3 Best Cloud Suite Software & Tools 2024

We use Cloudflare to manage our website DNS and domain names and also as a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to speed up our site. Some 60%+ of the internet relies on Cloudflare, and you get most of these great features for free.

Features & Differentiation

Rating: _A

DNS Management

You can essentially use Cloudflare for free, just to better manage your website DNS all in one place.

Domain Registrar

They also allow you to purchase domain names and manage them all in one place.

Website Security

Simply set up your Nameservers to go through Cloudflare, and they add a layer of protection and CDN (Content delivery network) to your website.

Serverless Functions

Cloudflare provides serverless compute services via Cloudflare Workers, a platform for building and deploying JavaScript functions that run on the Cloudflare edge network.

Email Routing

Want to set up complex email routing and even run emails through a Cloudflare Worker to format data before delivering it to the inbox you want it to go into? They do that too! Super powerful.

Okay, Cloudflare just does a lot, and most of it is totally free for quite high usage.

User Interface (UI)

Rating: _B

Show me one DNS provider that has an exceptional UI for managing DNS records and websites. They all suck. If there's a single company that's innovating in the design and layout of DNS settings and site management, it's for sure Cloudflare.

User Experience (UX)

Rating: _B

Mainly deducting points because they have so many services, that it's easy to get lost in the navigation when trying to do simple things. They also rename their services from time to time to make things a bit more confusing. Not a huge deal in the day-to-day usage though.

All other DNS providers are also super slow to propagate changes when they're made. Cloudflare on the other hand is usually instant which is fantastic.

Pricing

Rating: _A

We have gotten so much value from Cloudflare over the past decade, and we still have not paid Cloudflare for anything (aside for the domains we purchase through it, but they charge at cost, so you're paying less with them than any other domain registrar out there).

Final Thoughts

There's genuinely no reason to not give Cloudflare a shot. They are free and have an incredibly UI/UX and just make DNS management more enjoyable.

Google Workspace has built a brand perception around "quick moving and growing teams". And it's one that rings true in most cases.

Google Workspace is usually the #1 tool that every software integrates with (even just with the "sign in with Google" option)—and they make it easy with their super powerful API's built directly into their entire app suite.

We've actually made the conscious choice to only work with companies that use Google Workspace in-fact, because it's often more of a reflection of the type of company than anything.

If you're an older or enterprise company, you're often using that of Microsoft 365—which is fine, it's just that Microsoft ideally wants everyone to use all of their internal tools for everything (*cough* monopoly *cough*), and thus they don't play as nicely with outside tools (as Google Workspace on the other hand does).

If you're a quick moving startup or modern business that is interested in using modern an innovative software, you'd be best using Google Workspace at the core.

Microsoft 365 is more associated with older or large enterprise companies. Microsoft ideally wants everyone to use all of their internal tools for everything (*cough* monopoly *cough*).

Because of that, they don't play as nicely with outside tools (unlike that of Google Workspace on the other hand, which does).

It might sound a bit harsh, but if you're a modern and quick moving startup, your outside perception will be a bit tainted if you're using Microsoft 365 at the core instead of Google Workspace.

Everyone knows how to use Gmail, no one actually enjoys using Outlook (is the general perception).