Webshare.io Review 2024

Overview

I’m following up on the performance of Webshare.io since its launch in 2018. I must admit that initially specializing in datacenter proxies, it still upholds this as its core offering. However, some time ago, this provider also introduced residential IP addresses to its repertoire, focusing primarily on serving entry-level and mid-level clients. Despite being a relative newcomer, Proxy Webshare has successfully carved a niche in applications such as e-commerce scraping, multiple account management, and general web scraping.

Rather than relying on external partners, Webshare prides itself on developing all its technology in-house through its dedicated team. The primary focus revolves around cyber security and speed optimization. Webshare io boasts a global proxy network that undergoes continuous encryption and protection. Besides, all their intermediaries support HTTP(S) and SOCKS5 protocols, providing extra IP or password authentication options.

Emphasizing anonymity, Webshare proxy incorporates safeguards against sophisticated detection techniques, including but not limited to HTTP header inspection, TCP fingerprint proxy, port scan prevention, and DNS leak detection. The commitment to user privacy is evident to me, with a clear assurance that private information is not sold to any third party. 

Speaking about security, Webshare employs cutting-edge AI/ML-driven real-time anti-fraud mechanisms to thwart high-risk users and activities effectively. Processing a colossal volume of over 250 billion unique data points monthly, the company ensures the delivery of a secure and compliant business proxy network.

On the other hand, learn more about the impact of proxies on Machine Learning and AI applications.

And last yet not least, in this brief overview, is meant for developers: Webshare extends API access for a diverse range of proxies. Through the utilization of the Webshare API, you gain seamless integration of Webshare’s capabilities into your applications, facilitating the enhancement of user experiences and optimizing workflow efficiency.

But let’s dive into more details!

Feature-Set and Guidance

Static Residential Proxies

IP Pool: 20,000+

Locations: 5 countries

Use cases: Brand protection, lead generation

Webshare.io static residential proxies offer users the flexibility to choose between list-based intermediaries for shared or dedicated usage, accommodating up to two users or exclusive access. 

The subscription options entail extensive customization, allowing you to tailor every aspect of your plan, primarily dictated by pricing considerations. In particular, you can add more threads, opt for unlimited traffic, activate high network priority, obtain unlimited IP authorizations, or select the verified proxy feature adapted for Google Search and Amazon websites.

Static (ISP) residential proxies from Webshare.io boast high speed and unlimited bandwidth. The platform employs only well-established ISPs like AT&T, Sprint, Cox Communications, Verizon, and Lumen, achieving speeds of up to 1 Gbps with an exceptional 99.97% uptime and an aggregate network bandwidth of 100 Gbps.

❗IMPORTANT❗Enhancing remote employee security: The role of static proxies in ensuring secure connections 

These Webshare proxies are static, although a rotating feature enables you to shuffle them with each connection request. With rotating proxy plans and the provider’s rotation feature, you can opt for sticky sessions, adjusting session timeouts from 15 seconds up to 7 days, while the idle timeout spans from 15 seconds to 2 hours.

Regarding refresh options, list-based plans default to 10 individual proxy replacements. You can choose periodic whole list replacements (every 25 minutes to a month), purchase individual replacements without altering the entire list (from 1 to 1000), or replace individual addresses (ranging from 50 to 100,000).

Datacenter Proxies

IP Pool: 150,000+

Locations: 40 countries  

Use cases: SMM, web scraping, SEO, sneaker copping, accessing geo-restricted content

Webshare network of data center proxy offerings encompass shared, semi-dedicated, and dedicated IPs or a fixed-sized proxy pool with periodic rotations. Emphasizing high-speed servers with an aggregate network bandwidth exceeding 100 Gbps, Webshare provides rotation options for every connection request (rotating feature only) or a complete list refresh.

Out of 40 countries worldwide, you can choose targets across Europe, South America, and Asia. While the option to specify the desired number of IPs per location is available, keep in mind that, at the time of writing this review, city-targeting is not supported. However, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the company’s servers are meticulously optimized to efficiently manage high-speed traffic globally, equipped with dedicated Gigabit lines for seamless internet connectivity. Moreover, I know from the Webshare team that they’re currently working on integrating the city and ASN targeting functionalities, which are coming soon, so what else can we ask for?

Webshares’ datacenter proxies are presented in two formats: static proxies, optionally shareable, and a rotating proxy pool. The static proxies don’t rotate by default but can be customized through the platform’s dashboard, generating a backconnect address for automatic shuffling during each connection request.

