Are you a proud member of the data-harvesting community? If you are, the chances are that you already know that the Internet is a hostile place for your work (or hobby), in which many anti-scraping systems are trying to prevent your activities. And this is why Froxy proxy is around.
This platform has a list of high-quality, safe listed IP addresses that can go a long way in bypassing web filters. Those addresses allow you to research, scrape data, and unblock geo-restricted content online. Suppose that is not enough for you (and it should be). In that case, this proxy guarantees your complete anonymity, and it’s safe against IP leak protection.
So if you don’t know much about Froxy’s proxy service, you found the right review. Here, we will tell you about this site’s features, services, pricing plans, and customer support. Let’s get started.
Proxy servers and VPNs: what are they?
Let’s review the basics of proxy servers and VPNs and why Froxy is a particular case in the industry.
We start with VPNs. A VPN worth the name will perform two tricks for you. Firstly, it will hide your IP address and report to the world one from its network. Secondly, it will encrypt all your incoming and outgoing traffic so that any third party that intercepts it can’t make any sense of it — good encryption algorithms make ciphered data look like streams of random numbers. The best VPN vendors will also offer many other perks, such as a kill switch. Still, the essentials are in the IP masking and encryption processes.
A proxy server is similar to a VPN but not quite the same. It will spoof your IP address just as the VPN does, but it won’t provide encryption as a general rule.
Froxy’s service is something that falls in a gray area between a proxy and a VPN. Almost every VPN out there uses AES-128 or AES-256 (some use both) as the encryption protocol for user traffic. AES is military-grade, in use by the world’s actual military and intelligence agencies. It’s solid. But suppose you’re an average user that is not working on sensitive areas (an activist, a journalist, for instance). In that case, it’s probably a lot more than what you really need to stay safe.
Froxy implements encryption in all its traffic. It’s not AES but HTTPS, which is the algorithm we find on secure websites. While HTTPS is nowhere near as powerful as AES, it’s still sufficient. This gives Froxy an edge over the competition because it’s more like a light VPN than a mere proxy if you look at the technology.
Froxy: What is it?
If you have not heard about Froxy so far, even as a proxy enthusiast, this is because it is one of the newest proxy service vendors. It was founded as recently as September 2021 by the Estonian software company Wargames OU. It has quickly earned a loyal following in the United States and Russia.
Froxy is a fully-fledged platform that offers many different services at very competitive prices, given the current market prices. You can have mobile or residential proxies with their respective traffic allocations. The network’s uptime is guaranteed to be 99,9%, so your spiders, bots, and other terrific pieces of software can keep running 24/7.
The company’s customer service includes a dedicated technical support team.
The network includes more than 200 nodes scattered worldwide.
In short, this is an excellent, versatile, and reliable proxy service. If you need only the standard proxy option, or if you need an exceptional service that will enable you to deploy your online data harvesting projects, Froxy has everything you need.
Froxy’s key features
IP Pool
As a data harvester, your IP address is your passport and visa. So you need one that won’t trigger any of the aggressive measures against data harvest that are becoming common around the Internet.
Froxy has a list of more than eight million squeaky-clean IPs that will make your life easier.
The IPs ensure your online anonymity as you carry on with your work. They’re sourced from some of the world’s best ISPs and mobile networks.
Protection against IP leaks
If privacy is a priority for you, your vendor’s ability to prevent IP leaks is essential. This feature keeps your actual IP address safe from any snooping third party. It works fine even when your Internet is intermittent.
The IP leak protection feature is always active by default in each of Froxy’s proxy servers. So anybody trying to tack your digital activities using your IP address will have a really hard (impossible, in practical terms) time getting the beans on you.
Session control
If you browse the web for Froxy reviews, you’ll find the words “session control” recur frequently, so let’s have a look at that feature in more detail.
The session control feature comes in two flavors: “sticky IPs” and “auto-rotate.”
The auto-rotate mode will manage your IP addresses automatically. The other option will swap your IP according to a schedule. So, every time you reach a predefined period, your IP changes. The maximum length of every period is one hour.
Unlimited sessions
You can have as many concurrent connections as you want within the Froxy network. This expands the IP numbers you can use as you do your thing. And that plethora of addresses at your disposal, in turn, decreases the probability of being banned. So that’s rotation working for you.
But there’s a downside. The bandwidth you can get with Froxy is limited. But is this a deal-breaker? We don’t think so. The network is exceedingly stable, which is a special feature.
Geo-targeted tasks
Geo-targeted tasks are one area in which Froxy excels. The servers are scattered over 220 territories. Once you pick a server in the network, your IP will rotate randomly to the selected regions.
But it gets better.
If you like to narrow your choices down, you can do it to the ISP level. You can switch ports and servers so your performance is optimal. This fine-tuning will give you the ability to collect data from any place on earth with the utmost efficiency.
Security
The traffic in the Froxy servers is encrypted with HTTPS. Yes, we know: this encryption protocol doesn’t have the high reputation of the AES-128 or AES-256 you can find in a good VPN. But keep in mind that while AES is unquestionably superior, it is also overkill. The fact is that any expert worth his salt will tell you that HTTPS encryption is a suitable protocol that can guarantee your safety in any digital environment.
SOCKS5 is also available, improving your protection by managing the login process into the network. But it does more than just open the doors for you. It remains active as you stay inside the network; it streamlines your connectivity and keeps your connection reliable and consistent in terms of performance. It also reduces packet losses so that your data collection is more efficient.
The speeds
The speeds in Froxy are outstanding, and we will give you more details in short, but before we delve into that, let us give you a friendly reminder. The speed you can have when you join any given network (a proxy in this case, but it could be a VPN, for instance) is a rather complicated thing that depends on many factors, starting with your ISP, the hardware you are using, weather, geographical location and more. This means that while our speed testing is accurate for sure (we’re cautious when we do these tests), it doesn’t necessarily reflect the experience you should expect for yourself. So, no, we didn’t get it wrong. But we can’t test from your office either.
