Smartproxy proxy service review

Smartproxy is a fast-growing proxy service that has been around since 2018, and while the length of its tenure may not sound promising, the offer and capabilities certainly are. The main service revolves around roughly 65 million monthly IPs from their residential proxy offer, there is also a 10 million IP pool derived from phones and other devices on a cellular connection. The company claims that its residential proxies are the fastest on the market, with response speeds of less than 0.6s with a 99.68% success rate. The IP addresses, in general, come from over 195 locations around the globe, making the IP offering as varied as possible. To round things out, the data center proxies are also on offer, these proxies are IP addresses created in server hubs. 

Moreover, Smartproxy offers a unique feature they call the Site Unblocker, which does exactly as the name implies: lets you visit restricted sites, bypass stringent bot measures, and pull data that you need. The firm boasts an impressive success rate of 100% for the unblocker. In addition to the primary product, users can also benefit from additional features such as fingerprinting, proxy rotation, pool management, JavaScript rendering, and more.

Plans and pricing

The company recently introduced a new pricing scheme, with pricing based purely on how many GB of data or IPs you'll require, dependant on your needs. Let us start with the proxy section and the Residential Proxies plan, with the pay as you go plan starting off at $7 per GB. More importantly, each plan now comes with a 14-day money-back guarantee, which we haven’t tested out but safely assume is more than followed through by the company. The next plans under the Residential Proxies include the 2GB $6/GB plan, the 8GB $5.5/GB, the 25GB $5.2/GB, the 50GB $4.9/GB, and the 100GB $4.5/GB plans. 

Enterprise plans have a different pricing scheme that includes a dedicated account manager with each plan, spanning from 250GB to 5,000GB plans, and the ability to contact the SmartProxy sales department if you needs exceed these plans. All of these plans (regular & enterprise) give you access to over 55 million IP addresses, an unlimited number of parallel sessions, HTTPS & SOCKS5 support, rotating and sticky sessions, 24/7 tech support, and country & city-level targeting (with additional ZIP-level targeting for regular plans).

Flexible static (ISP) residential proxies pricing can be chosen through a dedicated plan, or on a per-GB or per-IP basis, with the 2GB plan costing $14/GB, 7GB plan $13/GB, 25GB $12/GB, and 50GB $11/GB. These prices have a Value Added Tax calculated on top of each month, which is not calculated in the offering. As with the Residental Proxies, you get the same access plus rotating on-demand IPs, unlimited duration sessions, and in-depth dev documentation.

With the two described pricing plans, Smartproxy extends its offer for proxies across Mobile Proxy plans that start from $8, Datacenter Proxies that start from $10 a month, Dedicated DC Proxies at $2.5 a month, and Site Unblocker from $14 a month. Each of these plans has a varying degree of bandwidth and additional tools packed in them, whose detailed description would require an additional full-length review to go through. 

Rounding out the offer from Smartproxy are its Scrapers plans, which all start at $50 a month and span across social media scrapers to SERP scraping tools.  Payment options include popular credit cards, PayPal, Apple, and Google Pay, as well as payments via cryptocurrencies.

Getting started

Smartproxy offers a user-friendly and intuitive dashboard that simplifies the configuration of tasks with new features and tools in the newly upgraded version. The navigation menu is conveniently located on the left side of the screen, allowing easy access to launch the necessary tasks. Once you have registered, purchased, and set up your plan, you will be able to add users through the corresponding menu on the dashboard. You have granular control over each user’s resources across all of your projects, with each sub-user having its own login credentials. 

From the dashboard, you can set up and customize your connections for proxy gates. Firstly, you need to choose between a sticky or rotating proxy, with the sticky proxies lasting up to 10 minutes, if so desired. Additionally, you can choose if you prefer a random IP or a specific IP from a country/city. All of these options can be easily accessed from the Endpoint menu in the dashboard.

Smartproxy Apps

Smartproxy also supplies some custom apps of its own to help you get more from your proxies.

For simplifying the web crawling process, Smartproxy offers various Scraping tools. The SERP Scraping API helps in gathering real-time information from search engines for all SEO-related metrics, while the dedicated eCommerce Scraping API does the same thing for all major eCommerce sites and provides a thorough analysis to help you follow market trends. Web Scraping API enables users to collect publicly accessible data from even the most complex websites built with JavaScript. Finally, with the Social Media Scraping API, users can scrape social media platforms of any scale and obtain well-structured data in raw HTML files or parsed JSON results. The social media tool covers all popular platforms (Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, etc.) and can offer the results in an HTML or GraphQL format for further analysis. For less experienced users, there is the No-Code Scraper, which allows users to scrape data using pre-made templates.  

SOCKS5 proxies are a new offering by Smartproxy, an evolutionary iteration of the SOCKS proxies that offer higher security and better speeds. This service grants access to over 50 million residential, datacenter dedicated, and mobile proxies. Additionally, it enables you to bypass firewalls and access previously restricted content securely by establishing connections through these proxies.

There are also browser extensions in the toolkit. By utilizing the Chrome proxy extension provided by Smartproxy, you gain immediate access to the intermediary. The plugin allows for custom sessions with just two simple clicks, and it is compatible with various types of devices. This plugin is particularly beneficial for large-scale projects, as it significantly simplifies the working process. If you have a valid Smartproxy plan, you will also receive a free Firefox Add-on. This extension prioritizes anonymity, localized content, and effortless website unblocking. Its design ensures a hassle-free experience.

Another convenient feature provided by Smartproxy is the Smart Wallet. This feature simplifies the process of purchasing proxies by allowing users to store all proxy-dedicated budgets in one place. It is particularly beneficial for users who prefer making payments with Apple Pay or Google Pay.

Support

Smartproxy provides documentation consisting of a wide range of helpful guides neatly categorized based on the platform's various features. To facilitate access to information, users can utilize the search function by using keywords. The documentation is designed with user-friendliness in mind, featuring articles written in simple language that's easy to comprehend and follow. Additionally, many articles include screenshots and videos to enhance the instructions. Should users encounter any difficulties or experience issues, the support team is available 24/7 through live chat and email. The support agents are highly acclaimed for their demeanor, response times, and ability to offer practical solutions to problems.

Final verdict

Smartproxy is a proxy platform that offers a wide range of features and very competitive pricing. It provides high-quality services with 24/7 customer support. The platform also includes an easy-to-use dashboard that is perfect for beginners. Additionally, there is a knowledge base filled with helpful articles for troubleshooting and guidance. For more experienced users, Smartproxy offers an API that allows for scaling data mining tasks. On the other hand, beginners can benefit from pre-configured templates to get started quickly. Overall, Smartproxy represents a solid choice if you’re looking for an all-encompasing proxy service.

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