In September, Apple Released iOS 9 to the public. It was also ipsw.me's best month to date.
All of the previous traffic records for the site have been broken: most concurrent visitors on the site, most visitors in a day, week, month. Most number of iOS files downloaded, most penguins seen, etc. it goes on and on. Without Cloudflare, a significant number of users wouldn't have been able to get their iOS downloads, or see the penguin! When the iOS 9 release hit, traffic went through the roof, and was too much for my poor server to handle on it's own.
Fortunately, Cloudflare stepped in, helping in a massive way. They kept the website available to all by using their powerful caching, worldwide CDN and security features. Below is a graph of the difference they made.
Here's some more graphs from the past month. I think they speak for themselves...
In a recent email celebrating their 5th Birthday, Cloudflare also sent me these statistics from my time using them...
Absolutely nothing. £0.00
That's right! Cloudflare has a free plan, and it's perfect for what I need. They also offer further paid plans to support professional and enterprise customers. Just imagine how powerful those are!
So, I have one piece of advice for you, if you're not already using Cloudflare. Use it! You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.