As I briefly mentioned before, both rotating intermediaries and proxy rotation features allow you to set session and idle timeouts, along with bandwidth limits ranging from 250 GB/month to unlimited. Concurrency restrictions default to 500 threads, expandable to 3,000+ at an additional cost.

This best datacenter proxy provider ensures free auto-replacements for intermediaries unavailable for over 15 minutes, exhibiting low country confidence, or experiencing slowdowns. Moreover, it also introduces a high-priority network feature, prioritizing requests for real-time applications like gaming or stock trading.

Residential Proxies

IP Pool: 30,000,000+

Locations: 195 countries 

Use cases: Ad verification, travel-fare aggregation, e-commerce

If you need to buy proxies for price tracking, I highly recommend Webshare.io since its residential proxies mark the latest addition to its service. They present a substantial proxy pool comprising 30 million IPs sourced from real users’ devices spanning over 195 global locations. 

Notably, the company adopts a traffic-based pricing model, deviating from the much more commonly used billing based on the quantity of IPs. If it all sounds too good for you, here’s a fly in the ointment: Targeting specific countries is feasible, albeit without city, ASN, or ZIP code filtering options. However, it is a temporary constraint as Webshare is working on putting this functionality into service soon.

Ideal for lower bandwidth usage, residential proxies from Webshare.io excel in emulating organic user behavior, guaranteeing unhindered scraping without IP blocks or CAPTCHAs. The company claims its pool is ethically sourced from reputable partners committed to business ethics and rigorous compliance standards, primarily featuring Tier A+ model proxies within the network. However, I was unable to find any evidence to support or refute this claim.

All in all, in comparison to other residential proxy options on the market and some other free proxies reviews, I must conclude that Webshare’s residential service presents a more straightforward feature set, acknowledging its relatively basic feature offerings. 

Usability  

Webshare’s Proxies Free

When you land on the platform, you’ll receive ten Webshare free proxy IPs, 100% no-cost, and data center intermediaries, with a monthly usage limit of 1 gigabyte. To view the available free proxys, simply click and navigate to the proxy list. Copy the address and paste it into the designated field along with the port. 

Once added to the browser, enable the proxy on a new tab and reload the page. Voila! You are now connected to the proxy address. Feel free to confirm it by checking the IP info, which will display the proxy address and location. I’ve been employing this free proxy option for quite a long time thus far, and I highly recommend you do so, too!

Dashboard

The control panel entails all the essential tools for smooth Webshare proxy management. It provides insights into your plan details, offering sections for subscription management, proxy configuration, usage statistics, and API documentation. You may stay flexible and personalize each plan through a range of selections and add-on features, allowing for a fully customized experience.

You’ll also find insightful usage graphs in the dashboard displaying proxy utilization, bandwidth consumption, and error ratios. This feature proves invaluable for assessing total request count and monitoring usage, offering transparency. Moreover, the capability to filter these graphs by specific dates enhances user control and analytics precision.

However, bear in mind that the company restricts users to one active plan concurrently, limiting the purchase of diverse products simultaneously. This constraint may pose challenges for those of you requiring various types of proxies. In such a case, I recommend creating a separate account using a distinct email address to address this limitation. 

API Integration

For flawless programmatic access to your proxies, Webshare extends an API to all its users, equipped with a comprehensive set of functionalities. These capabilities entail tasks like user registration, Webshare login procedures, notification management, profile creation, sub-user administration, traffic limit configuration, proxy configuration viewing, and beyond. 

Accompanied by code examples in cURL and prominent programming languages like Python and JavaScript, the API ensures a versatile and user-friendly integration experience – believe me, I’ve tested it on my own.

Customer Service 

Whether you’re a novice in your initial setup or addressing more intricate challenges, requiring help is actually inevitable one day, isn’t it? Webshare.io offers a range of options for both self-help and direct contact, although I and so many other users out there would prefer more additional alternatives. 

On the self-help front, there’s a Help Center – a repository of articles with a search function and categorization of articles into popular sections. Despite the positive aspects, I feel that the available content could be more extensive. Besides, I lack supplementary content like videos, webinars, a user forum, or ebooks. 

If I’m not mistaken, the blog appeared at Webshare.io after Oxylabs acquired Webshare Software. And that is good news, although the webpage still requires more engaging content. 

For direct contact, the options are somewhat limited. While an email option is provided with the assurance to “Contact us anytime,” the response time expectation or operational hours are unspecified. Furthermore, this solitary email option is the only avenue for support: the provider claims to have a live chat, but it’s unavailable at the time of writing this review. No live chat? Really?! 

