Storm Proxies review

Storm Proxies was founded in 2016 by a group of digital marketing experts. In eight years, it has become a globally leading proxy provider for individuals and small businesses. Storm Proxies is a small proxy provider with a pool of just 700,000+ IPs, unlike some competitors that top 100 million. It has limited reach, with IPs only in the US and Europe, unlike some competitors that cover virtually all countries.

At first glance, Storm Proxies seems to lack much to offer, but that’s an unfair characterization. It’s not as good as most competitors but fills a good niche: affordable proxies for simple activities. Storm Proxies doesn’t pretend to be a one-stop shop for all your proxy needs. Instead, it markets itself as a simple proxy provider and stays true to its pitch.

We’re reviewing Storm Proxies to help you decide if it’s a good choice. Our review will cover critical aspects like pricing, customer support, user-friendliness, and features. After reading this review, deciding whether Storm Proxies is worth adopting should be easy.

Storm Proxies: Plans and pricing

Storm Proxies offers three types of proxies: private datacenter, rotating backconnect, and rotating residential. Each type has distinct pricing plans, which we’ll explore.

Storm Proxies charges a monthly fee for private datacenter IPs according to the number of IPs. $10 monthly gives 5 IPs with unlimited bandwidth and 1 Gbps speed. $20 monthly gives 10 IPs, $40 gives 20 IPs, and $60 gives 30 IPs. $90 monthly gives 50 proxies, $160 gives 100, $320 gives 200, and $640 monthly gives 400 datacenter IPs.

The larger the number of datacenter IPs, the lower the unit cost. For example, $640 monthly for 400 IPs equals $1.6 per IP, compared to $2 per IP on the lowest plan.

For rotating backconnect proxies, you’ll pay according to the number of threads, i.e. simultaneous connections. You can pay $39 monthly for 40 connections, $59 for 80 connections, and $97 monthly for 150 connections. A monthly subscription gives you unlimited bandwidth.

Users pay a monthly fee for rotating residential proxies depending on the number of IPs. $50 monthly gives 5 IPs, $90 monthly gives 10 IPs, $160 gives 20 IPs, and $300 gives 50 IPs. The higher the plan, the lesser the unit price. For instance, $300 for 50 IPs equals $6 per IP, compared to $10 per IP ($50 monthly for 5 IPs) on the lowest plan.

Storm Proxies’ IPs are more affordable than most competitors. However, you should be aware of the limited proxy pool, with just 700,000+ IPs concentrated in the US and EU. This platform doesn’t offer a free trial, but it lets you request a refund within 24 hours if unsatisfied.

Storm Proxies: Features

Storm Proxies focuses on proxy IPs and lacks complementary features you’ll find on other proxy providers, such as web scraping APIs. However, it performs its core function well. Let’s explore the features users can access on this platform.

Residential Proxies

Residential proxies are real IP addresses sourced from physical devices. The device owners agree to add their IP address to Storm Proxies’ network in exchange for a benefit, e.g., VPN usage. Storm Proxies pools these IPs and offers them to its users.

Storm Proxies offers a roughly 700,000-strong pool of rotating residential proxies. Rotating means your IP address changes frequently, switching to a new one randomly selected from the pool. Constant rotation makes it harder for websites to detect the proxies, providing better anonymity and security.

What are residential proxies used for? Web scraping is a good use case. Suppose you run a website showing users the best sports and concert ticket deals. This website requires frequent data scraping from ticket sites like StubHub and Ticketmaster. However, these sites dislike data scraping and institute geographical and IP restrictions to block it. Storm Proxies’ residential proxies help counter these blocks.

When you use a residential proxy to visit a website, the website thinks the traffic comes from a typical device. With IP rotation, the website thinks the traffic comes from different devices visiting the site as usual. Some ticket websites block traffic from entire countries, usually those they aren’t serving. But you can simply bypass this geo-restriction by choosing a US or EU proxy.

Storm Proxies' residential proxies have unlimited bandwidth, so you don't need to worry about the volume of data being scraped. It uses encryption to hide your actual IP address from websites. During our test, Storm Proxies’ IPs offered fast speeds and performance, with little slowdown compared to accessing sites normally. The drawback is this platform’s limited proxy pool, with servers concentrated in the US and EU and negligible in other regions.

Datacenter IPs

Datacenter IPs are IP addresses tied to physical servers. These servers are sourced from secondary corporations, and Storm Proxies gives users easy access. Unlike residential proxies, which rotate every 3 to 5 minutes, datacenter IPs are static. You'll get one IP for a long time, but you can request up to two replacements monthly.

Datacenter IPs offer rapid speed and performance. In this case, a physical server with a stable connection sits as an intermediary between you and the Internet. This is much better than relying on an end user’s PC or mobile phone (residential IP), which might have an unstable connection.

If you’re scraping massive data volumes, datacenter IPs are the best choice because of their better reliability and speed. The drawback is that they're easier for websites to detect since the IPs don't change. They also have limited reach, with Storm Proxies offering datacenter IPs only in the US (Cheyenne, Los Angeles, and New York City). If you need a datacenter IP in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and other continents, Storm Proxies can’t fulfill this need.

On the bright side, Storm Proxies’ datacenter IPs are very affordable, with pricing as low as $1.6 monthly for each IP. This price provides unlimited bandwidth that enables you to scrape massive data volumes.

