Private proxies do more than merely hide your identity on the web. Find out in this guide how they can help your business too.
Private proxies also go by the names stealth or hidden proxies.
However, that is the case for all proxies — so what makes the private proxy any different? Let’s first examine the two leading proxy types. Then we’ll better understand whether a private proxy is suitable for your business.
What’s a residential proxy?
Residential proxies are servers that Internet Service Providers create. These proxies are real, physical machines and provide you with residential IP addresses. You technically share these IP addresses with others who are rotating their IPs as you are.
View more information on residential proxies.
These shared IPs are the best choice for ad verification, pricing intelligence data gathering, sneaker bots, and many other internet activities where maintaining the identity of a regular consumer is critical.
Pros & cons of shared residential IPs
Residential IPs come from real mobile and desktop devices. At IP Burger, we have over 75 million of these IPs that you can rotate. Inherently, we have them in nearly every city across the globe, ensuring our users have high availability, unlimited connections, and threads.
Residential proxies virtually guarantee no IP blocks. This should stir your mojo if you want to manage multiple social media accounts or access geo-restricted content.
In exchange for invincibility, you sacrifice some stability and speed.
Read more about the ultimate IP Scrambler in our blog if you want to know more.
What’s a data center proxy?
On the other hand, virtual machines on powerful servers host datacenter proxies. One server can host large amounts of proxies without compromising connection speeds. These private IPs are perfect for performing traffic-intensive activities like email protection, web scraping, or market research.
A datacenter proxy is a virtual IP address created by a server. Businesses generally provide these dedicated IP addresses instead of Internet Service Providers.
Pros & cons of dedicated datacenter IPs
Dedicated (or private) datacenter proxies are beasts; they’re fast. To top it up, they’re stable and a perfect cost-saving solution for any proficient proxy user.
So, if you don’t need to rotate your proxies automatically and require complete control of the IP address, this one is for you.
Private datacenter proxies are great for SEO projects, multiple account management, and scraping eCommerce en masse.
As a warning, datacenter proxies often trigger anti-bot detection, resulting in IP bans. And since they often share the same subnet, it’s not uncommon to lose numerous IPs at once, even if only one gets a ban.
So, if you aren’t fluent in proxy, go for a shared residential.
What can you use private proxies for?
You can use proxies for many different purposes, such as:
- Access blocked websites and content in your country (like Facebook) without being detected by the government or ISP. For example, if you live in China and want to access Facebook from there, you will need a private proxy server that Chinese censors do not block.
- Use sneaker bots to cop limited edition shoes for your sneaker resale business. Or just get your hands on some Jordans before they sell out. Be careful though — many foot sites catch onto datacenter IPs and limit interactions with them.
- Access websites that have been banned in your region (for example, Reddit). These sites are usually hosted abroad, and their IP addresses change frequently. Using a private proxy allows you to bypass these restrictions and gain access to them whenever they become available.
- Use proxies services on public WiFi hotspots such as Starbucks or Mcdonald’s without getting caught by the network administrator.
- Protect yourself from hackers who may try to steal information about you while browsing online with an encrypted connection through a private proxy server at home or work.
- Bypass geo-restrictions when accessing torrent sites like The Pirate Bay etc.
- Preventing ISPs from tracking your internet usage via third-party cookies installed on some websites (e.g., Google Analytics).
- Bypass ISP throttling when downloading large files (e.g., video, music) over the internet.
- View content on Youtube from anywhere in the world without censorship.
Private datacenter proxies or shared residential proxies?
Whether you need a dedicated datacenter or residential proxy depends not only if you’re an advanced user but also on the sites you target and the goals of your scraping projects. Here’s how it usually goes:
Residential proxies are excellent for extra-sensitive targets.
You can use residential proxies for web scraping sensitive web pages, managing multiple social media accounts globally, affiliate testing, ad verification, and SEO research, to name a few projects.
If you’re a sneakerhead, you should combine these with ISP proxies for the biggest hauls on sites like Nike, Footlocker, and Shopify.
These proxies are also the only ones you can use for price verification, ad targeting, and brand monitoring because of their ability to rotate within specific city targets.
Dedicated datacenter proxies are fast and cheap for large-scale projects.
Top projects include scraping eCommerce as well as doing competitor analysis. For example, some companies use these proxies to monitor and compare prices for internal purposes or provide aggregation services. Other businesses follow product demand and trends gathering data from top products or customer reviews.
In the end, residential proxies are far more reliable, even though they may not be as affordable initially. But if you consider your time, successful connections, and potential problems with anti-bot detection, shared residential takes the W.
Whatever you decide, check out our residential proxy inventory. Chances are, you’ll need some residential IP rotation for harder-to-get targets and data collection tasks.
