Proxyrack Review

Recommended for: Scraping data & YouTube Views & SoundCloud listens

On today’s review list, we have a proxy provider that is well familiar to us. Proxyrack is the company offer both proxies and VPN. Regardless, we will be reviewing their residential proxies and we will give you our unbiassed opinion if you should get proxies from them.

Unlike some of the recent companies that we have reviews, Proxyrack is a company that exists for 7 years. What initially started off as a small one-man company, today it grew into a company with teams on three continents.

The IP pool and list of locations are not breaking any records, but they are certainly not at the bottom of the list. Proxyrack has over 1,250,000 unique private IPs for all packages in over 40 countries in America, Europe, and Asia/Oceania.

Do you want to How does those residential IP proxies providers works? Learn the Luminati.io.

Proxyrack Types and Pricing

Unlike some companies that either sell strictly residential or data center proxies, Proxyrack has a little bit of everything.

The data center proxies come in two varieties: the USA and mixed datacenter proxies. With both, you get a single plan with a certain amount of IP addresses that you get access to. The only difference is the location. The USA data center proxies have only US IPs, while the mixed package has proxies from all over the world.

Since we are reviewing the residential proxies, we will go through the packages that they offer.

Proxyrack has three packages for rotating residential proxies: Standard, Elite and Guru. All packages give users access to over 1,250,000 unique private IPs every month and have unlimited bandwidth. The only things that separate them from each other are the number of maximum simultaneous connections.

Even though Proxyrack doesn’t offer a trial period, they do have a 14-day refund policy which provides more than enough time to test out if their proxies will work for you.

Apart from proxies, Proxyrack also offers the residential VPN. Along with the service they provide a native application with a certain set of features.

One thing that is worth mentioning in regards to payment is the available payment options. If you’re interested in paying with a credit/debit card, you can do that through PayPal, or if you’re into cryptocurrencies, you have few available options to choose from. On their website, it says that they accept payments with Bitcoin, LiteCoin, Ether, Zcash, Zencash, Monero, Dash, and Cloakcoin. On the other hand, in the dashboard, there is only an option to pay with Bitcoin.

Locations of proxy servers

When it comes to locations, Proxyrack isn’t a company that can say that it has IPs in every country in the world. As of this point, they claim to have residential proxies in over 40 countries, but they don’t disclose the list of countries.

Not having the ability to target certain countries is another thing that doesn’t look good for them.

Ping Test & Proxy Speed Test

Regardless of how many features Proxyrack’s proxies have or don’t, we still need to do a test to see how good they are.

The first test is the speed and latency. Having low speeds means that less amount of data can go through that proxy each second, meaning that it will take more time to get the data. Having high ping means that the data will take longer to reach the host.

Before testing the proxies, we did a controlled test on our VPS so that we have something to compare the test results with.

Once we had the base, we ran the test with the proxies. The results are below.

As you can see, the speeds are not breaking any records. We are aware that residential proxies don’t offer great speeds, but in this case, only three of the proxies provided decent speeds, the rest are below average. The latency tells a different story. There isn’t a single ping test that we can say is good enough, they are all above what we would call acceptable.

Geolocation Test / ISP Test

People use residential proxies mostly for their ability to “hide” the real user from the web service that he or she accesses. Among other things, users want the proxies to be from the location where the company claims to be and for those to be good proxies. To see how good Proxyrack’s proxies are, we ran another test.

The results that we got were not what we hoped. In almost all cases, a residential proxy will show as a good proxy in this test. As you can see here, one of Proxyrack’s proxies was identified as a mixed proxy, and another one was identified as a bad IP. Even though the rest were all good IPs, these two IPs that were “bad” don’t paint a good picture. Apart from that, all the proxies are from the claimed locations.

IP address compatibility Test

The final test, or as we like to call it – the real test, shows if the proxies are good or not. In this test, we take several websites that are good at discovering proxies. Once these websites discover that you are trying to access them through a proxy, your access will be disabled.

If we put the results from the previous test aside, Proxyrack passes the IP compatibility test with flying colors. Even the IPs that were previously identified as mixed or bad were able to access almost all of our testing websites, but for its worldwide IP addresses, It may be not so helpful in my views.

