Cloudflare redirects: when they work, when they break and better alternatives

Cloudflare is often one of the first tools teams reach for when they need to set up redirects. It’s fast, widely adopted and already sits in front of many websites as a CDN and security layer. For basic redirect needs, Cloudflare can be an effective solution.

But as websites grow and redirect requirements become more complex, teams often discover limitations that make Cloudflare redirects harder to manage over time. Understanding where Cloudflare redirects work well and where they start to break down can help you decide when a dedicated redirect solution is the better long-term choice.

How redirects work in Cloudflare

Cloudflare handles redirects at the network edge, before traffic reaches your origin server. This makes redirects fast and efficient, particularly for simple use cases. Cloudflare supports several redirect mechanisms, including redirect rules, bulk redirects and legacy page rules, depending on your plan and configuration.

Teams commonly implement Cloudflare domain redirects (sending one domain to another) and Cloudflare URL redirects (redirecting specific pages or paths), along with HTTP-to-HTTPS enforcement, subdomain redirects and basic campaign or marketing redirects.

Because these redirects run at the edge, response times are generally low, which is beneficial for both users and search engines.

Infrastructure rules vs. redirect systems

Redirects can be handled in two fundamentally different ways: as infrastructure rules or as a dedicated redirect system.

Infrastructure rules treat redirects as low-level network or server instructions. This is how platforms like Cloudflare approach redirects. Rules are evaluated alongside other concerns such as security, caching and traffic routing and are optimized for speed and efficiency. This works well for simple, technical redirects, such as HTTP to HTTPS enforcement, hostname normalization or basic domain redirects, where logic is stable and rarely changes.

Redirect systems, on the other hand, treat redirects as long-lived URL assets. Instead of being isolated rules, redirects are managed as part of an intentional system with ownership, history and visibility. Redirect systems are designed to handle ongoing change: content updates, migrations, campaign URLs, vanity links and SEO-driven restructures. They prioritize clarity, auditing and safe iteration over raw rule execution.

The difference becomes important as redirect volume grows. Infrastructure rules scale well technically, but they are not optimized for governance, collaboration or long-term maintenance. Redirect systems are built for exactly those scenarios, where redirects persist for years, are touched by multiple teams and directly affect traffic, SEO and user experience.

This distinction helps explain why Cloudflare redirects often work well at first, but start to feel limiting as redirects evolve from a one-time setup into an ongoing operational concern.

Common Cloudflare redirect use cases

For many teams, Cloudflare redirects are sufficient when:

• Redirect needs are limited in number.
• URL patterns are simple and predictable.
• Redirects are mostly technical (protocol, hostname or domain changes).
• Engineering teams manage redirect logic directly.

In these scenarios, Cloudflare provides a fast and reliable way to handle redirects without introducing additional infrastructure.

Where Cloudflare redirects start to break down

Cloudflare redirects work well when redirect logic is simple, stable and owned by engineering. Problems begin when redirects evolve from one-time infrastructure rules into long-lived assets that change frequently and require ongoing oversight.

Fragmented redirect logic and visibility

Cloudflare redirect logic is often distributed across multiple configuration areas, including redirect rules, bulk redirects and legacy page rules. As a result, it becomes difficult to understand how a specific URL will behave without manually tracing rules across different interfaces. This lack of a single source of truth makes auditing, documenting and maintaining redirects increasingly challenging as a site grows.

For SEO and marketing teams in particular, this limited visibility slows troubleshooting and increases the risk of mistakes. Issues such as unexpected redirect behavior or redirect chains often require time-consuming investigation, increasing the likelihood that problems go unnoticed.

Scaling complexity and rule fragility

Cloudflare can technically handle large numbers of redirects, but complexity increases quickly as volume grows. Managing hundreds or thousands of one-to-one redirects becomes cumbersome, particularly when regex-based rules are introduced. While powerful, these rules are fragile and small configuration mistakes can lead to unintended matches, redirect chains, redirect loops or broken links.

These problems often surface as “too many redirects” errors caused by conflicting rules. Diagnosing and resolving them typically requires deep familiarity with existing rule logic, making large-scale redirect management increasingly difficult over time.

Collaboration and ownership challenges

Because Cloudflare operates at the infrastructure and DNS level, access is typically limited to IT or WebOps teams. This makes it impractical to grant redirect control to SEO, marketing or content teams that frequently need to create, update or audit redirects.

Redirect ownership is often implicit rather than clearly defined, which slows down changes and increases the likelihood of errors. Over time, redirects become a shared dependency without clear accountability, making cross-team coordination more difficult than necessary.

Long-term redirect maintenance problems

Redirects in Cloudflare are frequently left in place indefinitely, even after their original purpose has passed. As sites evolve through migrations, content changes and campaign launches, new rules can unintentionally chain into or override older ones.

Without lifecycle management or historical context, safely removing or updating redirects becomes risky. These issues tend to accumulate gradually, meaning redirect problems often emerge long after the changes that caused them, when they are harder to trace and resolve. This is especially common on sites that evolve frequently or manage multiple domains.

Using Cloudflare and urllo together

Choosing urllo doesn’t mean replacing Cloudflare.

Many teams continue to use Cloudflare for:

• CDN and caching.
• Security and DDoS protection.
• Performance optimization.

urllo complements Cloudflare by handling redirect logic in a centralized, redirect-first system. This separation of concerns keeps infrastructure simple while giving teams better control over how URLs behave.

Cloudflare redirects + urllo

Cloudflare and urllo are built for different primary purposes.

Cloudflare is an infrastructure platform focused on CDN performance, security and traffic management. Redirects are one of the many features it provides.

urllo is purpose-built specifically for redirect management. It treats redirects as long-term site infrastructure rather than isolated rules. This means redirects are easier to audit, update and maintain over time, especially as sites grow more complex.

For teams managing ongoing URL changes, migrations or marketing links, this difference in focus becomes increasingly important.

Choosing the right redirect approach

Cloudflare is an excellent infrastructure for technical users to solve their redirect needs. But as redirects become long-lived, business-critical and cross-departmental, they benefit from being managed as their own layer of infrastructure.

A dedicated redirect solution like urllo gives teams the clarity, control and safety needed to manage redirects over the long term, without turning redirect management into a recurring source of risk.

Frequently asked questions about Cloudflare redirects

How do Cloudflare domain redirects work?

Cloudflare domain redirects route traffic from one domain to another using redirect rules at the edge. They are fast but can become difficult to manage when many domains or exceptions are involved.

Why am I seeing “too many redirects” with Cloudflare?

This usually happens when multiple redirect rules conflict or form a loop, often across protocol, hostname or path-based rules.

Are Cloudflare redirects good for SEO?

Cloudflare redirects are SEO-safe when implemented correctly, but managing complex SEO migrations can be challenging without dedicated tooling.

Can Cloudflare handle URL redirects at scale?

It can, but large-scale redirect management often becomes difficult to audit and maintain over time.

By Sarah Ellis

Director of Enterprise Accounts

Sarah is a passionate sales and management leader with over two decades of experience in the start-up, technology, real estate and music/advertising sectors. Sarah started her entrepreneurial journey years ago when she founded and ran her own bakery. Which is why she’s still the premier source of baked goods inside the urllo office.