A longtime Cloudflare user decided to replace the service for free after growing concerns about vendor lock‑in and recurring outages that can cripple a site. The blogger migrated a personal Phoenix‑based site to bunny.net, a Slovenian CDN that promises comparable speed with a smaller European PoP network. The switch also aligns with a desire to support EU tech infrastructure in 2024 today.

Initial setup required creating a pull zone, entering the origin IP and host header, then pointing the domain’s CNAME to the provided bunny.net endpoint. bunny.net offers a 14‑day trial with $20 of free credits; adding a credit card unlocks an extra $30. After the trial the service bills per‑use, with a $1 minimum monthly fee.

Cache behavior can follow origin headers or rely on bunny.net’s Smart Cache, which automatically stores static assets while leaving HTML uncached unless custom headers are added. The author added a middleware to emit long‑lived cache‑control values, enabling edge caching of HTML and cutting page load times dramatically. With SSL forced and Origin Shield enabled, the site now runs entirely on the European CDN.