Features of Proxyrack Proxy

14-day money back guarantee

It is a shame that they don’t offer a free trial period, but the 14-day money-back guarantees period is almost as good. Getting access to their proxies for two weeks is more than enough to decide if they will work for you.

Unlimited Bandwidth

With Proxyrack the sky is the limit. Actually, there is no limit. All of their proxy packages come with unlimited bandwidth. That means that there is no extra charge.

There are 3 residential IP providers that also offer Unlimited Bandwidth residential proxies, They are the Stormproxies, microleaves, Flipnode.

Multiple authentication methods

For those that are looking for providers that offer IP whitelisting and username/password authentication, Proxyrack will work excellent. You can whitelist up to four IP addresses, and you can also authenticate with a username and password. We will cover this in a section later on.

How to use

Proxyrack’s dashboard might seem difficult to get around, but in reality, it’s quite easy. Unlike most of their competitors, the main navigation panel is on the top, and from there you can navigate through the options.

By navigating to the Rotating Megaproxy menu, you will see the list of the rotating residential proxies that you purchased. There, you have two types of proxies: random and sticky.

Random IP on every request

The random IP address on every request is rotating proxies where each request sent out is through a different IP address. Proxyrack recommends using these IPs for scraping because each new request is sent through a different IP, meaning that the chances of getting blocked are almost nonexistent.

With the rotating proxies, you get the option to use their DNS or use a direct server IP and port. Proxyrack recommends using the DNS in case a server fails or has a high request load so that you can be transferred to a different server.

Sticky IP addresses

Unlike the random IPs, the sticky IP addresses can keep the session active for a certain period. In the description on the dashboard, Proxyrack claims that their static proxies will keep a session active for 3 to 30 minutes. In the setting below, we also say an option to keep it active for 60 minutes.

In either case, this is quite longer than most of its competitors. Same as with other rotating proxies providers, Proxyrack recommends using the DNS so that you can be switched over to a different IP automatically in case of a failure or a high request load.

Regardless if you’re using a static or rotating proxy, once you set up the parameters the rotation is done by Proxyrack’s servers. To help users with implementing the proxies, they have a repository set up on GitHub. There they cover the most commonly used programming languages. You can go through the examples here: https://github.com/proxyrack/API-Examples

Even though these proxies are not intended to be used for browsing, you can still configure the proxy settings on your browser to use them.

One cool feature that Proxyrack has is to choose what you will be using the proxies for. When you go to the Rotating Megaproxy menu, a popup will appear asking you about that. When you select what you will use the proxies for, they will try to optimize their proxies so that you get better results.

How to authenticate

Proxyrack has two ways of authenticating available: with IP whitelist and username and password combination.

IP Whitelist

Whitelisting IPs is a great feature if you are accessing the proxies from a certain computer with a single IP address. The advantage of this is that you don’t have to enter the username and password. To whitelist an IP go to the profile menu, navigate to “Proxy Settings.” Add your IP address in one for the fields and click “Save.” It takes 15 to 20 minutes for the settings to be applied.

Currently, Proxyrack limits the number of whitelisted IPs to four, which might be an inconvenience to some users. A solution to that is to authenticate with a username and password.

Username and password

There is hardly any settings that you can change here. A password is generated automatically, and you can see it in the “Rotating Megaproxy” menu.

Our Editor’s Verdict

There isn’t a perfect proxy provider. Ever one has certain strengths and weaknesses. The story is the same with Proxyrack. They lack certain features that other competitors have, but they have some advantages over them.

Verdict

Proxyrack is one of those companies that we have mixed feelings about. The IP pool and locations around the world are far less than some of their competitors. The speeds and latency aren’t remarkable and might be a cause for concern. As you noticed in the ISP test, two of the IPs were not identified as good. On the other hand, even those two proxies passed the use test and gained access to all strict websites.

Overall Proxyrack is not a bad company to get proxies from. If you are okay with the speeds and latency, IP pool and locations and you are looking for relatively cheap proxies for scraping, then this is the right place.

User’s Reviews & Rating