Backconnect Proxy

Backconnect proxies are a type of proxy server that dynamically routes traffic through a pool of rotating IPs. Storm Proxies lets you choose proxies that change every 3 minutes or 15 minutes. A 3-minute proxy is suitable for regular browsing or account creation, while 15-minute proxies are suitable for longer browsing sessions. You can also get a fresh IP address with every new HTTP request, enhancing your anonymity.

Storm Proxies gives you one or several "proxy gateway" IPs that you'll enter inside your proxy management software. With this connection set up, you'll receive a new proxy IP on every HTTP request, every 3 minutes or every 15 minutes (depending on what you choose). You don't need to manually change IPs in your proxy management software: everything works automatically on Storm Proxies' side.

The maximum number of backconnect proxy connections you can open depends on your proxy plan. Storm Proxies offers different plans ranging from 40 to 150 simultaneous connections. The lowest plan provides one IP address, and the highest includes 3 IP addresses for different computers. Users get unlimited bandwidth, so there’s no need to worry about your data scraping volumes.

Storm Proxies’ backconnect proxies were reliable during our test. We liked that the pools rotated automatically while we surfed the web seamlessly. We chose the option for a new IP address with every request, enabling us to bypass geo-restrictions more effectively, although we encountered a few request failures. The main drawback remains Storm Proxies’ limited 700,000-IP pool, unlike many competitors that give access to tens of millions of global IPs.

It’s worth noting some features that Storm Proxies lack. The first is a web scraping API, which many competitors provide. Web scraping is the most common use case for proxy servers, so many proxy providers offer APIs to assist users. This feature lets people kill two birds with one stone: getting reliable proxies and the APIs to leverage those proxies for data scraping.

Web scraping APIs let you automate massive data scraping tasks. You’ll choose the website you want to scrape from and select your data type, and the API fetches the data. The timing depends on the volume of data being scraped. APIs let you automate scraping tasks ahead of time. Unfortunately, Storm Proxies doesn’t provide this feature.

We don’t like that Storm Proxies doesn’t offer bandwidth-based pricing plans, which can be more economical for small users. If you need just a few GB of proxy bandwidth, it’ll be more cost-effective to pay for precisely that rather than subscribe to a monthly plan you won’t fully utilize. We also don’t like this platform’s limited geographical reach, with servers primarily in the US and EU. But if you’re looking for reliable proxies in these regions, Storm Proxies is an excellent choice.

Storm Proxies: Ease of Use

Storm Proxies offers a simple dashboard that we found easy to use. Setting up your proxies is as simple as it gets, helped by its limited features (there's not much to navigate). Creating an account requires your full name and email address. Then, you'll be asked to select a plan, although you can register without paying initially. After registration, you’ll be taken to the dashboard to access the proxies you paid for.

The user interface is simple, with all options at the top and the main dashboard below. From this menu, you can renew your plan, deploy new proxies, change credentials, and whitelist IPs. However, we noticed a user interface-related drawback: the lack of usage reports.

Most proxies we've tested provide extensive usage reports, letting users know how much bandwidth they've consumed over time. But Storm Proxies doesn’t have this feature, which we consider a disadvantage. On the bright side, Storm Proxies offers unlimited bandwidth, so you don’t need to monitor your usage rigorously.

Storm Proxies: Customer Support

Customer support is an area where Storm Proxies needs considerable improvement. It claims to offer "24/7 Premium Support, but this support is only available via email. There's no live chat or telephone option to communicate with support staff real-time. You can wait up to 24 hours to get a response to a support email. Storm Proxies’ support system isn’t the best when you need solutions to urgent issues.

There's an official Knowledge Base with solutions to common user challenges, e.g., “How do I start using proxies?” You can consult this Knowledge Base after encountering any issue, then seek direct support if you don’t find a solution to it.

Storm Proxies: The Competition

The proxy server industry is very competitive, meaning we can give Storm Proxies an endless list of formidable competitors. We’d like to highlight PacketStream, Bright Data, and Oxylabs as the main rivals.

PacketStream is a P2P proxy platform that lets users buy and sell residential proxies among themselves. Unlike Storm Proxies, it only offers residential proxies and does not offer datacenter IPs. Yet, PacketStream’s pool of 7 million+ IPs is much larger than Storm’s 700,000-strong proxy pool.

Bright Data is a stellar proxy provider that offers residential, datacenter, ISP, and mobile proxies. It also offers sophisticated web scraping APIs, letting users kill two birds with one stone. Overall, we consider Bright Data a better proxy service than Storm Proxies, albeit a more expensive one.

Oxylabs has a massive pool of 102 million+ proxies, compared to Storm Proxies’ miniscule 700,000. It provides residential, datacenter, ISP, and mobile proxies plus web scraping APIs and pre-built datasets. Oxylabs is a more sophisticated proxy provider than Storm Proxies. However, unlike Storm Proxies, which offers unlimited bandwidth, its residential IPs are bandwidth-limited.

Storm Proxies: Final verdict

Storm Proxies is not the most sophisticated proxy provider. It offers only residential proxies, has limited customer support, and has a small proxy pool. However, it’s one of the most cost-effective residential proxy providers you can choose. If you need US and EU residential proxies for little data scraping, Storm Proxies is an excellent choice. But, it’s not suitable for massive data scraping tasks.

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