudflare like a bouncer on a door to a nightclub, stopping troublemakers and checking ID to make sure that only those who should be in get in.
Performance
Another great benefit of Cloudflare is enhanced performance. The content delivery network (CDN) stores a cached version of your website on servers around the world, making sure that visitors get content from the nearest server to them, reducing load times. For example, if a visitor from Australia views your site, they will receive your site from an Australian server rather than having to get this from the UK, slowing down the page load time. In fact, Cloudflare was the fastest CDN in 48% of the top 1,000 global networks tested between November 2024 and March 2025 (2). This means nearly half of all internet users worldwide experience faster load times with Cloudflare, which is often by milliseconds, which can make a big difference for user experience and SEO.
Not only does this make your visitors happier, but it can also mean higher rankings on Google too. Images, videos and webpages load almost instantly, no matter where your visitors are, using Cloudflare’s image optimisation.
Industry studies (including research by the Aberdeen Group) have shown that a 1-second delay in page load time can result in 11% fewer page views, a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction, and a 7% loss in conversions.
Reliability
Cloudflare's Always on feature ensures that your website remains online even if the hosting server goes offline. This is carried out by caching the site, meaning that your Cloudflare shows a cached version of your site. Your website can still be seen by your customers even if it goes down.
Extra features
Cloudflare goes beyond just offering security, speed and reliability. It offers tools which are especially useful for growing businesses that need custom security or performance tweaks.
These include:
Firewall rules which allow you to customise the security settings, such as blocking traffic from certain countries
Rate limiting, which stops brute-force attacks by limiting login attempts.
Workers allow lightweight scripts to run at the edge (e.g., A/B testing or redirect rules) without slowing your server.
Can anyone set up Cloudflare?
Cloudflare is very user-friendly, and whilst anyone with limited technical knowledge can set up the basics with Cloudflare, misconfigurations can leave gaps. For example, if security settings are too strict, legitimate customers might be blocked. If you’re on a platform like Wix or Squarespace, integrating Cloudflare requires extra steps to avoid conflicts. If caching rules aren’t set correctly, visitors might see outdated content.
Here at Owtanet, we can provide you with a Cloudflare plan that suits your business and online presence size and provide as much help and support as you require.
DIY: We’ll provide the plan and support if you hit an issue.
Assisted Setup: We’ll provide the plan and configure everything correctly for you.
Full Management: For complex needs, we offer ongoing monitoring and support
Want to learn more? Explore Cloudflare’s features or get in touch to secure your online business today.
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