Those collecting public web data depend on the reliability of proxies they are using. Different web scraping tasks might benefit from different types of proxies, and while some might require the most advanced solutions, others will be perfectly done with the more accessible products. How not to get lost between the options, especially if you’re new to collecting public web data?
Oxylabs, a leading public data gathering solutions provider, has just launched a new product – Shared Datacenter Proxies. Their Commercial Product Owner Nedas Visniauskas explains how it differs from other types of proxies and shares tips on choosing the best fit for your case.
Nedas Visniauskas, Commercial Product Owner at Oxylabs
What are shared datacenter proxies and how do they differ from other types of proxies?
First of all, there are two main types of proxies: datacenter proxies and residential proxies. Each type can then be divided into subtypes depending on specific characteristics.
Datacenter proxies can be dedicated and shared. For a long time, we only offered dedicated datacenter proxies. However, listening to the feedback of our current and potential customers, we’ve introduced shared datacenter proxies to our proxy family.
The names of these proxies speak for themselves – dedicated proxies are dedicated only for the use of a particular customer, while shared proxies can be used by different customers at the same time. This is what makes shared datacenter proxies the most accessible ones – they are very cost-efficient.
At Oxylabs, we offer a huge high quality pool of 20 000 shared datacenter proxies from 6 locations. They come with automatic proxy rotation, meaning that you can get a new IP address for every request, and they also support maintaining sessions in order to reuse the same IPs when needed. With shared proxies you can get very cheap data as it is billed by traffic.
Are there any risks associated with the part of sharing?
The only risk is that shared datacenter proxies might get blocked more often than dedicated datacenter proxies or residential proxies, but it all depends on how they are used: which websites you’re scraping, how many requests you are sending, and what other customers are doing.
This is the nature of shared proxies – they depend on how different clients are using them at the same time. Yet still, it is a perfect entry product and a completely sufficient one for many use cases. I suggest trying it out and seeing how it works for your particular task. It might be that you don’t really need dedicated proxies, and with the shared ones you can get the same data at a fraction of the price.
What are the best or the most popular use cases for shared datacenter proxies?
The use cases for shared datacenter proxies are basically the same as for dedicated datacenter proxies.
Ecommerce businesses might use these proxies for price monitoring, market research, public review monitoring, and website change monitoring. Finance companies might benefit from a reliable and cost-efficient solution for collecting alternative data. Digital advertising companies that need to get market intelligence, might collect it using these proxies. Even travel companies might use it if the locations we offer meet their needs.
If the use cases for different proxies are similar, how should we distinguish when it’s best to use dedicated datacenter proxies, shared datacenter proxies and when – residential proxies? How to choose the product wisely?
Well, first of all, the answer lies in the scope of your scraping tasks. Which websites are you planning to scrape? How many requests are you planning to send? What anti-bot measures do those websites have? Which locations do you need to scrape from?
Let’s say, you need to check some specialized websites – they are not necessarily niche, but do not get in the list of the world’s most scraped pages. With shared datacenter proxies, you will get the best value for your money – they will do the task perfectly and will cost much cheaper than other options.
Meanwhile, if you’re doing continuous scraping and your business insights would suffer from any interruptions, you might want to choose dedicated proxies.
If you’re from an enterprise that scrapes very heavily, needs personalized solutions and requires many different locations, residential proxies might be the best fit.
However, if you’re unsure, I would always recommend trying out different proxies to see which works best specifically for your business. There are so many factors that might affect the proxy performance on different websites, that it’s not always possible to put everything in the boxes easily.
Interesting Related Article: “How Are Proxies Different from VPNs?“