Smartproxy Review – Excellent Residential Proxy Service

• Smartproxy review in a nutshell
• Proxy types
• Proxy location
• Proxy client
• IP source
• IP rotation
• IP replacement
• Authentication
• Bandwidth
• Speed & Performance
• Usage restrictions
• Trial period
• Pricing
• Payment methods
• Moneyback & Refund policy
• Support
• Control Panel
• Conclusion

Smartproxy is an excellent provider of residential proxies, ideal for web scraping, managing multiple social accounts, coping sneakers, buying tickets, or access local data. This Smartproxy review presents the main features of the service as well as its pros and cons.

Smartproxy review in a nutshell

Proxy types

Smartproxy offers residential proxies and data center shared proxies. Proxies are implemented as high anonymous proxies and use the HTTP/HTTPS protocol.

Residential proxies

The Smartproxy residential proxies are offered in 195+ locations, from a 10M IP pool, with a 3.1s average response time (according to the Smartproxy website). These proxies are ideal for web scraping, coping sneakers, unblocking Facebook, promoting your Instagram account, access Twitter unrestricted, posting on Craigslist.

Datacenter shared proxies

The data center proxies or shared proxies are located in US and EU. They are offered with no connection limits, no IP limits, and rotating IPs in 100+ subnets. Thus you can be sure you are not blocked or cloaked.

Proxy location

Smartproxy offers endpoints in more than 195+ countries around the world. The top proxy locations are the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, India, Japan.

Proxy client

Smartproxy residential proxies can be used in (almost) any scenario that involves changing your public IP address.

Manual configuration

All major web browsers allow proxy setup and they can route your Internet traffic through HTTP/HTTPS or SOCKS proxies.

The proxies offered by Smartproxy can be used in the same way as any other proxy. The first step is to navigate to Dashboard > Endpoints and choose your desired proxy location and IP rotation mode (Rotating or Sticky). Next, you will get access to a proxy address and a proxy port.

Proxy browser extensions

Further, here is a step-by-step tutorial on how to set up proxies on Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari. Additionally, the HTTP proxies can be configured on iPhone/iPad and Android devices.

Proxy extensions or proxy add-ons allow fast management of the proxy settings. The one that I recommend is FoxyProxy that works for Firefox, as well as for Chrome. For Smartproxy, you need to use the proxy endpoint (e.g., gb.smartproxy.com and port 30000) for the proxy IP and port.

Proxy software or proxy bots

Smartproxies are suitable to be used by proxy bots, scraper software (ScrapeBox, Scrapy Proxy Middleware, Parsehub), sneaker bots (AIO Bot – proxy setup on AIO Bot, Nike Bot, Another Nike Bot, SneakerHead-Bot, Easy Cop Ultimate), social media tools (Tinder Bot, Jarvee), other types of proxy tools (Elite Proxy Switcher, Proxifier).

Use the proxies programmatically

Proxies can easily be used programmatically to build your own scripts and applications. In order to connect to the proxies, you may use the username/password or the IP based authentication.

For example, in PHP, you may call the cURL function similarly to the code below:

$username = ‘username’;
$password = ‘password’;
$proxy = ‘gate.smartproxy.com:7000’;
$target = curl_init(‘http://ip.smartproxy.com/’);
curl_setopt($target, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($target, CURLOPT_PROXY, $proxy);
curl_setopt($target, CURLOPT_PROXYUSERPWD, “$username:$password”);
$result = curl_exec($target);
curl_close($target);
if ($result) echo $result;

Similarly, you may use the Smartproxy proxies from Python, Node.js, Java, C#, Ruby, Perl.

IP source

Smartproxy uses data center IPs and residential zone IP addresses, depending on the package.

IP rotation

Rotating proxies (aka backconnect proxies) are available. For each connection request, you get access to a new proxy. However, if you need to use the same proxy IP for a longer period you may switch to sticky sessions and use the same IP address for up to 30 minutes.

IP replacement

Due to the IP rotation system, there is no need for IP replacement. Simply, open a new session, and you will be assigned a new IP.

Authentication

You may choose the authentication method: basic HTTP authentication (username and password) or IP based. You may whitelist your IPs (up to 3) by creating sub-users in the Client Area (Dashboard).

Bandwidth

The residential proxies are charged by used bandwidth. Check the pricing section for more details. Unlimited bandwidth is available for the data center proxies.

Speed & Performance

For the Smartproxy speed test, I used a test account with access to residential proxies. I switched between several locations and tested the speed using Speedtest.net.

The download speed was (mostly) good (8-10 Mbps from my location) and the connection stable. However, I noticed the following two issues: on some networks (the UK or Asia) the speed was significantly lower (2-3Mbps), and for certain proxies, the upload speed could not be computed by Speedtest.net (probably due to some server settings).

Here are several of the Smartproxy speed test results:

Note: The speed test was performed in Europe, on a macOS machine using the Firefox browser.

Usage restrictions

The Smartproxy service cannot be used for any activities specified in the licensing agreement.

Trial period

No free trial is available, due to abuses. However, you may benefit from the 3-day money-back guarantee.

Pricing

The Smartproxy pricing for residential proxies is based on the used bandwidth and it starts at $15/GB for the smallest package.

The pricing for datacenter proxies is not publicly available and you need to contact the Smartproxy sales team for a custom quote.

Payment methods

Smartproxy uses Paddle as the payment processor and accepts the following payment methods: credit cards, PayPal, Bitcoin. For BTC payment you need to contact the support team.

Moneyback & Refund policy

Smartproxy offers a 3-day money-back guarantee. However, you are entitled to a full refund only if you have not used more than 20% of your plan traffic.

No refund is granted after the first 3 days of the service. Also, bitcoin payments are not refundable.

Support

The Smartproxy support team is available 24/7 for email and chat support.

Control Panel

The Smartproxy proxy management dashboard is simple and it allows you to:

• See your traffic usage.
• Select the proxy locations (Endpoints) and the proxy rotation type (Rotating or Sticky).
• Create sub-users for different tasks and track their traffic.
• Whitelist IPs.
• Upgrade or downgrade your subscription.

The user documentation is extensive and consists of many ‘how to set up’ tutorials.

Conclusion