Using a proxy server can benefit your business greatly. You can collect price and product information from giants like Amazon to stay ahead of the competition. Or, you can prevent ad fraud. And these are just a few examples of how a proxy can boost your business.
Datacenter equipment. Image credit: ananitit via Pixabay, free licence
There are two main types of proxies used in business – datacenter and residential. Let’s see how the two compare and what benefits they can bring to your team.
What Are Datacenter Proxies
Datacenter proxies are IP addresses held in servers of cloud and web hosting companies like Google Cloud and Amazon AWS. In essence, a datacenter proxy server routes your traffic through itself and provides you with an IP from a location of your preference.
There are two types of datacenter proxies: shared and private. You can buy IPs and use them with several people or get addresses you won’t share with anyone. The type you choose depends on your specific needs. For example, if you simply want to access content in another country, shared proxies will do just fine. But if you need a more stable identity, go for a private address.
Datacenter proxies don’t rotate by default, so they’re not ideal for use cases like web scraping. And even if you set up rotation, you’ll have a finite proxy pool to work with.
Datacenter IPs are fast and stable because the servers they’re held in have fast internet. This type of proxy won’t slow down your connection. Additionally, they come with unlimited traffic and providers often sell them by IPs rather than GBs because they are not tied to a specific physical location like residential addresses.
In terms of pricing, datacenter proxies are the cheapest from all types of proxies. You can get shared IPs for cents, and private proxies for as little as $1.
However, datacenter addresses come with some limitations. First and foremost, they’re easy to detect, so they won’t work with websites that have strong anti-bot systems. Then, you’ll get fewer locations compared to residential proxies; the number usually lingers up to 30 countries. Lastly, datacenter proxies tend to come in related blocks of IPs, meaning that they can get blocked in one go.
What Are Residential Proxies
Residential proxies are IP addresses borrowed from real user devices like laptops, smartphones – anything connected to Wi-Fi. With a residential proxy, your connection not only goes through a proxy server, but also a person’s device before it reaches the target website.
One of the biggest strengths of residential proxies is that they are highly anonymous. That’s because you connect through a real device, so it’s practically impossible to detect you from a regular user. What’s more, residential addresses come in big proxy pools. This translates to many locations and high IP diversity, so users won’t block a range of addresses at once.
Residential proxies rotate by default, so there’s no effort here – simply select rotation intervals, and the service provider will handle everything else. If you need to hold the same IP for a longer period of time, providers offer sticky sessions. For example, you can keep one address for 10 to 30 minutes.
However, not all glitter is gold. Residential proxies are more expensive than datacenter counterparts. The average price is between $7 to $15 for 1 GB of traffic. They are also slower and less reliable since your connection depends on the end user, who can disconnect anytime.
The Main Difference between Residential vs Datacenter Proxies
Here’s how datacenter and residential proxies compare with one another:
|
Datacenter |
Residential |
|
|
Source |
Servers in data centers |
Real user devices |
|
Speed |
High |
Medium |
|
Stability |
High |
Low to medium |
|
Locations |
Few |
Many |
|
Anonymity |
Low |
High |
|
Rotation |
Manual or automatic |
Automatic |
|
Price |
Low |
High |
Why Use Residential and Datacenter Proxies as a Business?
Both residential and datacenter proxies are popular choices in business. Let’s look at the major use cases.
1. Web Scraping
Web scraping is probably the most popular proxy use case. It allows businesses to automatically gather large amounts of publicly available information from websites that don’t offer an official API or it’s very limited. In this case, proxies help businesses to make multiple requests to a target website without getting blocked.
2. Market Research
For market research, you need to collect product data, pricing information, customer reviews, and other relevant data points. In this case, proxies help speed up the process and provide you with access to information in different locations. Additionally, a proxy will help you circumvent blocks from well-protected websites like eBay.
3. Building SEO Strategy
Proxies are also used by many companies that implement SEO practices. Businesses build software to gather information from different search engines like Google or Bing Popular SEO cases include rank tracking, SERP analysis, or keyword research. This way, they get insights into the competitive landscape and ways to improve SEO strategy.
4. Managing Multiple Social Media Accounts
Social media platforms are strict about how many profiles you can create and manage from the same IP address. While this makes sense, marketers struggle to keep up with these restrictions. Let’s say you have a business of managing 100 accounts. If the social media platform sees that you’re doing that from the same IP address, it might block all the profiles. Proxies can help you avoid this outcome.
5. Ad Verification
Businesses that use proxies in advertising can check their ads on a large scale because they allow you to change the location. For example, you can show ads based on the user’s geographical location. Additionally, ad fraudsters sometimes block the IPs of ad verification companies. In this case, you won’t be able to monitor ads. A proxy helps here, too.
6. Brand Protection
A business that wants to protect its brand needs to go through numerous websites and check for copyright infringement. Infringers impose mechanisms that hide content from certain visitors depending on their identity online. Proxy can give you a new IP address and location.