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+#+title: Ditching Cloudflare for Njalla
+#+date: 2022-06-01
+#+description: A retrospective on my decision to leave Cloudflare and move to Njalla for domain registration and DNS.
+#+filetags: :sysadmin:
+
+* Registrar
+After spending a year or so using Cloudflare for DNS only - no proxying
+or applications - I spent the last few months using Cloudflare Tunnels
+and Cloudflare Access to protect my self-hosted websites and
+applications via their proxy traffic model.
+
+However, I have never liked using Cloudflare due to their increasingly
+large share of control over web traffic, as well as their business model
+of being a MITM for all of your traffic.
+
+So, as of today, I have switched over to [[https://njal.la][Njalla]] as
+my registrar and DNS manager. I was able to easily transfer my domains
+over rapidly, with only one domain taking more than 15-30 minutes to
+propagate.
+
++I do still have two domains sitting at Cloudflare for the moment while
+I decide if they're worth the higher rates (one domain is 30€ and the
+other is 45€).+
+
+#+begin_quote
+*Update (2022.06.03)*: I ended up transferring my final two domains over
+to Njalla, clearing my Cloudflare account of personal data, and deleting
+the Cloudflare account entirely. /I actually feel relieved to have moved
+on to a provider I trust./
+
+#+end_quote
+
+* DNS
+As noted above, I'm using Njalla exclusively for DNS configurations on
+my domains.
+
+However, the transfer process was not ideal. As soon as the domains
+transferred over, I switched the nameservers from Cloudflare to Njalla
+and lost most of the associated DNS records. So, the majority of the
+time spent during the migration was simply re-typing all the DNS records
+back in one-by-one.
+
+This would be much simpler if I were able to edit the plain-text format
+of the DNS configuration. I was able to do that at a past registrar
+(perhaps it was [[https://gandi.net/][Gandi.net]]?) and it made life a
+lot easier.
+
+** Dynamic DNS Updates
+I have built an easy Python script to run (or set-up in =cron= to run
+automatically) that will check my server's IPv4 and IPv6, compare it to
+Njalla, and update the DNS records if they don't match. You can see the
+full script and process in my other post:
+[[../njalla-dns-api/][Updating Dynamic DNS with Njalla API]].
+
+I haven't used this other method, but I do know that you can create
+=Dynamic= DNS records with Njalla that
+[[https://njal.la/docs/ddns/][work for updating dynamic subdomains]].
+
+** Njalla's DNS Tool
+One neat upside to Njalla is that they have a
+[[https://check.njal.la/dns/][DNS lookup tool]] that provides a lot of
+great information for those of you (AKA: me) who hate using the =dig=
+command.
+
+This was very useful for monitoring a couple of my transferred domains
+to see when the changes in nameservers, records, and DNSSEC went into
+effect.
+
+* Tunnel
+Cloudflare Tunnel is a service that acts as a reverse-proxy (hosted on
+Cloudflare's servers) and allowed me to mask the private IP address of
+the server hosting my various websites and apps.
+
+However, as I was moving away from Cloudflare, I was not able to find a
+suitable replacement that was both inexpensive and simple. So, I simply
+went back to hosting [[/blog/set-up-nginx-reverse-proxy/][my own reverse
+proxy with Nginx]]. With the recent additions of Unifi hardware in my
+server/network rack, I am much more protected against spam and malicious
+attacks at the network edge than I was before I switched to Cloudflare.
+
+* Access
+Cloudflare Access, another app I used in combination with Cloudflare
+Tunnel, provided an authentication screen that required you to enter
+valid credentials before Cloudflare would forward you to the actual
+website or app (if the website/app has their own authentication, you'd
+then have to authenticate a second time).
+
+I did not replace this service with anything since I only host a handful
+of non-sensitive apps that don't require duplicate authentication.