I've seen enough stories exactly like this, where it turned out such usage is unusual and a move to a higher priced plan was justified (eg. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40482505, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34640016, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31336515), that I find it suspicious whenever people act surprised and outraged at cloudflare upselling them, but are cagey about what exactly their site's doing.
> offers truly unlimited bandwidth for free
Free of charge is different from free of restrictions. Cloudflare didn't trick anyone into signing up for these plans, and it's never been a secret that they're a for-profit company.
> contradiction between marketing and reality
I think the important distinction is contradiction between expectations and reality. Cloudflare free plan's outside of Pages have never offered "unlimited free bandwidth" but "generous free bandwidth with conditions". It just so happened that for many the "generous" was unlimited, and this precedence somehow convinced everyone that "free plan" meant "unlimited free bandwidth" instead of "generous free bandwidth with conditions".
I'm with parent in the feeling that most the stories of Cloudflare acting in bad faith end up being the customer up to shady shit but expecting Cloudflare to subsidize them because "free plan". I'd be genuinely curious to read about an incident where I didn't side with Cloudflare.
Separate to this issue is that their Sales team employ strategies that the engineering crowd considers distasteful like phone calls, pressure tactics and private pricing. Most engineers never need to talk to a sales person outside retail, so it's a shock when you're suddenly talking to one trained and incentivized to exploit more from larger clients but is instead using those tactics on you. It's unsettling if you're not familiar with it, and leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
> Cloudflare free plan's outside of Pages have never offered "unlimited free bandwidth" but "generous free bandwidth with conditions".
To be clear, Cloudflare's pricing pages have definitely included statements like "we never charge for bandwidth" for the free plan of the CDN. Here's a snapshot from exactly 10 years ago[1].
They removed it after a while, probably because it's just not true, and I don't think they make any such statements on their increasingly complicated pricing pages any more.
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20150116071824/https://www.cloud...
The statement is true in so much as you can not be billed for traffic that has occurred without a paid contract in place. Also no mention of "unlimited", and though free is used throughout never "free bandwidth". It also doesn't contradict that Cloudflare can and does restrict or limit services for perceived TOS violations.
In the many years I've used Cloudflare I was never under the impression I received "free unlimited bandwidth", but "generous free bandwidth with conditions".
So if you're on a free plan you never pay for bandwidth, until you're not on a free plan (or any plan). It sucks to be one of the free plan users that doesn't have the ability to make a paid plan work, but I don't understand why Cloudflare needs to keep subsidizing something that wouldn't be tenable without their handout.
On the one hand it’s completely reasonable for a business to ask customers to pay for what they are getting.
On the other hand, this entire HN thread was kicked off by a blog post gushing about how awesome it is that Cloudflare offers truly unlimited bandwidth for free.
I’ve been around the industry long enough to understand that anything marketed as free and unlimited is in fact a loss leader. But I also am fine with pointing out this obvious contradiction between marketing and reality.