The Nameserver Question Every Smart Website Owner Eventually Asks
I want to share a conversation I had recently with one of our customers — because I think a lot of website owners have the exact same question buried somewhere in the back of their minds, and they just haven’t asked it yet. This particular client was brave enough to ask it directly, and I respect that enormously.
Here’s what they wrote to me:
📬 From a Usijali Hosting customer:
“Thanks for your response, I appreciate it. One question though, maybe I’m getting something wrong. If I have to go to my domain registrar to replace the existing Usijali nameservers with Cloudflare’s two nameservers, how does Usijali Hosting make money from this? It seems you’re not involved anymore. Please clarify. Does Cloudflare give free hosting?”
Honestly? I love this question. It shows someone actually thinking critically about what they’re paying for and who does what behind the scenes. That kind of curiosity makes my job easier in the long run — and it deserves a thorough, honest answer.
So let me walk you through exactly what’s happening, in plain language.
What We Actually Do for You as Your Hosting Provider
When I think about what our team at Usijali provides, nameservers are genuinely one of the smallest items on the list. Here’s what we’re really doing for you every single day:
Your website’s files — every page, image, theme file, plugin, stylesheet — they all live on our servers. Physically. When a visitor loads your homepage, those files are fetched from our infrastructure and sent to their browser. That’s us. That’s our hardware, our network connection, our electricity bill, our maintenance team keeping everything running smoothly.
If you’re running WordPress (and most of our customers are), you also have a database sitting on our servers. Every blog post you write, every product you list, every customer comment — it’s all stored in a database we manage and back up. Without that database, your website is just an empty shell.
We also handle your email accounts. If your business email is yourname@yourdomain.com, the mail server processing those messages is ours. That inbox doesn’t vanish when you change a nameserver entry.
And on top of all that, there’s the invisible work — security scanning, automatic backups, server updates, uptime monitoring, and yes, the support tickets I respond to every day. None of that is tied to who manages your DNS.
All of that continues completely unchanged when you switch to Cloudflare’s nameservers. We’re still here. We’re still working.
So What Do Nameservers Actually Do? Let Me Explain It the Way I’d Explain It to a Friend
Imagine your website is a physical office building. Your hosting package with us is the lease — we own the building, we keep the lights on, we fix the plumbing, and we make sure the doors stay open. You and your visitors use the building every day.
Now, a nameserver is basically the street sign out front. It tells the internet: “Hey, this domain name? It lives over there — at that IP address.” When someone types your domain into their browser, their computer quietly asks the DNS system, “Where does this website live?” The nameserver answers with directions.
When we manage your nameservers, we’re the ones maintaining that street sign. When you switch to Cloudflare’s nameservers, Cloudflare takes over the sign. But — and this is the crucial part — the building doesn’t move. Your website is still physically located on our servers. Cloudflare just becomes the entity giving out directions to it.
The way I always put it:
“Usijali is your website’s home. Cloudflare is the signpost pointing to that home. We earn by keeping your home secure, fast, and online. The signpost can be anyone’s.”
What Actually Changes — and What Doesn’t
I find it helps to be very concrete about this, because the line between DNS and hosting can feel blurry until you see it laid out:
| What changes when you switch to Cloudflare | What stays exactly the same |
|---|---|
| Cloudflare manages your DNS records | Your website files live on Usijali’s servers |
| Cloudflare acts as a middleman (CDN/proxy) between visitors and your server | Your databases are on Usijali’s servers |
| DDoS protection and caching happen at Cloudflare’s edge network | Your email accounts run through Usijali |
| Usijali is no longer your DNS resolver | You continue paying Usijali for hosting, bandwidth, security, and support |
The way I see it, Cloudflare and Usijali aren’t competing — they’re complementary. Cloudflare adds a protective, accelerating layer on top of our infrastructure. Visitors hit Cloudflare’s global network first, get served cached content or have threats filtered, and then (for dynamic requests) Cloudflare talks to our servers to fetch what’s needed. It’s actually a setup I recommend for many of our clients.
And No — Cloudflare Does Not Give You Free Web Hosting
This part of the question comes up often, and I want to be clear because the confusion is completely understandable. Cloudflare markets itself heavily, and some of their language can make it sound like they’re a one-stop shop. They’re not — at least not in the traditional hosting sense.
Cloudflare’s free plan gives you:
- DNS management (pointing your domain to a server)
- A reverse proxy and CDN (caching and routing traffic)
- Basic DDoS mitigation
- A free SSL certificate so your site runs on HTTPS
What it does not give you is any place to actually store your website. There’s no server space, no database, no PHP engine, no file storage. Cloudflare doesn’t hold a single byte of your WordPress content. They pass traffic along — they don’t serve it.
The only Cloudflare product that comes close to hosting is Cloudflare Pages, which can deploy simple static websites — plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, with no database. That won’t work for a WordPress site, an e-commerce store, or virtually any dynamic website. You’ll always need a real hosting provider behind it.
So if someone tells you they’re “hosting with Cloudflare for free,” they either mean something very specific and technical, or there’s a misunderstanding somewhere. For the overwhelming majority of websites, you need a hosting company. That’s what we’re here for.
To Answer the Question Directly: We’re Still Very Much Involved
When a client asks me, “Are you still involved if I switch to Cloudflare’s nameservers?” — my honest answer is: absolutely. More than 95% of what we do for you is completely unrelated to who handles your DNS. You’re still a Usijali Hosting customer. Your site still runs on our infrastructure. We still manage your server, respond to your support requests, back up your data, and keep things online.
We hand over one small, administrative role — answering DNS queries for your domain. That’s it. And in exchange, you gain Cloudflare’s global CDN, better caching, and an extra layer of protection. That’s a trade worth making for most websites.
📋 Here’s the short version, if you want to copy this into a conversation with someone:
- Nameservers only control where the internet looks for your site — they don’t move it.
- Your website stays on Usijali’s servers regardless of who manages your DNS.
- Cloudflare points visitors toward our servers — it doesn’t replace them.
- Cloudflare’s free plan is DNS and CDN only. It is not web hosting.
- Usijali continues earning from hosting your files, databases, emails, and support.
- The two services work together beautifully — they’re not competing for your site.
I hope that clears things up. And if you’re a client reading this who’s been wondering the same thing but hasn’t asked yet — please do reach out. Questions like this are exactly the kind of thing I want to answer before there’s any confusion about what you’re getting for your money.
That’s what we’re here for.
— A member of the Usijali Hosting Support Team
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