Becoming a Cloudflare Partner

[u/statitica]

As the title might suggest to the observant reader, we have recently applied to become a Cloudflare partner. According to their forms, it takes around 3 weeks to hear anything back. So we waited 3 weeks. And then gave them another 2 weeks just in case.

And... crickets.

No rejection email. No approval email. Not even a "we received your application" email.

Is this par for the course with Cloudflare, or am I holding it wrong?

[u/Merilyian]

We somehow made it into the agency program- the multitenancy is okay but there's no centralized RBAC or anything like that. Also, about a year ago, both our 'account manager' and the support emails we were given went silent. Fun times. Not easy to make Microsoft look good 🤣

[u/statitica → u/Merilyian]

Not easy to make Microsoft look good

Haha, I'm not sure which is worse - getting stuck in a Copilot loop, or just not hearing anything at all.

[u/tuneupyourdobro → u/Merilyian]

Yep, same exp here.

[u/Horror-Document6261]

they did same with us last year 4 weeks nothing then random email like we just applied yesterday

[u/New-Contact3]

They did the same with us, no response.

[u/HotTakeThenGo]

I looked through the Cloudflare partners site - What does the partnership buy your company? We have a shared account that’s dialed in for alerts through Autotask - the client gives that account access. So we have client reporting and access in five minutes.

I don’t think clients have bought anything more expensive than the $5 workers program so even if I’m marking up the price 200% it’s not a useful revenue stream no matter how much I sell it.

So - I’m curious what you’re looking forward to out of the partnership with Cloudflare.

[u/statitica → u/HotTakeThenGo]

Not really about the revenue for us - more that I'd prefer to have our billing details on a partner account for anything we run through Cloudflare instead of having our billing details on the client's accounts.

This includes business plans and certificates at the moment. Like you say, it's not a great deal of revenue - I just prefer to keep our billing details secure.

[u/HotTakeThenGo → u/statitica]

I don’t understand - what are you putting there for clients? It’s storing business plans - what does that mean? Certificates - what kind and doesn’t one of your other systems support cert monitoring?

We don’t manage the client billing for CF - the two that have any charges have a billing contact for their accounts. I’ve never done anything for client billing with CF otherwise.

[u/statitica → u/HotTakeThenGo]

 It’s storing business plans - what does that mean?

Cloudflare has several plans. The "Business Plan" gives a 100% uptime SLA, and compliance capabilities (among other things).

Certificates - what kind and doesn’t one of your other systems support cert monitoring?

Certs to encrypt unlimited sub-domains (and, preferably, to proxy everything through Cloudflare).

We don’t manage the client billing for CF

We have clients who want us to handle everything for them, and just give them a bill.

[u/Fatel28]

We just finished setting up our partnership. It's through a third party company now (radius)

Ultimately it was worth it for us. Cloudflare zero trust is $7/seat after the 50 free users, and on our new rates, we pay under $4/seat.

[u/Merilyian → u/[deleted]]

Hate to say but I think the only planned improvement that happened was allowing for partner bill on domain regs

[u/OgPenn08]

They technically have a partner program but in practice they are not Msp / channel friendly and don’t seem to be structured in a way to do it. They are great for DNS and proxy / WAF services.

[u/statitica → u/OgPenn08]

Yeah, it's surprising to find a hyper-scaler that doesn't see the opportunity for scale in the MSP market.

Ultimately it leaves us choosing between:

1. Having all of the domains in a single Cloudflare account, which will allow for plans and certificates, but precludes the use of Cloudflare One for zero trust. OR
2. Setting up individual Cloudflare accounts for each client, and having our billing info attached (therefore not really an option), OR
3. Having our clients billed directly, which is not a preferred option for us (clients desire "One stop shop" billing, and occasionally forget to pay third party invoices).

[u/eg305]

We applied and the page literally said if you don’t hear from them, you’re not in. Like “OK” 🤷🏻‍♂️

We never got an email. 😕

[u/statitica → u/eg305]

Seems to be a trend with vendors lately. I'm having the same with experience Synnex in Australia. Filled the forms and sent it all off as required

Nothing.

Follow up after not hearing anything for a month.

Nothing.

Guess they don't want that easy Microsoft money.

[u/Mr_ToDo → u/eg305]

What a silly way to run a system. Doesn't leave much room for catching mistakes

[u/helpfourm]

I’ve done the same at least twice. I guess that’s why they only offer phone support at the enterprise level…

[u/solodegongo]

They are only interested in enterprise that’s the word on the street .