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Cloudflare with Unbounce

  • 4 October 2017
  • 8 replies
  • 477 views
Phillip

Does anyone have experience using Cloudflare with Unbounce?

I would like to see if their service can speed up my Unbounce pages.

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Best answer by Rob 10 October 2017, 00:54

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8 replies

Zoe_Tattersall
Userlevel 6
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Hey @Phillip, I don’t personally know much about Cloudflare … however, a client I’m working with currently has a web-hosting business that uses it. The landing page I’m working on for him at the moment has Cloudflare implemented. I haven’t compressed any images yet as this is still a WIP. Not sure if this helps you, but maybe you can use dev tools to inspect it.

Side note: Something I learnt – when pointing a custom domain to Unbounce with Cloudflare, you need to temporarily switch Cloudflare off to allow it work. Then switch it back on, once the domain is showing as working in Unbounce.

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Rob
Userlevel 6

Hey @Phillip It is possible to use Cloudflare and Unbounce together although I wouldn’t say it’s a match made in heaven by any means. Due to how Cloudflare acts as a proxy it prevents the Unbounce app from seeing the CNAME or pinging the DNS when adding the domain into Unbounce, which then prevents the app from knowing when a domain is correctly pointed to the Unbounce servers. Our SSL functionality depends on the app verifying the CNAME record so this in turn fails when the app cannot see the CNAME. The solution is to only enable Cloudflare after Unbounce has fully enabled and provisioned the SSL cert for the domain.

In regards to use of Cloudflare with the Wordpress plugin again this is possible, however it’s not all that stable and it’s not something we can fully support. One of the big features of Cloudflare is something called Rocket Loader which I’ve seen cause a number of different issues with Unbounce pages on Wordpress, including pages 404ing and protected assets errors on form submission. One of the reasons for this is that Cloudflare will attempt to minify or compress any JS and CSS being loaded on the page automatically, including the default Unbounce JS and CSS files. This can break some core functionality of the pages due to the way Rocket Loader minifies the content. Long story short, Rocket Loader doesn’t currently work with Unbounce pages and that’s the main feature in Cloudflare designed to speed up load times as far as I know. So if that’s the main purpose in using Cloudflare it may be more trouble than it’s worth.

Cloudflare can also cause issues with stat tracking in Wordpress because of how it acts as a proxy. The cause of these issues tends to be (but not always) the IP address of the visitor not making it’s way to Unbounce. At this time unfortunately we can’t fully support the Unbounce plugin in conjunction with Cloudflare.

That being said, I have seen it work in the past (we just can’t technically support it). A number of our customers do take the CNAME approach and after allowing the domain and SSL to fully enable in Unbounce it works without issue.

Hope this helps a bit! Keep in mind as well that I only really ever come across Cloudflare when there is an issue or when something breaks. It’s possible that someone else has had a better experience with Cloudflare and Unbounce and I’m just unaware of it 🙂

Phillip

Thank you @Rob!

We are not running our pages through the Wordpress plugin. Will Cloudflare’s Rocket Loader break our Unbounce pages? Or is that only an issue with the Wordpress plugin?

Rob
Userlevel 6

I’ve only ever seen it be an issue with the Wordpress plugin. With the CNAME, the content is server directly from Unbounce’s servers so Rocket Loader doesn’t have a chance to minify any of the assets. Since it’s not something we fully support though I’d recommend testing it before going live with any campaigns.

Normally I’ll suggest setting up the CNAME and adding the domain into Unbounce. Once we’ve fully enabled SSL on the domain you can switch Cloudflare on and everything should work fine.

Phillip

Welp… I dove head first trying to determine if Cloudflare + Unbounce = ❤️

The bad news: since Unbounce uses CDNs, most of Cloudflare’s optimizations are not available. Unbounce images are hosted on Amazon’s Cloudfront CDN, so Cloudflare’s image feature, Polish, does not work.

Additionally, Unbounce hosts shared javascript resources on CDNs. This makes sense, because it allows all Unbounce clients to cache the same files. But it also means Cloudflare cannot optimize these resources with HTTP/2 or Auto Minify.

Really all that Cloudflare can do is auto minify the HTML Unbounce page and send that over HTTP/2. It can also Optimize resource loading with Rocket Loader and Mirage. But those features by themselves aren’t really worth the hassel to setup.

T

Yep. I can confirm that Cloudflare does not work with the WP plugin.

It screws up styles and most definitely screws up JS.

But!

but But BUT!..

It works when you by way of CNAME.

Thanks @Rob

J

Hi Rob, I am running into the same issue with SSL certification on a Cloudflare + Unbounce integration. I have my landing page with a subdomain set up and published and Cloudflare turned off. Ho long should it take for Unbounce to enable SSL (forced SSL is checked)?

Rob
Userlevel 6

Hi @John_Capone! Could you let me know what your domain it (feel free to DM me) and I’ll have a look on this end to check it’s current status.

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