Smartproxy is a premium proxy service provider with a cheap price, and with rotating backconnect IPs that lapse after every thirty minutes. Want to know how they achieve your goals? Please read on!
- 40+ million IPs from 195+ locations
- Offer Cities(Only 8)/50 USA states/Countries Geo-targeting
- Quite flexible of Micro Plan pricing
- Up to 30 minutes of IP rotation time
Since 2018, the world has witnessed one of the best proxy providers which is Smartproxy. Ranked as one of the cheapest providers with the least amount of $0.5, this is a proxy server to consider when planning to purchase one.
Smartproxy is also one of the most secure proxy providers globally with SSL (Secure Socket Layer) 256-bit encryption. It also has rotating backconnect IPs that lapse after every thirty minutes. Is that interesting? Below we also have other resourceful features of this server.
Smartproxy Pros and Cons
Considering how Smartproxy has been on demand nowadays, we took time to research it. The following are the aspects we liked and others we did not like about this server.
Why We Like it
- Has a worldwide coverage: This proxy serves over 195 countries, although most of the server's hotspots are in eight cities and about fifty US states.
- Possess an advanced bot scraper: Smartproxy unblocks many sites because it has a web crawler software
- Good for SEO: Apart from its web scraping bots that increase SEO leads, Smartproxy has a search engine proxy that contributes to a higher SEO ranking.
- Easy to use: With SmartProxy chrome extensions and Firefox add-on, you do not need to log to its dashboard. Even its dashboard is interactive and straightforward.
- A huge IP pool: The Smartproxy has at least forty million residential IPs and forty thousand datacenter IPs.
- Highly secure: This server has SSL encryption to secure your data.
- Utilize all authentication features: You will find the IP whitelisting and username or password authentication protocols
- Support chrome extension: Smartproxy is compatible with chrome and you can pull it from the chrome extension bar. This makes it easier to use without a dashboard need for configuration.
Why We Don't Like it
No SOCKS protocols: Thereby, it inconveniences high-traffic sites like video streaming.
No free test: However much one may want to test the proxy, you need first to pay and test the proxy before a three-day lapse.
Limited bandwidth: Smartproxy is charged by the bandwidth. Hence, you cannot get a plan with unlimited bandwidth.
Smartproxy Overview
Overall, Smartproxy is affordable with an estimate of seventy-five dollars at 5 GB. Smartproxy is found worldwide and is famous for its scraping and SEO bots. It has also introduced the SEO proxy that helps in generating SEO tools.
Smartproxy has datacenter and residential proxies types. The residential proxy type is the most widespread, while the datacenter proxy type has shared proxies. Smartproxy has an HTTPS proxy protocol and acquires an IP and password authentication when it comes to this server's protocols.
That being said, hope you have understood the bigger picture of the Smartproxy. But what about its specific features? Read on for more to understand.
Smartproxy IP Types
As mentioned earlier, the Smartproxy has two types of IP which are datacenter and residential proxies. You can find Smartproxy IP types by opening the ‘solution' tab on the top left of the Smartproxy websites.
Residential proxies boast a mammoth of forty million IPs and connect through the peer-to-peer network. This is a time-phased rotating proxy type that rotates after every thirty minutes.
If you want a more stable connection from Smartproxy, you might consider its datacenter proxies. These proxies are only shared, and they also have 30min sticky sessions. Found mainly in the USA, datacenter have at least 40,000 IPs.
Smartproxy have also introduced Search Engine Proxies that have to scrape bots to extract information. They also analyze and monitor keyword performance.
Smartproxy Pricing
Probably you are aware of Smartproxy because you heard that it is affordable. This provider charges a minimum of $80 per 8GB on a micro-level. On that note, Smartproxy fixes their proxy price per the bandwidth (GB). The higher the bandwidth, the more the package cost. Some enterprise plans can go as high as $3000 per terabyte.
Apart from the enterprise and micro level, the server has other classes like a starter and regular. The regular is affordable at $400 per fifty GB, and the other costs half the amount.
If you think that is enough, wait until you meet the pricing of the datacenter proxy. Could you believe that Smartproxy's datacenter plan costs as low as $0.5 per GB? Now you can attest that Smartproxy is one the cheapest we have.
