Utilly vs. DIY on Cloudflare Workers.
Plenty of teams serve subfolders with a hand-built Workers proxy, and it can work well. This page is an honest look at what you take on when you build and run the proxy yourself.
When DIY is the right call
You have an owner
An engineer whose job includes edge config, with time to build and keep owning it.
The routing is simple
One site, one route, and a map that rarely changes once it works.
You want zero vendors
No recurring cost matters more to you than the maintenance hours it replaces.
What you take on, side by side
Initial setup
diy on workers:Write and deploy a worker: routing rules, host and path rewrites, header handling, error paths. A day if you have done it before, longer if you have not.
with utilly:Four guided steps in the dashboard. No code to write or deploy.
SEO edge cases
diy on workers:Trailing slashes, redirect chains, canonical mismatches, asset paths: each one is yours to find in Search Console and fix in code.
with utilly:Handled by default. Internal pages and links are mapped to subfolder paths automatically.
Caching
diy on workers:You design the cache keys, the rules, and the invalidation story yourself.
with utilly:A caching layer in front of your origins is included and managed for you.
Ongoing changes
diy on workers:Every new route, origin, or team request is a code change and a deploy by whoever owns the worker.
with utilly:Add or edit a route in the dashboard without touching code.
When routing breaks
diy on workers:The engineer who wrote the worker is the support plan, including at inconvenient hours.
with utilly:Routing is our entire product, and support comes with the plan.
Cost
diy on workers:Low infrastructure cost, paid for in engineering hours: the build, the fixes, and the ownership.
with utilly:From $29/mo, with no engineering time attached.
Curious what the managed side looks like in practice? Read how Utilly works, from the request lifecycle to rollback.
Fair questions
Is Cloudflare Workers a bad way to do this?
No. Workers is excellent infrastructure, and a well-written worker can absolutely serve subfolders correctly. The comparison is not about capability; it is about who builds, verifies, and maintains the proxy over time.
Is Utilly itself built on Cloudflare Workers?
We keep our architecture private on purpose. What we publish is the behavior you can verify from the outside: routing, caching, TLS, and rollback with a single DNS change.
Can I migrate from an existing Workers proxy?
Yes. Point Utilly at the same origins, recreate your route map in the dashboard, preview the result, and switch DNS when it looks right.
What does the DIY route actually cost?
Rarely the infrastructure, which is cheap. The real cost is engineering hours: the initial build, hunting SEO edge cases, and owning the proxy when it misbehaves.