Private Proxies in 2021. Still Essential?

So many proxy types have appeared up to 2021. Most people do not even imagine their lives nowadays without paid proxy services. Ordinary people, small and large businesses, all use proxies in their every-day life.

Proxies act as intermediates between a user and the destination site. When the user enters a request, it is met halfway to the destination resource by proxy. The proxy masks the user’s real address and rotates it to an absolutely another address. The destination resource sees only the new address and cannot track who you really are with proxy.

Ordinary people use proxies for personal needs.

• Individuals want to protect themselves online. Proxies help with this.
• Besides, there are many web-sites, platforms and YouTube videos that are geo-restricted. Proxies have power to put those restrictions aside and give access to all the desired resources.

Businesses benefit from this service in many ways. Leading business online is crucial nowadays by proxy. Almost everybody has accounts on social media. It is comfortable to conduct business activities online, but platforms are also smart nowadays. They perceive certain repetitive actions from the same IP as suspicious ones and can block your accounts.

Proxies allow companies:

• placing advertisements;
• conducting promotions;
• safety from frauds and hackers;
• gathering data and analyzing it;
• price monitoring;
• multiple account creation;
• security boost of their data;
• ​unblock blocked websites online and vice versa blocking unwanted resources for their employees.

All this is possible with a private proxy.

Peculiarities of Proxy Servers

A proxy server is an intermediate between you and your destination site. It allows clients making requests and receiving answers. Proxy servers help to preserve client’s anonymity.

Here is a little scheme to show everything better. For example, if you do not use proxies, your activities online look like this:

You -> Your IP address -> the Internet.

However, if you do use proxies, everything will happen like this:

You -> Your IP address -> Proxy server -> Proxy IP address -> the Internet.

Your real IP will be masked and your destination site will see only the proxy IP address.

There are software and hardware proxy versions. Software proxies are usually hosted by a provider or deal with a cloud. It is necessary to install a special application on your device so interaction with proxy becomes possible. Hardware proxy versions are placed between your network and the World Wide Web where you receive, send and forward information from the Internet.

Thus, proxy servers are set up either on your device, computer or network. Most likely the set up means dealing with an automated configuration script. There are:

• forward proxy;
• private proxy;
• transparent proxy;
• distorting proxy;
• datacenter proxy;
• residential proxy;
• shared proxy;
• public proxy;
• reverse proxy.

When you are connected to the Web, it is possible to track you because of your IP address. Hiding your real IP is the only way to stay incognito online. Private proxies are great helpers with this.

Some people also use VPN instead of proxy servers. VPN is a virtual private network. It can be compared with the invisibility cloak. With the help of remote servers it masks your presence online.

Proxies are usually cheaper than VPN. That is why if you need to use them constantly and for repeated actions (for example, data collectors and marketers need them), proxy is a better solution.

It is necessary to do a little research in order to choose your best private proxy services. You will find a private proxy lists below in this article. A private proxy means that a client can exclusively use a dedicated IP at a certain time.

Proxy Provider Choice

Making a choice in the ocean of proxy services may seem endless because there are so many of them nowadays. However, this great circle can be quickly narrowed down if you know certain nuances.

To start with, there are free and paid proxy services.

Free Proxy Services

Free residential proxy services look very attractive to inexperienced users, but having tried, they quickly understand the pitfalls of the free services.

It is necessary to invest money in order to up-keep and maintain the proxy software and hardware. It is necessary to pay people who will attend the operation of proxy servers. Free residential proxy services cannot provide and guarantee a high level of your protection online. No matter if you are an individual or a business owner your data can leak or be attacked. Obviously, no one wants this.

Other issues are the response time and the connection speed. Free residential proxy services cannot guarantee you a stable connection with their servers. The connection is often lost and you can be disposed to attacks. Sometimes proxy allow boosting your Internet speed, but everything is vice versa with free private proxy servers unfortunately. Predominantly the response time is longer than while usual browsing.

Paid Proxy Services

The situation with paid proxy servers is different, but there still are nuances you need to count on before paying for a service. To properly choose your private proxy you need to check several things before buying.

1. The security level. It is crucial to be sure that the company you have chosen will protect your data while surfing the Web by proxy.
2. The choice of countries. Some resources are blocked in certain parts of the world. This is called a geo-restriction. To make sure a paid proxy company is suitable for your needs, check if it provides proxies for the needed region. For example, it is always easy to find a USA private proxy, but not each service provides residential proxies for other regions that are not as popular.
3. Targeting. It is very convenient if a paid proxy service allows you targeting not only up to the country, but even up to the city.
4. The quantity of IP addresses. It is important to be sure that there are enough IPs for each client as the addresses should be assigned to one person only for a certain period of time.
5. The possibility of a free trial. Not every residential proxy service offers using their proxies for free. However, the ones that do offer free trials definitely look beneficially in front of the first ones. It is always better trying a service before paying for a proxy. There can be a trial period, a promo price for a certain volume and time or a money-back guarantee that is available for 3 days or for a week.
6. Ban probability. The service should promise you a low ban probability. It should be confirmed by their own testing of their product.
7. The connection speed. You should be able to find out the connection speed of the paid residential proxy servers. If the connection is not fast enough or if the connection falls off, you should not use it in order not to get frustrated each time.
8. Price policy. The services under the discussion can be really pricey. Thus, it is crucial to find a provider with tariffs that will satisfy your needs in both traffic volume and price by proxy.

