The temptation to self-host load balancers

When distributing traffic across multiple servers, the instinct is setting up own load balancers. HAProxy, Nginx, or Traefik on dedicated VPS.

It works. But should you do it?

Problems with self-hosted load balancers

Adding load balancers means adding infrastructure layers:

Another server to maintain

Security patches and updates
Monitoring and alerting
Backup and disaster recovery
SSL certificate management

Load balancers become critical single points of failure. If they go down, everything behind them is unreachable.

High availability requires complexity

Single load balancers defeat the purpose. You need:

Two load balancers for redundancy
Keepalived or similar for failover
Floating IPs or DNS failover

Now you’re maintaining multiple servers just to route traffic.

Geographic limitations

Self-hosted load balancers sit in one location. Users on the other side of the world route through that single point, adding latency.

The Cloudflare alternative

Cloudflare offers load balancing as a service:

Global anycast network

Cloudflare has data centers in 300+ cities worldwide. Users connect to nearest ones automatically.

Health checks and automatic failover

Cloudflare monitors origin servers and routes around failures automatically. If servers go down, traffic shifts to healthy servers within seconds.

Geographic steering

Route users to closest servers:

European users → Amsterdam server
US users → Las Vegas or Dallas server
Asian users → Singapore server

This happens automatically based on user location.

Simple configuration

No HAProxy configs. No Nginx upstream blocks. Just a web dashboard:

Add origin servers
Configure health checks
Set routing rules

What it costs

Cloudflare’s load balancing pricing:

Load Balancing: Starts at $5/month for basic features
Additional origins: Small additional cost per origin server
Health checks: Included

Compare to:

Two VPS instances for redundant load balancers: $10-40/month
Your time maintaining them: significant

Setting it up

Step 1: Add domain to Cloudflare

If not already done, add domain to Cloudflare and point nameservers to them.

Step 2: Create load balancer

In Cloudflare dashboard:

Go to Traffic → Load Balancing
Click Create Load Balancer
Enter hostname (e.g., app.yourdomain.com)

Step 3: Create origin pools

Origin pools are server groups. Create one or more:

Example: Geographic pools

Pool us-servers: Dallas and Las Vegas VPS
Pool eu-servers: Amsterdam VPS
Pool asia-servers: Singapore VPS

Step 4: Configure health checks

Set up health checks:

Type: HTTP or HTTPS
Path: /health or any endpoint returning 200 OK
Interval: How often to check

Step 5: Set traffic steering

Choose traffic distribution:

Geo Steering: Route to nearest pool based on user location
Dynamic Steering: Route based on latency measurements
Proximity Steering: Route to geographically closest pool

The bottom line

Every infrastructure layer added is a layer to maintain. Load balancers are critical. If they fail, everything fails.

Cloudflare gives:

Global presence you couldn’t build yourself
Automatic failover without complex configuration
Geographic routing out of the box
Less to maintain so focus on applications

For a few dollars monthly, enterprise-grade load balancing without enterprise complexity.

Explore VPS plans across multiple data centers for geographic redundancy.

Use Cloudflare load balancing instead of self-hosted