Smartproxy Authentication
Privacy and anonymous browsing are the main significances of using a proxy. Thanks to Smartproxy authentication measures, they ensure privacy, the security of data, and anonymous browsing.
For example, the user password or username are types of authentication features. When you register to their account, you can provide a password or username, which is hard to guess. These details hence protect your browsing and account.
They also have the IP authentication protocol that comes as the IP whitelisting. IP whitelisting retains IP lists, types, or ranges that will connect to trusted sources. That is still a secure way of hiding your identity. The number of IPs to whitelist increases with your subscription plan.
Smartproxy Protocols
When it comes to your data security, you can trust the Smartproxy HTTP and HTTPS connection protocols. Most significantly, the HTTPS protocols contain a Secure Socket Layer (SSL). SSL has 256-bit encryption that protects your data or browsing history against hackers or trackers.
Moreover, websites and other domains view an HTTPS source as trustworthy. That is because HTTPS acquired a certification to access a website and validate its sharing key. In that process, the HTTPS protocol encrypts most of the page requests.
Similarly, the HTTP protocol protects your browsing only that it is not in-depth as for HTTPS. HTTP monitors the internet traffic and blocks unauthorized content like spyware.
Testing Smartproxy
With that Smartproxy's knowledge, it would help examine whether this proxy's features are genuine. For that reason, we tested these proxies for data scraping, social platforms, sneaker sites, and speed.
Notably, one thing that impressed us all along is the speed and the Smartproxy data scraping. Therefore these were the first items to test. All through this practice, we tested 200 concurrent threads. Below are our results.
| Tested for | Data scraping | Social platform | Sneaker sites | Speed test |
| Rating | 93/100 | 85/100 | 80/100 | 92/100 |
As you can see in the above table, we rated all our samples out of a hundred. Our target mark was over 80%, and we were happy every sample reached that score. Speed test and data scraping are the variables that scored highly beyond our expectations, with over 90%
It would help to notice that these values came from augmented ratings of each sample we had earlier tested. Below are the results of each domain.
For Data Scraping Performance
Testing scraping performance was our biggest priority. We wanted to know how good the server is in scraping, and it never disappointed us. As you can see from the results, Best Buy, Amazon, Walmart, and Target got high marks. Even the sluggish eBay still performed better.
Average success rate on E-commerce websites - 93%
To develop these ratings, we accounted for the number of errors we met, the blocks, the speed of connections, the bandwidth used, and the time for response. We are glad to inform you that we received zero blocks and errors as far as data scraping is concerned.
We first tested Amazon, which is popular to block scrape bots because of its vast data collection. We would get lots of CAPTCHA'S, 403, and other connection errors when we used another proxy provider. But for Smartproxy, the connection was smooth without any errors and blocks.
We repeated the same test for all e-commerce sites and Smartproxy directly connected to most shopping sites. Aliexpress and Best Buy impressed us because the response time was around 3.1s, and we could make multiple requests, even for confidential pages.
With eBay, we received some CAPTCHAS and two to five errors, and that's why it scored less than 90%. Other than that, we attribute the Smartproxy's success in scraping due to the large pool of rotating IPs and the search engine proxies.
Test on Social Websites
When it comes to social media, they also block people, especially those looking to own more than one account. Also, some media sites do not favor web crawling and scraping. But we knew our Smartproxy would perform well on these sites.
Average success rate on social websites – 85%
We were particularly impressed when testing Facebook the connection was smooth, knowing that it has strict scraping policies. The only slight drawback came when downloading or uploading large content videos on Facebook. The download speed was fast at first, and then it slowed in-between. For that reason, we had to buy a more bandwidth package to download more Facebook videos.
Instagram was the most promising with an incredible speed in downloading or uploading content. Smartproxy had an Instagram automation proxy. When we used that automation bot, we could scrape most Instagram information, create many unnoticeable accounts, and geo-target sites in another nation.
Reddit and Twitch had had no account block even when we opened numerous accounts with those sites. We received some Twitter errors, but our problem was in YouTube, where there were more than ten errors and blocks. Still, the downloading speed of YouTube videos was less.
