The “hotline” on the front end of the Cloudflare website is a call to action to drive new clients to use Cloudflare’s services.
What does "Under Attack" mode actually do?
When you flip that switch in your dashboard, Cloudflare puts up what's called a “Managed Challenge” page. This is an interstitial screen that every single visitor has to pass through before they can reach your site; a "click here if you're human" checkpoint.
A DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack works by flooding your server with massive amounts of fake traffic from bots. The goal is to overwhelm your server until it crawls to a halt and stops responding to real visitors entirely.
When “Under Attack Mode” is on, that challenge page sits at the network level which means that the traffic hits Cloudflare's servers, not yours. Every connection that can't pass the human check gets stopped right there and your hosting server never sees the flood. The attack is still technically happening, but Cloudflare is absorbing it at the edge so your site stays up.
Cloudflare is upfront that this is a last resort. It does temporarily affect your site analytics, and real human visitors will see that interstitial page before they can get through. That's a friction cost worth paying when the alternative is your server going completely offline, but it's definitely not something you'd want running all the time.
What is "WeWatchYourWebsite"?
This is a different tool, solving a different problem.
"WeWatchYourWebsite" is a proactive daily health check for your application. Instead of watching external traffic, it tracks what's happening inside your server: responsiveness, resource usage, performance metrics, and configuration changes.
In plain terms, it's making sure the code that runs your website is working well for a normal human visitor, and it alerts you the moment that stops being true. It could notify you of a broken plugin, a crashed database, or a failed update that nobody noticed.
How do they differentiate?
The clearest way to see why these tools aren't interchangeable is to run each one through two common failure scenarios.
Scenario 1: a sudden flood of malicious traffic
A coordinated botnet targets your domain. The volume of fake requests starts overwhelming your server infrastructure.
Monitoring's response: your uptime monitor pings you to say the site is down. That's useful, but it can't stop the flood or filter a single bot.
Cloudflare's response: this is exactly what Under Attack Mode is built for. You flip the switch, the Managed Challenge goes up at the network level, and the flood gets absorbed before it reaches your server.
Scenario 2: a broken plugin or database error
An automatic update fails quietly in the background, or your database crashes, and your site starts showing an error screen to every visitor.
Monitoring's response: this is where active monitoring tools really shine. It detects the internal failure immediately and alerts your team so they can fix the code and bring the live site back.
Cloudflare's response: because this is an internal code failure and not an external traffic attack, Cloudflare won't catch it. It'll simply cache and serve that error page to your visitors as if everything is normal.
Each tool is effectively blind to the other's emergency. That's the key thing to take away here.
So, is this overkill? No, but here’s what actually is
Relying on only one of them creates a real single point of failure. We recommend using both at their appropriate time of need.
Think of it like protecting a physical retail store. Cloudflare is the security guard at the front gate. When a crowd rushes the doors, the guard stops them from breaking the glass and pouring in.
Website monitoring is the smoke detector and camera system inside the building. It tells you when a pipe bursts in the back room, or when someone slips through a side window while the guard's attention is on the front.
Together, they give you a complete perimeter-to-core strategy. One keeps malicious traffic out; the other keeps your internal systems healthy, fast, and secure.
Overkill is real, but it typically comes from unnecessary redundancy within a single layer. Running three uptime monitors that all check the same endpoint or stacking multiple web application firewalls that inspect the same requests often adds cost and complexity without providing much additional protection. That's where you start paying for the same coverage twice.
Cloudflare and website monitoring sit on different layers and watch for different failures, so combining them lets them work in unison, each covering the gap the other can't see.
Building your full coverage, one layer at a time
Cloudflare and website monitoring aren't competing tools fighting for the same job; they're two halves of a security setup that only works when both are in place. One guards the gate, the other watches the inside. Skip either one, and you've left a blind spot exactly where the other tool would've caught the problem.
If you're not sure whether Under Attack Mode is configured correctly, or you don't have monitoring in place yet, that's exactly the kind of setup you can ask about during our Office Hours livestreams. Come join us every Thursday at 2 p.m. EST and we can walk through with you, no guesswork required.
FAQS
Does "Under Attack" mode hurt my SEO or scare off real visitors?
It can add friction, which is why Cloudflare frames it as a last resort rather than a default setting. The Managed Challenge page is a small speed bump for a real visitor, not a blocker, but it does mean an extra click before they reach your site, and it can temporarily skew your analytics while it's active. The tradeoff is worth it during an actual attack; it's not something you'd want running permanently.
How do I know when it's safe to turn Under Attack Mode back off?
Watch your traffic patterns in the Cloudflare dashboard. Once the flood of suspicious requests drops back to normal levels and your site's performance stabilizes, you can switch it off. If you're not sure how to read those patterns, the Office Hours community can help you make that call so you're not leaving the challenge page up longer than necessary.
Will I know if my site goes down without monitoring in place?
Only if a customer tells you or you find the issue yourself on the live site. Without active monitoring, there's no automatic alert when your site throws an error or goes offline. You could be losing visitors for hours before you find out. Monitoring closes that gap by notifying your team the moment something stops working.
Not really. Both Cloudflare and website monitoring platforms are designed to handle the complex stuff in the background. You don't need to understand the technical details to benefit from them. You just need to know when to turn them on and what the alerts mean, which is exactly what the Office Hours community is here to help with.