We had the following results regarding speeds at Froxy:
- Latency. 310 milliseconds
- Upload speed. 6.3 Mbps
- Download average speed. 1.7 Mbps
So, as you can see, the upload speeds are much higher than the download speeds, which is a bit of an anomaly.
But what do the numbers mean in terms of user experience? Well, since we’ve been working under the assumption that data harvesters are an essential user group for Froxy, we can say that they will be fine.
Mostly, data harvesting involves the transference of text data in small quantities at a time. So, that application will work fine with Froxy. On the other hand, if you’re more the kind of guy who’s expecting to transfer larger, binary files, then this isn’t the optimal choice for you. While you can manage those tasks, you will also need a bit of patience and planning as you do so.
Residential proxy service
The residential rotating proxy is Froxy’s bread and butter. It’s built from gateways collected from several ISPs. This kind of traffic originates, for the most part, in desktop and laptop computers more than from portable devices.
The residential plan gives you unique IP addresses attached to actual-world networks. This grants you the ability to ping to any location in your chosen world. And let’s not forget that it gives you infinite simultaneous connections without any further payment or configuration.
And how about bandwidth? It’s limited, and it can go from 3 GB to 1 TB. You need to make sure you choose a plan that suits your usage. Otherwise, you could run out of bandwidth before your cycle completes. If that should happen, you will need to either upgrade or renew your package –which means you’ll have to pay extra.
Mobile Proxies by Froxy
As the name suggests, this service is for the smaller devices in the industry, such as mobile phones and tablets. This kind of hardware usually goes online through a WiFi signal or a cellular network. Such a setup often facilitates bypassing firewalls, thus removing some of the friction you often find in accessing data or content.
The bandwidth in these plans is also limited to a quantity varying between 50GB and 1TB.
One of the most remarkable features of mobile proxy packages is the access you get to a massive number of 3G and 4G international networks. And you have the advantage of geo-targeted access for websites with locked content.
The 40 USD lower price for mobile proxies is relatively high for the industry’s average, primarily because it gives you only so many GBs. However, mobile data tends to be expensive in almost every case.
User-friendliness
The user interface in Froxy is intuitive and straightforward. It shows you a dashboard that can easily visualize everything you need to know or use. Newbies and seasoned users will find the tools they need here (server selection, port configuration, log-in details, and much more).
That was the general landscape but look at the central part of the control panel. That’s where the geolocation controls are located. You will choose your country, region, city, and preferred ISP here.
Furthermore, as you move your pointer around the interface, the screen tips will pop up for you. This is a favorite feature among several reviewers. Every tip will give you a concise description of the functionality in question. This helps every kind of user. The less experienced ones could need all the help they can get, at least initially.
However, the more expert users will also like the feature because however experienced you may be; the chances are that you haven’t memorized every single functionality of every single option available.
Another good reason for the screen tips is that there is no knowledge base in Froxy. How is it that a service that aspires to be top-notch doesn’t have this otherwise standard thing? Well, it’s new. It’s been around for fewer than six months so far. We don’t know if the team is working on building a knowledge base. Still, given the standard nature of such a section on the website, it stands to reason that it will come online at some point in the near future.
Customer support
Customer support is much like manuals. We always hope we won’t need to use them at all. The highly intuitive interface and the excellent quality of Froxy’s service guarantee that very few users will ever need expert help from the customer service team. But when you need it, it must be fast, accurate, friendly, and helpful.
So how does it work? There’s a nice little pop-up widget that will give you access to the live chat agents during the daytime. If you need assistance at a different time, you can always submit a ticket on your own.
The live chat agents are friendly, know their stuff, and are ready to be helpful. Answers to tickets are fast (but bear in mind that a “fast” response to a ticket in this industry is about 24 hours), informative, and helpful as well.
Pricing and packages
The mobile packages start at 40 USD. The residential ones are at 45 USD.
You’ll be disappointed if you like the 30-day or 60-day money-back policies that have become the rule in most VPN and proxy server providers. Unfortunately, no such thing is on offer on the website. The refund options are limited as well. However, you can test the service for three days using the 1.99 USD package.
Payment is available through PayPal, WebMoney, and some cryptocurrencies.
Conclusion
Froxy Proxy service includes everything you need for your web scraping project to succeed. You have the speeds, the clean IP addresses, geolocations to choose from, suitable speeds, an interface that’s easy to configure. It’s all there! All that is missing is the code you’ve written, and it’s just waiting for the right environment to do the deed!
Froxy’s main industry rivals are NetNut, BrightData, and IPRoyal. Froxy is good enough, but those two big players are way better, which is why they have such a privileged place in the market. However, you could find that a particular feature or server in Froxy is the one thing you were looking for and had not found yet. So, since you can try the service for 2 USD, you could find out that this vendor gives you precisely what you need if you give it a shot.
The packages are well-designed, and they offer value for your money in the current market. You have eight million IP addresses to choose from, but the provider measures your usage carefully. The bandwidth cap is terrible news. For the most intensive users among us, that is a deal-breaker in itself.
The customer support is excellent, but not the best. However, it still lacks a knowledge base.
However, let’s not forget that one thing makes Froxy unique among proxy servers: traffic encryption. As a result, this service looks more like a light VPN than a standard proxy server. So, if privacy and anonymity are a priority for you, along with functionality, this is the one vendor that suits your needs.
In the end, you’ll be the final judge: take the 2 USD 3-day trial and figure out if Froxy is your cup of tea. Stay safe!