We attribute the sluggishness of YouTube videos and Facebook because Smartproxy lacks SOCKS protocol. Therefore it can't load high-traffic sites like video streaming. We received Captcha's authorization in Twitter, Facebook, and other sites we removed them using Captcha remover.
Test on Sneaker Sites
Nike Adidas, Supreme, Foot Locker, and Finish Line are sites that restrict the pair of shoes to buy online. Notably, they ban the use of sneaker bots that allows one to buy multiple sneakers using multiple accounts.
We determined the sneaker rating using variables like bandwidth, concurrent errors, pin or latent time, timeout, and the number of blocks. We then averaged the results of these variables to come up with percentage ratings.
Average success rate on sneaker sites- 80%
Being one of the most rigid sneaker sites, Adidas impressed us with its 80% mark. Although we could get the Captcha errors and slowness in connection, we had a smooth ride in Adidas and supreme. Generally, the suspect sneakers like Foot Locker, Adidas, and Supreme performed well because of Stormproxy's sessions of 1 min, 10 min, and 30 min.
Nike and Finish Line produced below-average performance because they lagged in response, and there were lots of connection errors. Overall, Stormproxy performs well on sneaker sites compared to other companies because of their anonymous backconnect IPs. Also, their sticky time is another factor.
Speed Test
| Smartproxy Residential Proxy | Ping (ms) | Download (Mbps) | Upload (Mbps) |
| Smartproxy proxy 1 | 279 | 2.83 | 1.21 |
| Smartproxy proxy 2 | 302 | 2.17 | 2.03 |
| Smartproxy proxy 3 | 354 | 1.03 | 0.96 |
| Smartproxy proxy 4 | 413 | 2.79 | 1.47 |
| Smartproxy proxy 5 | 375 | 3.15 | 2.78 |
Rating, 92/100
Although the speed test depends on the number of connections and sites we visit, few proxies' providers can match the blazing speed of Stormrproxies. Most of the connections we realized were in gigabyte speed.
Generally, the standard speed of Smartproxy is 3.1s, but we connected to sites at a higher speed through our experiment than that. We even had a stopwatch to measure the time taken to respond (latency or ping time) in milliseconds.
Another parameter for the test was proxy connection speed, which we used a speed test. We experimented with the amount of data that can be downloaded or uploaded by Stormproxies in a second. Our average upload time took around 15 Mbps, download 25mbps, and ping time about seventy Mbps.
We also tested speed with five different Smartproxy types, which you can see their results from the table. All through, the connection had few errors and Captchas requirements.
However, we did not like Smartproxy 5 and 4 that took a long time to download or upload large-size content. Smartproxy 1 and 2 impressed us because they need a short latent time to complete large downloads and uploads.
We conclude that Smartproxy is fast because it has rotating residential and datacenter IPs that change faster in each session. These companies also have quality servers that improve the connection speed as they move close to their hotspot areas.
Smartproxy Customer Support
We are genuinely hats off with the customer support of Smartproxy. They are available 24/7, and they respond to our queries quickly. When we encountered an issue with our connection errors and Smartproxy's IPs, these people were interactive to help us.
The platform also provides us with a library of guidance documentation blogs to help you operate the proxy software.
The Editors Verdict
If by now you still have doubts about Smartproxy, why don't you test it for yourself? You will find the program affordable considering its excellent scraping bots and fast connection. When security counts, this proxy has SSL technology and security protocols. Hence, it is hard for someone to hack you.
Lastly, the backconnect residential proxies and datacenter proxies have a speedy internet connection and higher anonymity.
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Are Smartproxy Proxies Good for Social Media?
Yes, the Smartproxy suit for all social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.
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Are Smartproxy Proxies good for the Sneaker site?
Yes, their rotation IP change enables the creation of multiple sneaker accounts and works perfectly with bots.
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Are Smartproxy Proxies Good for Scraping?
Yes, because they have scraper boots that utilize the backconnect IPs to stay anonymous. They also have thirty minutes sticky sessions to scrape data efficiently.
Smartproxy Alternatives
Well, if you still feel the Smartproxy is expensive, you could use a $19 monthly Storm proxies. But if option the high-quality proxy provider, Bright Data is the best. Suppose you need a direct substitute, you could choose Shifter which has a backconnect IP as Smartproxy.
Last Updated on May 16, 2023
