Most small business sites sit directly on the open internet — no cache, no firewall, HTTP half-enabled.
Cloudflare free plan fixes all three in 20 minutes:
- Proxy DNS (orange cloud) + SSL Full Strict + Always Use HTTPS
- Cache rules for images/CSS/JS — Edge TTL 30 days, purge on deploy
- Auto Minify + Brotli + Early Hints + HTTP/3 (20-40% smaller pages)
- WAF Managed Ruleset + Bot Fight Mode + rate rule on /contact
- Verify cf-cache-status: HIT, PageSpeed before/after
Full guide with exact clicks:
https://www.uphilltech.ca/posts/2026-10-30-cloudflare-free-tools-small-business.html
We deploy this for clients — first conversation free. (204) 918-5534.