In May 2026, Cloudflare laid off approximately 1,100 employees — about 20% of their workforce — despite reporting 34% revenue growth. The cuts hit engineering, product, and support teams. For developers relying on Cloudflare Pages, Workers, and R2 for hosting, this raises a practical question: who is left to support you when things break?
We analyzed this in detail in our coverage: Cloudflare Just Cut 20% of Staff Despite 34% Revenue Growth. The short version: Cloudflare is doubling down on AI inference and enterprise networking. Hosting products like Pages and Workers are not where the growth is.
What Cloudflare’s Layoff Means for Hosting Users
When a company cuts 20% of staff, the impact is not theoretical:
- Fewer support engineers — Response times increase. Complex issues take longer to resolve.
- Fewer product managers — Feature development slows. Bug fixes get deprioritized.
- Institutional knowledge loss — The people who built and understand the edge cases are gone.
- Priority shifts — Remaining resources go to revenue-generating products (enterprise networking, AI), not developer hosting.
Cloudflare Pages is already a second-tier product within Cloudflare’s portfolio. Their revenue comes from enterprise security, CDN, and now AI inference — not from free-tier static site hosting. After cutting 1,100 people, the Pages team likely got smaller.
Cloudflare Pages vs DeployBase: What You Get
| Feature | Cloudflare Pages | DeployBase |
|---|---|---|
| Static sites | Yes (primary use case) | Yes |
| Server-side rendering | Workers (edge functions) | Node.js with full runtime |
| WordPress | No | One-click setup |
| Laravel | No | One-click setup |
| Node.js (full) | Workers only (limited runtime) | Full Node.js 18/20/22 |
| PHP | No | Yes |
| Database | D1 (SQLite-based, beta) | MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, MongoDB |
| SSH access | No | Yes |
| File system | No persistent storage | Full file system access |
| Git deploy | Yes | Yes |
| Free SSL | Yes | Yes |
| Starting price | Free (limited) | $5.99/month |
| Support | Community forums, ticket (paid plans) | Direct human support |
| CDN/Edge | Global (their core strength) | Single region (Hetzner EU) |
Where Cloudflare Still Wins
Cloudflare’s edge network is genuinely excellent:
- Global CDN — 300+ data centers worldwide. Unmatched for static asset delivery.
- DDoS protection — Industry-leading mitigation, included free.
- Edge functions — Workers run code in 300+ locations with sub-millisecond cold starts.
- Free tier — Generous free plan for static sites and basic Workers usage.
- DNS — The fastest authoritative DNS globally.
If your application is a static site or JAMstack app that benefits from edge deployment, Cloudflare Pages is still hard to beat on performance.
Where DeployBase Wins
DeployBase is better when you need a real server, not an edge function:
- Full server environment — SSH access, persistent file system, background processes
- Traditional web apps — WordPress, Laravel, and full-stack Node.js with databases
- Real databases — PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB — not SQLite-based beta products
- Human support — Real people who respond, not forums and AI chatbots
- Predictable pricing — Flat monthly rate, no usage-based surprises
- No vendor lock-in — Standard Docker containers. You can migrate anywhere.
The Support Gap Is Real
This is the core issue. When Cloudflare cuts 20% of staff:
- Their community forums become the primary support channel for free/pro users
- Paid support response times may increase
- Edge cases and bugs in Pages/Workers may take longer to fix
- Product roadmap slows as engineering resources are reassigned
At DeployBase, support is not a cost center we are trying to shrink. It is part of the product. When you have a deployment issue at 2 AM, you get a human response — not a link to a documentation page.
The Hybrid Approach
Here is what many developers do: use both. Deploy your application on DeployBase, then put Cloudflare’s CDN and DDoS protection in front of it. You get:
- Full server environment from DeployBase (SSH, databases, all frameworks)
- Global CDN and DDoS protection from Cloudflare (free tier is fine for this)
- Best of both worlds without depending on either for everything
DeployBase even has built-in Cloudflare integration — add your API token and zone ID in the dashboard, and DNS management happens automatically.
Bottom Line
Cloudflare is not going away. They are a $35B company with strong revenue growth. But their hosting products (Pages, Workers, D1) are not their revenue drivers, and the 20% layoff means fewer humans maintaining and supporting those products.
If you need a CDN and DDoS protection, use Cloudflare for that. If you need a hosting platform where someone picks up the phone when things break, DeployBase is built for that.
The question is not which product is better in isolation. It is: which company is investing in the product you depend on? After cutting 1,100 employees, Cloudflare’s answer is clear — and it is not hosting.