It is also necessary to consider which needs you choose your private proxy. Many professions need this kind of service nowadays. Here is the list of some popular professions and needs.

• Social media marketers. They need residential proxies to connect social media platforms. Residential proxies help them to increase their reach and work from a single place. Social media platforms act very strictly and ban suspicious accounts. Residential proxy helps with managing and automating multiple accounts.
• Local services. Private proxies allow manipulating the search engines. This means that local services can obtain locally targeted Web-scraping data. Besides, it will be possible to access all the restricted resources in your area.
• SEO. If you need scaling up your operations, you need residential proxies. You will be able to track the ranks, scrape the needed data and find the backlinks.
• Advertisers. Placing multiple advertisements is easy with residential proxy services.
• Brand protection. Private proxy boosts your security level up. Since you stay incognito online, no hackers or frauds can track you by your real IP address.

As you can see, the appliance of residential proxies is vast. They are used in every-day life of individuals and businesses.

To shorten your way to the best paid proxy servers, this article will tell you about the most popular providers.

The List of Best Paid Private Proxy Services

These are the providers that have already recommended themselves in the residential proxy world.

• OnlineProxy

This service has its proxy servers in more than 100 countries of the world. It owns more than 60 million IPs. OnlineProxy has a high protection level and states 99.5% of activities without ban. The connection speed is fast. You can choose paying for gigabytes or for unlimited traffic. It is also possible to try a ‘Promo’ tariff for $2.5. It gives you 100 Mb for 15 days.

• SmartProxy

SmartProxy covers 195 locations globally and has more than 40 million IPs. The prices start from $63.5 for the first month. Smartproxy offers extensions for Firefox and Chrome. However, you will be restricted in geo-targeting and this might be a problem for certain needs.

• Oxylabs

This provider has global coverage and more than 70 million addresses. The prices for residential proxies start from $300 per month for 20 Gb. Since Oxylabs uses back-connect gateway servers, it will be necessary to manually modify the IP and add targeting parameters. This might be an issue for beginners.

• Luminati

With over 72 million addresses and global coverage Luminati has a reliable safety level. However, with all that, its pricing mechanism is quite complex and can be suitable not for everyone.

Hopefully the list of these paid residential proxy monsters will help you to make your decision quicker.

Are Proxies Still Essential?

Technologies develop very fast today and everything changes very quickly. Platforms learn to block anything suspicious more and more. However, residential proxy still stay valuable for both individuals and businesses.

Individuals benefit from:

• the possibility of optimizing their Web activities;
• the chance of accessing the restricted content in certain regions;
• the guarantee of increasing their security level while surfing the Web.

Meanwhile the businesses take the advantage of:

• the extra protection level from hackers and frauds;
• the possibility of gathering / scraping data that is valuable for them;
• the ability of reaching their audience in large volumes.

Having stated all that, it is possible to come to the conclusion that private proxies do have a future in 2021and in the years to come. With all the benefits people receive with private proxies, they are fundamental for every-day security and operating a successful business online.

Residential proxies will not simply disappear in the coming years, they will still be essential for everyone who is browsing the Web. They can be called ‘guides’ to the network.

Imagine the Internet to be a new country you have never visited before. You do not know their language and do not know anyone there. If you are completely alone, anything can happen to you. For example, you can accidentally find yourself in a dangerous residential quarter and be robbed by some bad guys.

However, if you hire a guide, he will know the language of this country and the places that are better to be avoided. He will safely show you everything you would like to see in this country and prevent you from entering the ‘bad guy’ residential quarters.

Residential proxies are such ‘guides’ in the Internet world. They protect you from hackers and frauds. Private proxies reveal data that your rivaling businesses can hide from you. Thankfully to residential proxy servers and the choice of countries and cities you can access any resource that is geo-targeted. Your Internet connection speed can be increased with the help of proxy servers if you choose a reputable paid provider.

The merits of residential proxies while surfing the Web cannot be lowered. The best thing is that you can try the paid services for free in case you have any doubts in the company’s reliability. There is no doubt that a reputable company will have a round-the-clock client support that will help you if any questions or issues arise.

Make your every-day life easier with these great helpers. They will make your route to the destination platforms safe and comfortable. Your personality will stay incognito online and it will not be possible to track your actions while browsing.

Residential proxies have a future in 2021 and in the next years. They are essential for ordinary people, small and large businesses who want to operate the Web safely and comfortably. Hopefully this article gave you some hints on how to choose a reputable residential proxy provider with reliable servers.

OnlineProxy, Smartproxy, Oxylab and Luminati are highly recommended services. Check them out yourself and choose the accommodation that is most suitable for your needs. Do not hesitate that residential proxies are essential and still will be serving us for a long time.