Cloudflare isn't a monopoly. Cloudflare doesn't even have a particularly strong moat when compared to Fastly or Akamai. Cloudflare doesn't even have any network effects.
I must disagree, and wish I had more data on how many sites host with cloudflare because it's free.
I just checked, fastly is $50 per month, and Akamai doesn't list pricing so let's assume it's more.
Cloudflare has had network affects from integration with wordpress and cpanel too I believe for some time now.
without cloudflare your site can be taken offline by any random person willing to spend $20 for ddos sellers.
The free plan is a pretty big moat imho, especially if 'half the internet can fail..' - I doubt 10% of those sites would be using cloudflare if there was a monthly fee pushed on them.
Admittedly, my cloudflare usage is only about 30 sites, so my data point is small. The few hosting and design clients I have and their budget constraints are not indicative of 'half the internet' - but I don't believe fortune 500 and SV sites are either.
