As a veteran in the web data industry, I‘ve tried my fair share of residential proxies over the years. But Smartproxy caught my eye recently with two major additions to their product lineup – ISP proxies and expanded SOCKS5 support.
These offerings address previous gaps between Smartproxy and the proxy elite, demonstrating their commitment to providing robust, flexible tools for web scraping and data extraction.
In this post, I‘ll break down these new offerings through the lens of an experienced proxy user and scraper. Let‘s dive in!
Contents
ISP Proxies – The Gold Standard for Reliability
First up – Smartproxy‘s new ISP proxies. To understand why these are special, we need to explore the core difference between ISP and residential proxies.
Residential proxies use IP addresses dynamically assigned to home internet users. The benefit is you get millions of IPs to choose from, making it easy to rotate IP and maintain anonymity.
However, residential IPs come and go offline frequently as users turn on/off devices. For heavy-duty scraping and data extraction, residential proxies carry the risk of IPs going dead during critical jobs.
ISP proxies solve this by using IP addresses directly leased from internet providers. Rather than relying on unpredictable home connections, ISP proxies give you complete control over staic, always-on IPs perfect for intensive scraping workloads.
According to Smartproxy, their ISP proxy pool contains over 16,000 IPs based in the United States. How does this stack up to other leading providers?
| Provider | IP Pool Size |
|---|---|
| Luminati | Over 30 million |
| Oxylabs | 500,000+ |
| Smartproxy | 16,000+ |
| GeoSurf | 10,000+ |
As you can see, Smartproxy‘s ISP proxy network is smaller than proxy giants like Luminati and Oxylabs. However, 16,000+ IPs is extremely substantial given Smartproxy‘s relatively young age starting in 2019.
For reference, proxy veteran GeoSurf only offers around 10,000 ISP IPs globally. Smartproxy‘s US-based pool already exceeds them after just 3 years in business.
Furthermore, Smartproxy‘s ISP proxies appear to be well distributed geographically across the US. According to their documentation, you can target proxies by state or city to pinpoint specific locations.
This level of granular targeting ensures their ISP IPs are diversified and less prone to blocking, a key advantage over providers with more concentrated resources.
Unlocking New Use Cases
In my experience, ISP proxies become essential once you start running large-scale jobs with thousands or millions of daily requests.
Relying solely on residential proxies leads to instability at scale as IPs sporadically drop offline. ISP proxies maintain rock-solid uptime even under immense workloads.
Here are some examples of use cases where I‘d recommend ISP proxies over residential:
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Social Media Marketing – Managing thousands of social accounts via API requires persistent sessions. ISP proxies ensure your IPs stay active even after days or weeks of use.
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Travel Price Aggregation – Sites like Expedia, Priceline, and Airbnb can blacklist IPs, so rotating ISP proxies is key for long-term stable scraping.
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Inventory Monitoring – Checking competitor stock levels daily from retailer sites like Walmart and Target demands always-on proxies.
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Brand Monitoring – Tracking mentions of your brand across forums, reviews, and social media benefits from ISP proxies to prevent blocks.
These use cases require maintaining high request volumes over extended periods of time – conditions where residential proxies often falter while ISP proxies thrive.
Smartproxy‘s ISP Proxy Plans
Smartproxy offers paid ISP proxy plans based on monthly data usage. The starter plan provides 25GB for $300/month, while the top Enterprise plan offers 1TB of data for $6,500/month.
How does Smartproxy‘s ISP proxy pricing compare to competitors? Here‘s a benchmark of popular providers:
| Provider | 5TB/Month | 10TB/Month |
|---|---|---|
| Smartproxy | $18,750 | $32,500 |
| Luminati | $22,500 | $45,000 |
| Oxylabs | $14,160 | $25,920 |
| GeoSurf | $30,000 | $60,000 |
| Storm Proxies | $20,000 | $36,000 |
Based on these figures, Smartproxy prices competitively in the mid-range. For moderate traffic under 5TB/month, they offer among the lowest rates. But volume discounts from Oxylabs and Luminati make them more affordable for extremely large usage.
