Choosing Proxy Providers for Your Needs
Numerous types of proxies with different specifics indicate that there are different levels of their applicability. It might be an additional headache for the customer to choose among different proxy providers.
It’s obvious that the service you need depends on the reasons why you are looking for it. Today we will discuss what are the main criteria to determine which provider suits best your interests.
Types of Service They Offer
Some proxy providers offer both data center and residential proxies, and some are only selling one of these types. Their main difference consists in their speed and safety. Although they are both fast and safe enough, data center proxies are faster, while residential proxies are safer.
If you need to work fast and improve your safety, but you are not working with geo-sensitive data, then data center proxies are for you. They are good for data scraping, general anonymous browsing, and social marketing. Residential proxies are better for when you need to cover a large number of locations and get data that way.
In either case, if a proxy provider offers only one type of these, they may pay more attention to its quality and might ensure you with a better overall service, compared to companies that sell both types and must adjust to serving their clients with their specific problems and needs that differ throughout separate types of proxies.
Reliability of a Provider
The key aspect is the trustworthiness of your proxy service provider. You shouldn’t even consider those that seem fishy from the beginning.
If they are offering too many services for too low a price, you can be sure that they are not to be trusted. Equally, if you find lots of negative reviews about the company, that’s a warning sign.
The easiest way to find out the reliability is to look at how well the provider is perceived among different users, how well it is described, and how often it is mentioned in different sources. A good name is hard to get and easy to lose. If you find a company that bears a good reputation on its name, and they work hard to maintain it, you will surely get what you are looking for.
Number of IP Addresses Offered
If your work consists of having to deal with geo-restricted content, you need to manage huge amounts of accounts, or you are using bots in vast quantities, the number of IP addresses is another important feature when deciding which proxy provider to choose.
More IP addresses will usually cover more locations and provide a bigger variety for a better IP rotation. Usually, residential proxies have more IP addresses. However, data center proxies can also have enough for nearly all purposes if it’s a bigger provider.
You need to check and compare how many IP addresses a company can provide. Usually, good businesses provide them in millions.
Types of IP Usage
A proxy server can give you an IP address that can be shared with other users of the same proxy or that is dedicated for a single user at a time. That’s also an important feature to consider. Usually, dedicated (or private) IP addresses are safer because you are at no risk to get attention for actions done by other users.
A shared IP address can have some benefits when you have a proxy. For instance, they will generally be significantly cheaper. However, dedicated IPs are safer for the most part. So, you need to choose which one fits your needs better.
Moreover, an IP address can be either static or rotating. If you want a new IP address that differs from your original one, but you want to build some history under it and use it for a long time, you should take a static IP.
But if you are using bots, web scraping, or doing something that will eventually attract unwanted attention, then you should always choose rotating IPs, for they are harder to detect and let you distribute your different tasks so that you will not be caught for a combined too excessive activity that, say, exceeds the allowed number of requests on the site.
Specialization of a Provider
If you need proxies for a particular field of activity, your expectations might be fulfilled better when you find a proxy provider that offers proxies developed for this specific purpose. For instance, proxies for sneaker copping, harvesting data, or for using bots, etc.
Although any proxy can be used for any purpose since they all do the same by changing your IP address and making you anonymous, specialized proxies might be better if you need them for that specific reason only.
Good Encryption
Proxies are useful only when they do what they are meant to do, namely, to provide you with better anonymity. That’s why you must be sure that a proxy provider can ensure you with good encryption of your data and browsing. Good companies that are selling their services always do that.
However, if you are planning to use free proxies, you must look for a provider that offers good encryption and has good-quality paid services also. Only then can you trust such a company even if it offers free proxies along with their main paid product.
Limits
When you choose a proxy provider, you must see what limits they set for their customers. You must make sure that you will get sufficient bandwidth, sessions, speed, and enough GBs for a price that you consider paying. A good indicator is if you are paying per IP and receive most of these features unlimited. If something seems off compared to its competitors, that’s the first sign that you might look somewhere else.
Conclusion
Finding the best proxy provider comes down to figuring out what you need proxies in the first place and finding a trustworthy company that offers the best services that go by your preferences. You should mistrust companies that have no good reputation and are too different in their services or prices compared with what’s on the market.
