Proxies are an essential tool for many businesses and individuals but choosing one type over another is a hit-and-miss game. Especially when you don’t know what comes with your choice, in this article, we will examine the five benefits of private proxies while comparing them to shared ones.
Proxies and Private Proxies
Proxies act as middlemen between you and the internet, ensuring anonymity and allowing you to bypass geo-restrictions. These functions are achieved by changing your IP address – a unique sequence of numbers identifying every device on the internet. If you connect to a proxy before you visit the web, your IP address will remain hidden.
Proxies are servers that can allow others to connect to the internet through them. Private proxies provide only exclusive access to one user, while shared ones can support multiple connections concurrently. If a shared proxy is limited to only a handful of users, it is called a semi-dedicated proxy.
Most proxy providers sell these proxy types as different products, pairing them with two main proxy types:
Datacenter proxies provide virtual IP addresses that originate from servers in data centers. They use business-tier internet that isn’t affiliated with internet service providers (ISPs).
Residential proxies originate from ordinary homes, so their IP addresses are verified by ISPs and tied to physical devices on which they run.
Finding private, semi-dedicated, or shared data center proxies is common because they can provide enough speed to allow multiple users to connect. Moreover, these proxies are created in bulk, so providers have large pools of IPs. Therefore, to avoid bans while sharing, you need many IPs.
On the other hand, residential proxies are rarely shared and more frequently sold with exclusive access. The reason is that residential connections are too slow to support thousands of users simultaneously. In addition, residential IPs are unique and would be hard to replace if some user might ban them.
The same goes for other types, such as mobile or ISP proxies, as their setup would not allow a high number of users concurrently. However, even when the provider can supply you with any option, it is always best to choose private proxies. Five benefits of private proxies are undeniable.
Speed
Having exclusive access to a proxy server at your disposal ensures better connection speeds than sharing it with others. Even if you share data center proxies, which can support huge bandwidths, their performance will be significantly slower than having access all to yourself.
You can never know how many people are connected to the same server or what they do in real-time. Most shared proxies do not provide traffic information, and you can only guess it from how fast it works.
Highly demanding tasks (for example, large-scale web scraping) can use almost unlimited bandwidth. You can run multiple errands concurrently without losing speed if your scraper supports it. An hour’s work can be done in minutes with a private proxy.
Reliability
Private proxies are not only faster but also more predictable in their performance. Shared proxies tend to perform differently at different hours. In more busy times, usually during business hours, the performance drops as more people flock to connect to them. It is not the case with private proxies.
Private access means no one else is using the proxy, whether at a busy hour or not. It also helps to deal with downtimes more efficiently since fewer factors impact them. Of course, external causes might still lead to downtimes, but private proxies are usually prioritized in such cases.
Legitimacy
Legitimacy is best ensured by not sharing access with other users. Many websites have strict rules on what visitors can do on their websites. If they are using spam bots or breaching terms of use in any other way, the IP address will likely get banned.
You might not even know it before you need it, but shared IP addresses are banned on many websites around the internet. Your progress may be stopped, and you will waste time even if you do not have any wrong intentions. With private proxies, you will not face any legitimacy issues.
Pricing
While it is true that shared proxies are cheaper initially, the pricing of private ones might lower your expenses in the long run. However, due to slow speeds, poor reliability, and legitimacy, shared proxies will cost you more time, and time is money.
With private proxies, you won’t be paying for concurrent sessions started or bandwidth used. Instead, you purchase a pool of private IP addresses in your selected location and can use as much traffic as you want. It’s a superior pricing model for most applications.
Applicability
All the benefits of private proxies solidify them as the most widely applicable type. Therefore, it is recommended to use them for the majority of tasks. Private proxies are the better choice, even when shared proxies can do the work.
Anonymous browsing is the most straightforward use of proxies. You can set them up in your browser, PC, or dedicated software and surf the web more securely. However, private proxies are the best choice as shared ones will be slower, and some websites can be inaccessible due to IP bans.
Email protection is where businesses use private proxies to increase their security. Special software, along with proxies, is used to scan incoming emails and block spam, malware, or other threats. Using shared proxies is not an option since it can expose companies’ data and slow down the work.
Web scraping collects publicly available data with bots. Private proxies contribute while keeping everything anonymous and safe. The most common purposes for collecting data are review monitoring, market research, ad verification, and brand protection.
Wrapping up
The five benefits of private proxies – speed, reliability, legitimacy, pricing, and applicability, make them the best choice for most cases. If you are still uncertain about which proxies to choose, going with private ones of any kind won’t let you down.
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