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Currently using Digital Ocean server as a reverse proxy, looking for something cheaper. Does Cloudflare offer what I'm looking for?
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Current setup is an OpenVPN server running on a Digital Ocean droplet, which acts as a reverse proxy using nginx and forwards all the data to my server, which works great as I can't port forward on my school's WiFi. I've heard people mentioning Cloudflare does something similar, how easy would it be to transition my setup to this? Took me about a week getting my current setup working haha.
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Yes, Cloudflare Tunnels is what you're probably looking for. I use it myself, and I know a lot of people in this sub do as well. It's free and pretty much just works. I have three hosts on the domain I host with Cloudflare that are configured for use with Tunnels, and I have a Raspberry Pi running cloudflared which makes a Wireguard connection to Cloudflare and shuttles traffic from the SSL-protected external address of those hosts to the server on my internal network, which don't need SSL, but can have it, self-signed or otherwise. The certificates are free and automatic so you don't need to do any configuration there. Just read the docs. :)
https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/connections/connect-networks/
I’ve been really happy with Smartproxy. They offer solid proxies at competitive prices, and the service has been great.
You could use something like Tailscale. Cloudflare has Zero Trust Network Access and I think it is free or has a free tier: https://www.cloudflare.com/plans/zero-trust-services/
This, paired with a cheap 1 cpu VPS for 10 Bucks a year
If you just need a really cheap VPS (and not reverse proxy/tunnel), take a look at LowEndBox / LowEndTalk. You can find deals like $15/year there.
Beware that reliability matches the price, and the company may (or may not) shut down on a short notice. But sometimes you need something really cheap, and these sites help a lot.
I use Cloudflare tunnels it’s great and requires no ports open on my network.
For things that can’t go through Cloudflare - for example I can’t push things higher than 100MB through Cloudflare’s Proxy. I bought a cheap $23 a year server from Racknerd with 5TB egress a month, connect that server to my network using VPN and use nginx on that server to serve apps that want to push higher than 100MB payloads
Oracle have free tier VMs I use for my reverse proxy.
Me too Just remember to setup neveridle so your instance is not reclaimed
+1 for Cloudflare tunnel. I use them for my domain registrar and certs too. UDP stream isn't possible in the free tier, in case this was for a game server of some kind.
Vultr has IPv6-only $2.50 monthly virtual machines.