How to Reduce Website Latency Using Cloudflare

This guide shows you how to put your website behind Cloudflare (Free Plan) to reduce global latency and improve performance.

What This Will Do

• Visitors in Asia, i.e., India, will hit the Cloudflare Mumbai edge server.
• Cloudflare fetches content from your origin server (Australia)
• Static files get cached globally
• Latency drops dramatically

Step 1 — Create Free Cloudflare Account

1. Go to https://cloudflare.com
2. Click Sign Up
3. Choose the Free Plan
4. Click Add a Site
5. Enter your domain:

   example.com

Step 2 — Cloudflare Scans DNS

Cloudflare will automatically detect your DNS records.

Make sure:

• Your A record IP matches your current hosting server IP
• The orange cloud ☁️ is ON (Proxied)

Type: A
Name: @
IP: 123.123.123.123
Proxy status: Proxied

If it’s gray → click it → turn orange.

Step 3 — Change Nameservers (MOST IMPORTANT)

Cloudflare will give you two nameservers like:

emma.ns.cloudflare.com
john.ns.cloudflare.com

Now go to your domain registrar (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google Domains, etc.).

Find Nameserver Settings and replace the existing nameservers with the Cloudflare ones.

Wait 5–15 minutes (sometimes up to 1 hour) for activation.

You will receive an email: "Your domain is now active"

Step 4 — Enable Speed Optimizations

Speed → Optimization

• ✔ Auto Minify (HTML, CSS, JS)
• ✔ Brotli
• ✔ HTTP/2
• ✔ HTTP/3

Caching → Configuration

• Caching Level: Standard
• Browser Cache TTL: 1 month

Caching → Rules (Huge Performance Boost)

If URL matches: *
Then:
Cache Level: Cache Everything
Edge TTL: 1 hour

This allows even HTML to be cached at Cloudflare edge locations.

Optional But Powerful

Enable APO (Automatic Platform Optimization)

If you use WordPress, Cloudflare APO dramatically improves performance.

Cost: ~$5/month

Recommended for high-traffic sites.

Step 5 — Test Speed from India

• GTmetrix (Mumbai location)
• WebPageTest (India)
• Ping from Indian VPS

Before: 600ms
After: 100–150ms

Common Mistakes

• Forgetting to turn orange cloud ON
• Not changing nameservers
• DNS propagation not completed
• Hosting firewall blocking Cloudflare IPs

SSL Recommendation

SSL/TLS → Overview

Set mode to:

Full (Strict)

Do NOT use "Flexible".

Expected Real-World Results

Location	Before	After Cloudflare
Australia	80ms	70–90ms
India	600ms	100–200ms

Summary

If your server is located in Australia, Cloudflare is the fastest and easiest solution to reduce latency for India users.

Setup time: ~10 minutes
Cost: Free

Further Reading

1.