How do other users find this cheap proxy service? Well, satisfied ones report this, in particular:

However, less satisfied users complain about the following…

If the latter feedback contains the company’s reply (which is pretty common for Webshare and serves well in fixing issues!), things differ with the former feedback. As I’ve been researching Webshare.io proxy user feedback on various platforms and industry-specific forums, the problem with appearing on spam databases (the ultimate reason to explain the purposes of proxy usage) resulting in the suspension of an account without any possibility of a refund turned out to be pretty widespread for Webshare proxies. Proxy Webshare requests government ID verification in such cases, which most users refuse to provide (fair enough!). Consequently, the problem remains open, and users just leave in anger with no refund. 

Well, I’m afraid this policy of banning accounts and retaining funds based on solitary or rare IP reports to any spam database can deliver more harm than security and reliability benefits. 

Performance Testing     

Ping test

My initial evaluation involved a ping test to assess the quality, speed, and server distance of the Webshare proxies. For that, I used SpeedTest.net, remembering that lower ping values below 100ms are considered optimal, while higher values may lead to performance issues. 

Webshare.io proxies exhibited a moderate ping performance, ranging from as high as 221ms to as low as 124ms.

Check out my Proxy Performance Metrics Guide: A deep dive into latency, throughput, and proxy reliability.

Speed test

Next, having scrutinized connection speed, I realized that approximately 85% of the proxies demonstrated enhanced download speeds, with one proxy reaching an ultra-high speed of 140.65 Mbps. A baseline speed test without proxy usage provided a benchmark for comparison.

ISP test

I conducted geolocation tests using two websites to ascertain the proxies’ adherence to specified server locations, which is crucial for diverse applications like anonymous web surfing. While the IP addresses exhibited non-sequential patterns, all proxies were associated with the same Internet Service Provider (ISP), indicating the potential sharing of subnets.

IP address compatibility test

In my final and pivotal test, I assessed the Webshare proxies’ compatibility by attempting to access various popular websites. The results indicated that some of them faced restrictions or were flagged, possibly due to being used or blocked. While a majority of the proxies accessed most websites successfully, the occurrence of failures with some intermediaries somewhat diminished my confidence in Webshare.io.

Pricing 

Webshare.io adopts a subscription-based pricing model, distinguishing itself by offering customers comprehensive control over their subscriptions. The pricing structure entails not only the quantity of intermediaries but also factors in bandwidth, refreshes, and additional features like the high-priority network and thread allocation. If you need to buy proxy, remember that Webshare pricing varies based on the proxy type, with different modifiers applied to each.

Webshare employs a pay-per-IP pricing system for list-based plans while rotating proxies are subject to charges based on traffic usage. Commencing with a modest starting price, the plans are further scaled to accommodate varying quantities of IPs and extend to unlimited traffic. You can opt for either a monthly subscription or an annual payment, enjoying a 30% discount with the latter.

Need to buy SOCKS5 proxy yet feel uncertain about the provider’s alignment with your requirements? This is just to remind you of a free proxy list from Webshare.io. Granted, it is confined to a mere 10 free IPs, rendering it less suitable for extensive projects. Nevertheless, it boasts a credit-card-free setup and is a perpetual plan, exempt from time restrictions typically associated with trial periods. 

Noteworthy is its impressive 99.97% uptime, coupled with the inclusion of all features found in a paid plan. This renders it conducive for a comprehensive test run and, as demands grow, an effortless transition to a higher-tier plan. Heh, even employing software tools like Scrapebox, Tube Site Submitter, or Xrumer requires a minimum of 100-200 proxies to manage concurrent threads effectively. Yet 10 IPs, including a free SOCKS5 proxy, for the beginning is not a bad start to figure everything out. 

To conclude, I must admit that Webshare’s pricing is really budget-friendly with exceptionally competitive rates, particularly when opting for basic plans without additional features, undercutting many premium and mid-range alternatives in the market.

The Verdict 

Despite being a relative newcomer in the market, Webshare has made a significant impact by introducing a flexible pricing model for users to get a proxy cheap and a self-service approach, setting it apart from longstanding providers unable to implement such innovations over the years.

Not without flaws, although temporary ones. For me, significant restrictions include the inability to target cities, states, or ASNs, limited location coverage for ISP products, and additional features incurring extra costs. Consequently, there may be better choices for use cases reliant on precise geographical targeting. However, I highly recommend getting back to Webshare and checking city/ASN-filtering options as soon as they implement them. I’ll keep you posted!

Nevertheless, Webshare.io emerges as a commendable option in the market. Through my tests, its shared data center and static residential proxies demonstrated impressive results. So, go for it; it’s highly recommended, and I mean it!

FAQ