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Cloudflare pulls more web traffic through Reddit than many brands do from all their channels combined.
According to SimilarWeb, nearly 86,000 visitors found their way to Cloudflare’s site via links shared on the front page of the internet. And that’s just in the last month.
While this represents a tiny fraction of the 22 million monthly visitors, the value of the visits is nothing to laugh at. Why? Because these are high-value web pages they’re reaching.
Documentation pages. Product update announcements. Warnings about the latest scamming tactics.
The Cloudflare team isn’t just spamming different subreddits with fluffy blog posts hoping it magically turns into traffic. Their approach is far more deliberate.
Today we’ll look at the groundwork Cloudflare has laid out that contributes to this Reddit dominance, from their top-notch product and documentation to building trust and transparency in their branded subreddit with an extensive moderator team.
Cloudflare’s Reddit Success Shows up in the SERP
Reddit’s takeover of the SERPs might be old hat to some of you, but it’s still reshaping how we think about search visibility.
People are looking for more honest, authentic discussions on products, services, and just about everything else, so they turn to the social platform most known for its candor.
That shift in behavior shows up clearly in the data.
There are around 1,850 different SERPs for queries including the keyword “Cloudflare” that feature a Reddit URL in the top 10 results. For top 3 positions, that number is about 750.
Reddit posts about Cloudflare that rank on the first page of Google drive over 26,000 visits each month. That’s twice as much traffic as they generated last year, and the number of ranking pages has 3x’d.
For example, one Reddit post holds the #2 SERP position for “Cloudflare speed test,” pulling in around 4,345 visitors every month at $5.6k in traffic value. And it’s not even in the brand-owned sub. It’s in r/HomeNetworking.
However, it does include a link to Cloudflare’s speed testing subdomain as the top comment, with 148 upvotes giving massive visibility to this page. The cosign from the Redditor directly below doesn’t hurt either.
As a freemium product that powers and protects a large portion of the internet and has over 200,000 paying customers, it’s not surprising that Cloudflare gets talked about on Reddit. Especially with its relevance to a number of large technical subreddits like r/webdev, r/sysadmin, r/selfhosted, and r/HomeNetworking.
But, as we’ll see below, the conversation surrounding Cloudflare’s services can be quite fraught. That’s why they’ve invested in a branded subreddit where they can build a connection with their community in a more controlled environment.
According to Ahrefs, the r/CloudFlare subreddit has 1,251 posts that show up in a top 10 SERP position. This organic search exposure brings 18,000 visitors to the branded subreddit every month.
Here’s a look at some of the top posts bringing traffic to r/Cloudflare:
Not only do these posts funnel web searches to Cloudflare’s subreddit, but the detailed comment sections they spark often include links to Cloudflare’s massive amount of user support content.
Their developers subdomain has over 3,700 detailed documentation pages, while their community subdomain has tens of thousands of web pages with threads discussing product issues. When brands create content that’s actually helpful to their user base, the likelihood that it gets distributed on platforms like Reddit increases significantly.
These threads all contribute to those 80,000+ Reddit referrals that Cloudflare receives every month.
But before we get too far ahead, remember this: a Reddit post can rank well in search for the wrong reasons, and those reasons can hurt your brand.
How Cloudflare Builds Community on Trust and Transparency
The r/CloudFlare subreddit currently has 34k members.
That may seem small for a company whose product is used by over 24 million websites and proxies 20% of the web, but Reddit’s influence extends far beyond the number of people subscribed to the subreddit or those who even have an account.
In our new Reddit marketing guide for 2025, Ross explains how over 55% of the people visiting Reddit don’t actually log in. This massive community of lurkers doesn’t show up in terms of subscriptions, comments, or upvotes, but they are still influenced by the sentiments shared on this platform.
For companies, the goal behind Reddit is to build an engaged community where discussions around brand and product are positive and (more importantly) helpful, so these silent users are exposed to the brand in a positive light.
And that’s exactly what r/CloudFlare does.
It provides value for both seasoned users and newcomers. Experienced users share news or voice frustrations, while new adopters look for guidance and troubleshooting help.
The top five posts from the past month show a wide range of Cloudflare users and what they’re hoping to get from the subreddit.
- Questions from newer users about issues with Google indexing static pages
- Free guides from experienced users explaining more advanced Cloudflare use cases
- Venting sessions from customers about Cloudflare’s “nightmare” customer support
- Requests from users for more insight into a recent DoS attack they experienced
- An announcement from Cloudflare about the impact of a major power outage in Europe
This is a pretty standard array of sentiments that you’ll find in technical Reddit communities, especially those based around products. New users ask questions. Seasoned users answer them. Frustrated users air grievances.
Cloudflare’s goal is to maintain an environment where the first two happen more often than the latter. Now let’s see how they do it.
An Extensive Moderation and Support Team
The r/CloudFlare sub has a large moderator team consisting of high-level employees and community volunteers (known as Community MVPs).
Cloudflare clearly sets a high bar for these volunteers, with the majority of them being actively engaged in relevant, highly technical subreddits like r/selfhosting and r/webdev. As far as Cloudflare employees, team members from several departments also help moderate the subreddit and engage with the community in other spaces.