It‘s also worth noting Smartproxy‘s current ISP proxies only support HTTP and HTTPS protocols. Many competitors offer additional protocols like SOCKS5 out of the box. As an advanced user, I would love to see Smartproxy add broader protocol support in the future.
But overall, Smartproxy‘s new ISP proxy solutions provide an exciting mid-priced option perfect for users with needs in the 1-10TB/month range.
SOCKS5 Support Unlocks New Possibilities
In addition to their shiny new ISP network, Smartproxy has also added SOCKS5 support to their residential and mobile proxies.
This brings them closer to matching top providers who have long offered the SOCKS protocol. While limited compared to premium SOCKS5 features, it‘s a glimpse into the future of Smartproxy‘s proxies.
A Brief SOCKS5 Primer
For the uninitiated, SOCKS5 is a versatile internet protocol that routes traffic through a proxy server. It evolved in the early 90s to overcome limitations of HTTP-only proxies.
Some key benefits SOCKS5 unlocked:
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Protocol Support – Works across multiple protocols like HTTP, FTP, SMTP, and more.
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Encryption – Supports SSL-encrypted connections for added security.
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UDP – Enables UDP-based networking unlike HTTP proxies.
These features made SOCKS5 a linchpin protocol for activities like web scraping that rely on flexibility and encryption. Most advanced proxy tools offer SOCKS5 support as a result.
Why SOCKS5 Matters Today
While SOCKS5 is decades old, it remains arguably the most important proxy protocol in 2022. Here‘s why:
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Ad Verification – SOCKS5 proxies allow advertisers to check ads globally using real residential IPs.
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Price Monitoring – Retail bots use SOCKS5 to watch competitor pricing from different locales.
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Account Creation – Signing up social media and e-commerce accounts benefits from geo-targeting via SOCKS5.
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Web Scraping – SOCKS5 proxies enable scraping complex sites protected by IP blocks and captcha systems.
As you can see, nearly every facet of the web scraping and automation industry relies on robust SOCKS5 functionality.
By adding SOCKS5 support, Smartproxy opened their residential and mobile proxies up to a wider range of use cases. This brings them on par with veteran providers who have long catered to power users via diverse protocol access.
What‘s Next for Smartproxy‘s SOCKS5 Offering?
While welcoming SOCKS5 support, as an advanced user I did notice Smartproxy‘s current offering has limitations:
- No UDP support for Smartproxy‘s SOCKS5 proxies
- Lack of ASN/ISP filtering options
- No browser extension for easy SOCKS configuration
Many premium proxy services like Oxylabs provide advanced SOCKS5 options like these. It leaves room for Smartproxy to further improve their SOCKS5 offering with power user features.
However, the core addition of SOCKS5 opens exciting possibilities for Smartproxy users. And it demonstrates their commitment to continued proxy innovation in step with leaders in the web scraping industry.
I‘m eager to see how Smartproxy builds on top of SOCKS5 support down the road. Robust SOCKS functionality unlocks game-changing potential for their growing base of customers.
Final Thoughts
As someone who relies on proxies daily for web scraping and data extraction, I‘m bullish on Smartproxy‘s recent additions.
Their new ISP network provides rock-solid uptime for heavy workloads, while SOCKS5 support brings new possibilities across their proxy lineup.
Competitively priced plans and continued feature expansion paint the picture of an emerging provider intent on competing with the best of the best.
While not yet on par with immense veteran networks like Luminati and Oxylabs, Smartproxy‘s trajectory is exciting. I can wholeheartedly recommend Smartproxy to anyone seeking mid-range pricing coupled with robust proxies and a dedication to cutting-edge features.
With initiatives like ISP proxies and SOCKS5, Smartproxy is positioning themselves as the next major powerhouse in the proxies space. I‘m excited to see where they innovate next on their quest to deliver a world-class proxy solution.
