We hear this question often — and each time it ends differently. Below are answers to the most common versions.

“…if I already have Cloudflare?”#

A reasonable question. But Cloudflare has limitations that are critical for affiliate marketing.

Cloudflare does not guarantee that your backend is hidden from ad networks. Cloudflare and Google have long been official partners, so technically there is no guarantee that Google has no access to the real IPs of servers hidden behind Cloudflare. Facebook states directly in its patents that it takes the IP address of a domain’s server into account — and it would be naive to expect that its anti-fraud system cannot see the real IPs behind Cloudflare.

Domains behind Cloudflare get banned more often. According to media buyers across different verticals, running traffic to domains behind Cloudflare has been an almost guaranteed ban for the last several years. The cause may be an “exposed” backend (a tracker server is not replaced every day) or the very fact of using Cloudflare — but the result is the same.

Complaints still reach your hosting provider. Cloudflare lets you ignore some abuse reports, but any complaint more serious than an anonymous one is forwarded to your hosting provider (in our experience — to Hetzner). And that is a direct path to having your server blocked.

With PrivateFlare, traffic flows only through your own nodes: the real IP of your backend is hidden behind them, and we neither see nor store your traffic.

“…if I can set up an Nginx proxy myself?”#

You can. But then you are responsible for issuing and renewing certificates, synchronizing them between servers for high availability, and, on top of all that, building your own API for automation. It can be done, but is it worth your time? PrivateFlare provides all of this out of the box: automatic certificates, any number of nodes, and an HTTP API.

“…if I can do everything myself?”#

In-house solutions do not suit everyone and do not always withstand production load. Teams need clearly defined business processes with a transparent structure and pricing. The idea for PrivateFlare was born while organizing a large affiliate team — about 150 media buyers at its peak — so every process built into the service has been tested under truly demanding conditions.

“…if I can simply keep several servers?”#

You can move your tracker from server to server every single day — but then there is no time left for working with traffic. With PrivateFlare, the backend stays where it is: only the nodes change, and a new node is connected with a single command.