Here’s a closer look at the team of Cloudflare employees and committed volunteers who oversee the sub:
Based on their top posts and comments this year, here’s how the different Cloudflare moderators engage with their community of users:
u/Cloudflare is the official brand account and broadcaster for all company updates. It posts everything from product release timelines to service outage explanations and even messages from the C-Suite.
With 8,000+ post karma and no comment karma, it’s less of a moderator and more of a distribution engine. Purely posting web content isn’t advisable for most branded accounts on Reddit, but when you produce content that’s truly valuable to your audience, it works.
u/CF_Cloonan functions as an escalation and support liaison who tracks user-reported issues, liaises between support and technical teams, shares workaround links and, when necessary, directly addresses technical issues.
u/RyanK_CF is Cloudflare’s front-line public-facing advocate, triaging service requests, de-escalating support complaints, and acting as the empathetic, constructive arm of the moderation team.
u/WalshyDev is a Cloudflare engineer and a reliable voice for product clarification in the subreddit. His role centers on explaining platform behavior and guiding users through the specifics of different Cloudflare products (Pages, Workers, Wrangler, etc.)
u/xxdesmus is the personal account of Justin Paine, Cloudflare’s VP, Global Trust & Safety and one of the most important members of the team.
Since their product can be abused for potentially serious criminal activity, it’s important that company leadership directs users to the proper channels for reporting abuse (i.e. not Reddit), serves as a constant reminder of company policy, and communicates clearly during mission-critical issues.
Having Cloudflare’s Head of Trust and Safety engaged in the Reddit community sends a strong statement about the company and its relationship to users.
Earlier this year, there was an incident where a key Cloudflare service went offline for an hour and caused cascading issues with service delivery. u/Cloudflare posted a link to a detailed overview of the incident to the subreddit and Justin jumped in to provide context and take accountability.
As important as these moderator accounts are, they’re just the tip of the iceberg for Cloudflare’s Reddit strategy. Keeping up with the sheer volume of mentions and customer service requests is one thing. But aligning on how to handle product recommendations and complaints is another.
For instance, to handle the volume of messages in Mint Mobile’s “semi official” subreddit, they have a dedicated slack channel with 100s of members.
While Cloudflare has a large team active in the subreddit, none of the employee accounts are active on a daily basis (at least in terms of posts and comments). It just goes to show, even with enterprise resources at your disposal, it’s nearly impossible to cover all the ground on your own.
Which highlights another benefit of having an active branded subreddit: it naturally outsources lower-order service requests to power users and evangelists.
Community-Driven Problem-Solving, Education, and Support
Even with a large contingent of moderators and Cloudflare employees, it’s not realistic to have the VP of Trust and Safety or Community Management jump in on every post. The CF team and volunteer moderators try to triage as much as they can, but it’s inevitable that some posts and comments fall through the cracks.
Thankfully, all the work Cloudflare has put into building a viral product, providing extensive documentation, and being transparent with their users means there are quite a few Redditors happy to pick up the slack.
It’s a similar phenomenon to what happens in r/1Password: power users and product evangelists who frequent the sub surface relevant issues on their own, starting conversations that:
- Educate and empower new and intermediate users
- Identify gaps in Cloudflare products, documentation, and support
- Facilitate productive discussions and strengthen community bonds
For instance, a top commenter recently posted in the sub explaining a potential security vulnerability facing free Pages users. This included a detailed description of how this issue came up, how to mitigate it, and how Cloudflare responded to their report.
The post received nearly 250 upvotes from the community and sparked a detailed discussion about fringe-case functioning of one of Cloudflare’s most popular products. This included over 27 comments and multiple URLs directing to developer pages and the Cloudflare GitHub repo.
This type of user-generated content is even more important when new hacking tactics emerge. Individual users often come across these issues before the Cloudflare team is aware of them. r/CloudFlare gives them an opportunity to quickly warn others and even identify the specific attempt in question.
This exact thing happened just a few months ago when a social engineering campaign involving fake Cloudflare verification pages was making the rounds.
The detailed discussion clearly raised flags for the Cloudflare team who created a pinned post on the same topic a little over a week later.
Generating web referrals from your subreddit? Sure, that’s a nice benefit. But creating a community where your users look out for one another and your brand? That’s customer retention in action.
Prioritize Trust and Transparency on Reddit and the Rest Will Come
Cloudflare’s Reddit success isn’t about gaming algorithms or manipulating discussions. It’s about showing up consistently, providing genuine value, and building authentic relationships with their user community.
Through maintaining transparency during outages, offering detailed technical explanations, and empowering both employees and power users to contribute meaningfully, they’ve created a self-sustaining ecosystem that generates substantial traffic while strengthening brand trust.
The lesson for other B2B companies is clear: Reddit rewards authenticity over promotion. When you prioritize helping users solve real problems and build genuine community connections, the traffic and brand advocacy naturally follow. It’s a long-term strategy that compounds over time. And that’s exactly what sustainable growth looks like.
If you’re ready to start building an authentic community for your brand and positioning for long-term wins, get in touch with us about Reddit marketing today.
