Shifter Cons

Shifter has been rated as one of the best and most popular providers in the proxy market. Established far back in 2012, Shifter aims to implement the best proxy quality and performance. The market has a ton of providers these days, with new ones popping up almost every day. Even though there are some Shifter cons, it has remained one of the strongest options today.

Shifter is still one of the best providers offering quality proxy services at an affordable cost with a whopping 31M IPs. Though it is one of the best, it is not without fault. There are some noticeable flaws with Shifter, as well as technical cons associated with its use. The purpose of this article is only to bring to your attention the flaws in Shifter. You can choose, however, to ignore these flaws by looking on the brighter side of things.

Limited Proxy Locations

Shifter has a limited number of locations for its proxies. Some clients have complained of receiving non-geo-selected IPs. While they have used the default proxy settings for US access and made no other changes, Mongolia or Hong Kong were displayed when using the proxies.

If you are looking for proxies that allow geo-targeting from multiple locations, check out SmartProxy, which is available in over 195 countries worldwide. If you want more residential IPs, you can also look into Bright Data, which offers a pool of 72M IPs for homes across the world, from top locations like the US, UK, Russia, Asia, and Italy.

No free trial period

Not having a free trial is one of the biggest cons. Although Shifter offers a trial policy for new users, they have to fully pay for their proxy plan to test the service to see if it matches the standards of their project. This makes it unfavorable for skeptical proxy users. However, Shifter guarantees a full refund within 3 days of purchase except for Bitcoin purchases.

For individuals looking for a proxy for the first time, proxy services such as NetNut are unquestionably the finest alternative. With a proxy strategy, you can simply get about without committing.

Short trial period

The 3 days paid trial period offered by Shifter is not the best. This is why it made it to our Shifter cons list. In the end, 3 days is simply not sufficient time to fully evaluate the proxy’s performance to determine whether it effectively meets the purpose for which the user intends to buy the proxy plan.

NetNut is known for offering free trials for up to an entire week which is very impressive. It offers users up to 7 days of the free trial. It is enough time for you to decide whether their proxies are worth your time and money. ProxyRack also offers a paid trial up to 14 days. Users are guaranteed a full refund if they are not satisfied with their performance after purchasing the proxy plan. 

Not the cheapest

Using Shifter backconnect services, residential and datacenter proxies are available starting at $250 a month, which is not the cheapest you can get on the market. Shifter provides cheaper plans as compared to other providers like Bright Data (formerly Luminati). But users requiring a large number of IP addresses might end up spending more than with another provider.

Premium proxy providers like Oxylabs offer datacenter proxies for as low as $180 per month subscription. This plan comes with unlimited bandwidth as they charge per the number of IPs. ProxyRack, another provider known for providing very cheap proxy plans, offers private residential proxies for just $65.95 per month.

Not very fast

Shifter is quick, but it lags behind other suppliers. This is especially true when there are a significant number of concurrent connections. Shifter’s proxies often run incredibly quickly when running a few connections at once, making them appropriate for tasks that do not require many connections. According to users of Reddit who have evaluated Shifter, the proxies perform mediocrely when many connections are going simultaneously.

Bright Data is a good option if you want to get things done quickly. It is well-known for providing one of the fastest proxy speeds on the market. Even though they provide many benefits, they can be expensive and have limited bandwidth depending on how much data is sent each month.

No Live Chat

Shifter has an excellent customer support team to assist you when the need arises, but it lacks a live chat feature, a common tool that most proxy users consider to be mandatory. Shifter makes use of tickets rather than live chat, which is one of the Shifter cons. Their users who we came across said it would be great to have the ability to communicate and receive help directly from the dashboard.

Users may communicate with online representatives directly and instantly via live chats. As a result, you may get assistance without having to submit a ticket or send an email. Infatica, yet another excellent proxy service provider, allows customers to speak directly with agents via their live chat. Oxylabs‘ live chat responds very quickly. This enables users to engage with agents in real-time.

Conclusion

In the proxy business, people consider Shifter as one of the best and leading providers. It highlights some of the best and most interesting features you will ever find. But, like every other provider, Shifter is not flawless. 

The choice as to whether Shifter is suitable for your project is up to you to decide. Before settling down, take a look at Shifter cons mentioned above. Check out the alternatives above in terms of other providers.