I’m currently using NPM and upgrading to a new VPS for my business. I have a public website and am going to host a few more for friends, plus a few other services. Everything is on docker for ease. I use Cloudflare for DNS so would prefer using a DNS challenge. I will change this at some point but not yet ready to!
Should I:
- stick with Nginx Proxy Manager which I know well (is it really that insecure or outdated?)
- switch to NPM Plus (assuming this is the easiest)
- switch to Caddy (seems to be there most recommended but will be a learning curve for me)
- Try out Nginx (seems like a massive learning curve so I’m very reluctant)


Thanks for this. To be honest it just did not cross my mind! Horserace, I am not sure I want to rely on Cloudflare too much though in case they so something in the future like put those things behind paywalls. My domains are through someone else so can easily switch nameservers to them for DNS. It does sound much easier and safer though so will have to consider it
Totally understandable. It’s good to be aware of future pitfalls, etc. I realize there are those who frown on Cloudflare, and I can see their point. For me, I’ll use them for the time being, and monitor any policy changes, or future gotchas. Of course, it goes without saying, that we should be doing that anyways even for opensource software. Things change, motivations change, project direction changes.
There are similar alternatives to Cloudflare Tunnels/ZeroTrust. I have not tried every one of them so I cannot vouch for their usability. There is ngrok, which seems to be the most popular of the alternatives, and there is Pagekite, Zrok, Pinggy, Localtunnel. As far as selfhosted options, Nebula, SirTunnel, BoringProxy, Pangolin, and frp come to mind.
If it were me, and these were public facing businesses, I would go with something rock solid like Cloudflare, familiarize myself with the options, then monitor for policy changes.