Smartproxy’s Cons

Currently, Smartproxy is one of the most well-known proxy providers in the proxy market for offering cheaper premium proxy solutions to users. It offers high-quality proxies, a user-friendly dashboard, and 24-hour customer service support, making their use worthwhile. Smartproxy provides a wide range of proxies, from rotating proxies, backconnect proxies, unlimited proxies, shared proxies, anonymous proxies, HTTP proxies, and IPv4 proxies. In this article, you will find out some of Smartproxy’s cons.

With their numerous subscription rates, you will undoubtedly find a bundle that fits your budget. Data scraping/mining, affiliate testing, and ad verification can all be accomplished using Smartproxy’s IP addresses. SmartProxy is also an excellent choice for most social networking platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, and Pinterest. Though not the cheapest on the market today, SmartProxy offers residential proxies for as little as $75 a month, with 5GB of bandwidth included and additional GBs available for $15.

Smartproxy’s Cons

SmartProxy, as a proxy service, is not without flaws. Particular characteristics and drawbacks of SmartProxy as a provider may make it unsuitable for some proxy users or projects. However, as we explore some of these restrictions, you must determine whether SmartProxy is appropriate for you.

Limited Geo-Targeting 

I will begin my discussion by talking about the geo-targeting limitation as the first item on our Smartproxy’s cons list. As a provider, it offers proxies across more than 195 locations worldwide. However, the provider seems to flop a little bit when it comes to city-level targeting. This is usually not a problem for users who are not necessarily looking for granular targeting options. State- or country-level targeting is mostly enough for such users.

SmartProxy only offers city-level targeting for a few cities in the US, UK, and Europe. In addition to New York, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and Miami, cities with city-level targeting include London, Moscow, and Berlin. You need to consider alternative options like StormProxies or Oxylabs if your project needs city-level targeting, such as sneaker copping.

Slow Email Support

The delay in help, even for a minute, can cause stress when you are trying to succeed in your endeavors. Customer support is one aspect of the proxy business on which customers base their final decisions on purchasing plans.

SmartProxy offers a 24-hour customer support service with live chat and email support as well. Unfortunately, SmartProxy is not doing quite well with its email support, but the live chat is super fast. 

The majority of consumers who requested assistance via email support reported having to wait longer than expected for a response. Even though they had to wait for hours for an answer, they said it was worth it. However, I feel that the fast delivery of information should never be neglected. As a result, email assistance is one of Smartproxy’s drawbacks.

There is always a better option when it comes to quick email responses. Infatica allows users to request assistance through support tickets and emails. According to their Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), Infatica replies to emails within four hours. To actually prove this, I submitted a ticket and received help from the support team by email in just five minutes, which is very impressive. Infatica also has a very intuitive live chat, though slightly primitive.

Limited Bandwidth

Purchasing additional GBs while using proxies through your monthly subscription is a hassle you might dislike. Unfortunately, with this provider, users have to go through this experience. This is one of Smartproxy’s cons. This is because SmartProxies charge based on GBs, and, therefore, once your allocated data transfer limit is reached, you have to purchase additional GBs.

If you are looking for unlimited bandwidth to complete your project, then you can look up Shifter. It is one of the best premium proxy providers, offering residential proxies with unlimited bandwidth from a pool of over 31 million IPs at a very competitive price. StormProxies and ProxyRack also offer cheap residential proxies with unlimited bandwidth.

No SOCKS5 Support

No SOCKS5 support is one of the most important Smartproxy’s cons. The fact that SmartProxy only supports HTTP and HTTPS protocols is another disappointing aspect of SmartProxy as a proxy provider. In other words, SmartProxy isn’t the right choice for users working on projects that require SOCKS-compatible proxy servers.

As a result, a provider such as SmartProxy will struggle to differentiate itself from its competitors, as most are adding SOCKS4/4A/5 to their HTTP(S) proxies. Oxylabs, for instance, has an entire pool of SOCKS5 supported premium residential IPs specially selected for users who might require them.

If you are looking for a proxy provider that supports HTTP/HTTPS, as well as SOCKS5, then you can check RSocks. It offers premium residential, datacenter, and mobile proxies across 68 countries around the globe, with 36 mobile operators in various cities. You can also check out ProxyRack or Shifter for affordable proxies with SOCKS5 support.

Conclusion

Smartproxy is undoubtedly one of the best premium residential proxy providers on the market. It offers cheap proxy solutions from over 195 geolocations worldwide. Some of their users claim that their proxies are unblockable and undetectable, deeming SmartProxy a reliable and safe choice for their projects.

Though SmartProxy is one of the finest, it does have certain drawbacks that may make it unsuitable for your project. The disadvantages of Smartproxy include data transfer limitations, a lack of city-level targeting, and a lack of SOCKS5 protocol compatibility. Before choosing a new proxy service, check out the alternatives listed above.