6 minute read
Everyone is in need of a good proxy solution these days. Being able to boost your privacy and protect your business is crucial, hence the reason why you always want to focus on finding a reliable service. But when you are looking for the best proxies, what exactly should you narrow down on? What features are very important? Here’s a list with the things to focus on.
IP quality and reputation
When you want to find a good proxy provider, a very good idea is to assess the reputation scores, the block rates, request success rate and reliability. If these are high, that means the provider is actually good, and it’s worth considering them. You also want to study how they source the IPs, how often they refresh the IPs, if they are actively monitoring IPs and so on.
Network size
Ideally, a great proxy provider will have a pretty high number of IP addresses. But don’t be enriched by the idea that a very large network will have quality IPs only. A lot of the time, massive networks will suffer from a lower network quality. So it makes sense to ensure that you have coverage for the geographic region you want, along with good IP quality. That’s the ideal option, so try to take that into consideration.
Geographic coverage
Some of the top proxy providers out there will provide comprehensive targeting solutions. That means they allow you to target countries, regions, cities, ISPs and even carriers. Being able to target at that high of a level is great, and it differentiates the best providers from the lower quality ones.
Reliability
Clearly, you always want to work with a company which is dependable and very reliable. The last thing you want are things like failed requests, inaccurate data collection, workflow interruptions or a loss in productivity. Reliable proxy providers will always offer you network monitoring systems, service-level commitments, infrastructure redundancy, published uptime statistics and so on.
As a business or a professional user, your target uptime should be over 95%, or even 99% where possible. Remember that while a lot of proxy providers will advertise 99%, not all of them have that. Hence the reason why you want to check for reviews and do a deeper assessment, just to make sure that everything is ok here.
Connection speed
As expected, speed will affect not only the operational efficiency, but also the user experience and productivity. So you do want great proxy performance. That will differ based on the infrastructure quality, network routing, as well as server locations, traffic management, bandwidth allocation, etc.
Some of the major performance indicators will be the response times, latency, throughput and connection stability. That’s why users which perform those large-scale operations will be a lot better if they test providers before committing to one of them. Otherwise, it can be very easy to pick the wrong provider, which in turn will not deliver the results you expect, and that’s extremely challenging.
IP rotation
It’s not one of the things you might think about when selecting the best proxy provider. But the truth is that you do want a provider which is rotating IP addresses at a regular interval. That way, you are not reusing the same IPs over and over. Some of the providers even offer you custom rotation rules. Those are ideal, but even regular rotation is more than enough for most of the clients these days.
Privacy and security
Security is crucial when it comes to proxy providers. You need to make sure that they have a secure authentication system, encrypted connections, as well as transparent privacy policies, not to mention a strong infrastructure protection. You want to know if the provider is logging user activity, how the data is stored for customers, but also whether the authentication is secure. Clearly, most businesses have sensitive information, so making sure all of that info does not leak is a crucial part of the process.
Proxy types
As you already know, there are various types of proxies on the market these days. Residential proxies are using IP addresses assigned to real households. ISP proxies will combine residential IPs with data center infrastructures. Mobile proxies are the most popular since they have a very good reputation. And there are also data center proxies, which aren’t as flexible or good for most people.
Scalability
Is your business able to scale when it comes to proxy use? That’s what the proxy provider needs to do, as they have to deal with a higher traffic volume, support for more regions, larger IP allocations and enterprise deployments. Granted, this won’t happen all the time, but you do want a provider which is able to offer scaling opportunities whenever that is necessary.
Dashboard and user experience
The quality of the provider’s management interface does matter quite a bit. A reliable and modern dashboard needs to include usage analytics, session control info, traffic monitoring, but also geographic targeting, billing management and so on. A user-friendly interface is crucial and it’s worth its weight in gold for many users.
The same thing is valid when it comes to API access and automation support. The best proxy providers will offer you API access, along with automation tools, SDKs and solid documentation. With those benefits, users will be able to monitor usage more effectively, rotate sessions with ease, scale operations and manage proxy pools in no time.
Closing thoughts
Clearly, there are a lot of different things to focus on when selecting the best proxy provider to fit your needs. The type of proxies used, pricing, customer support, transparency, the overall experience, all of them matter a lot. As a business user, you also want to focus on reliability and uptime, along with scalability. Every single detail matters when selecting the best proxy provider, and that’s why you want to spare no expense. When you choose a good proxy provider, you want to use them in the long term, so having the right partner in this regard makes all the difference in the world.
