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The Orange Cloud Report

Core platform

SSL/TLS

Score: 9/10

Free universal certs changed the whole industry.

Last updated

Universal SSL made HTTPS free and automatic for millions of sites. It is still excellent, with automatic issuance and renewal, Total TLS for every subdomain, and Advanced Certificate Manager when you need control over CAs, validity, or hostnames.

Origin CA certificates (free 15-year certs for the Cloudflare-to-origin hop) plus Full (strict) mode is a setup I’d consider mandatory, and it takes about ten minutes.

It loses a point for occasional sharp edges. Certificate validation can get stuck with vague dashboard messages, some renewals need a manual nudge, and useful controls such as custom cipher suites require higher tiers.