There’s no denying that residential proxies have been getting relatively cheaper but still expensive. In fact, some providers are raising prices, and it’s easy to say that there’s no truly affordable but still exceptional service. Fortunately, DataImpulse has risen to the occasion to fill that gap.
The proxy service provider offers 1 gigabyte for $1. Price is not its only pro; it offers several other features, including multiple locations, encryption, customer support, and custom features to fulfill your needs. But is DataImpulse worth it? Let’s discuss it in our detailed DataImpulse review and find out.
Quick overview of DataImpulse
| Country | USA |
| Founded | 2022 |
| Proxy networks | Residential proxies, Mobile proxies, Datacenter proxies |
| Pricing | Cheap |
| Cheapest plan | $1/GB |
| Starter plan | $50 |
| Payment methods | AliPay, Visa, Mastercard, Crypto, PayPal, etc. |
| Web scraper | – |
| Other tools | – |
DataImpulse background
DataImpulse is a residential proxy provider based in Estonia that hit the market in late 2022. However, the company has moved up the food chain and attracted attention because of its affordable prices.
Despite being registered in Estonia, the company belongs to a Ukrainian development agency known as Softoria. In addition, the company has ties to other products like ZoogVPN and DataforSEO, which suggests that the proxy service may be reselling the resources.
We noticed that DataImpulse contains the ethical acquisition of the IP sources. Interestingly, signs show that the company is building its proxy rather than just relying on resale – something good for those looking for IP diversity.
DataImpulse is affordable and has built a good reputation for providing undetectable IPs that you can use to access arguably all sites. Additionally, it supports the best security protocols like HTTP(s) and SOCKS5 with live customer support that you can rely on.
There’s more to learn about this service; continue reading.
DataImpulse proxy network
DataImpulse sells three types of proxy servers. They include:
- Residential proxies featuring more than 100 locations that you can choose from.
- Datacenter proxies from several countries in a kind of rotating pool format.
- Mobile proxies featuring a small but steadily growing network of IPs from the end-user devices
DataImpulse caters to customers who are looking for affordable residential proxies. However, based on the service’s location coverage as well as pool size, it’s easy to say that it’s not ideal for large-scale projects, but perfect for small-scale projects because of its enormous 5 million IPs.
Moreover, its rotating and stick port support has contributed to its rise in popularity, making it an excellent option for web scraping.
Performance benchmark
Let’s take a closer look at DataImpulse proxies:
Pool size & composition
DataImpulse has an advertised proxy pool of 5 million, which is suitable for smaller projects.
| Gateway | Parameters | Unique IPs | Residential |
|---|---|---|---|
| Global | 1.2M req, 21 days | 371,222 | 80% |
| UK | 561k req, 14 days | 64,780 | 91% |
| US | 560k req, 14 days | 144,210 | 78% |
| EU | 1.2M req, 14 days | 74,980 | 75% |
| Australia | 140k req, 7 days | 4,880 | 32% |
| India | 560k req, 14 days | 46,298 | 98.5% |
| Brazil | 560k req, 14 days | 13,398 | 43% |
One notable problem we encounter is that a large portion of the proxies are identified as non-residential addresses. This is a prevalent problem, especially in Australia, making it difficult to treat the Australian DataImpulse pool as residential.
On paper, the service’s proxy network has global coverage, but it has a relatively large number of IPs of about 100 or more at once online in about 100 countries. This could result from either building a home-grown proxy pool or simply not having hit the popularity heights of the major competitors yet.
However, DataImpulse offers a nice real-time table with all the available proxies on its dashboard.
Apparently, DataImpluse has modest targeting options—more individual countries. For that reason, it has plenty of tricks, including the user selecting several countries at once. In addition, they can filter the ISPs that they don’t want.
Infrastructure performance
| Gateway | Avg. success rate | Avg. response time |
|---|---|---|
| Random | 98.5% | 1.1s |
| UK | 99.8% | 0.7s |
| EU | 98% | 0.98s |
| Brazil | 95.4% | 1.74s |
| Australia | 97.46% | 1.89s |
| US | 99.9% | 0.5s |
| India | 98.9% | 0.9s |
DataImpulse infrastructure is okay, as almost 95% of requests are completed successfully. However, timeouts and bad requests (error code 400) can sometimes be problematic. Perhaps both can be improved going forward.
Unfortunately, DataImpulse’s response time metrics are not among the best, but it’s relatively quick in India and the UK.
Regarding performance against some popular websites, the average success ranking is about 70%, with about 30% of the requests failing on average. Unfortunately, Google has a higher failure rate.
Features
| Traffic | Rotation | Concurrency | Others |
|---|---|---|---|
| Depends on the plan | 120 mins, and 30 mins for sticky sessions | 2,000 threads | Host blocking, anonymous filter |
Proxies can rotate with each connection request and can last for about 120 minutes. When it comes to the default sticky session, it’s approximately 30 minutes. Also, you should be aware that DataImpulse limits the user with the number of threads that can be established at once. Fortunately, it’s evident that 2,000 isn’t that small, and most users don’t have to be bothered. However, the thread limit will be increased if 2,000 is insufficient for the customer’s use case.
Additionally, the service features a toggle to filter out less anonymous proxies. The proxy service also allows the blocking of hosts, which can sometimes work perfectly as a makeshift ad blocker.
Security features at DataImpulse
We live in an era where data privacy and security are crucial. Fortunately, DataImpulse offers protection and reliability. It has implemented multiple security measures to ensure that transactions and user data remain safe and confidential.
Some of the top security features include:
- Advanced encryption standards – The proxy service has employed strong encryption protocols that guarantee data protection. Also, all communications within its ecosystem are encrypted using SSL technology.
- Network security – DataImpulse has reinforced firewalls and intrusion detection mechanisms to monitor and protect against any potential cyber threats. The service takes regular security audits by independent third parties to help identify and fix system vulnerabilities.
- Proxy security – The premium proxy service provides proxies that ensure the security and anonymity of users by hiding their real IP addresses. In addition, with residential proxy services, DataImpulse has ensured the highest level of legitimacy and ability to unblock websites, increasing the efficiency and security of web scraping.
Integration and use
| Connection method | Protocols | Format | Authentication |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gateway address | HTTP, SOCKS5 | USERNAME__cr.gb:PASSWORD@gw.dataimpulse.com:283 | IP white list, Credentials |
The residential proxy network is accessed using the back-connect gateway server, whereby the user request is sent via DataImpulse’s load balancer before it hits the end device. Parameters are added to the username to ensure that it configures the proxy server.
Sticky sessions are created by simply changing port numbers, such as 1000, 1001, and many others. The system automatically generates usernames and passwords.
How to use DataImpulse
Let’s discuss what it takes to use DataImpluse:
Registration
To register with DataImpulse, you need to fill out a four-step form. You’ll be required to provide your email address, use case, name and surname, and contact information. You can also register through LinkedIn or Google’s single-sign-in option.
Dashboard experience
Data Impulse has a functional dashboard that facilitates seamless service management. You can purchase plans, monitor usage statistics, configure proxy gateways, explore IP availability in various locations, and access help documentation.
Unfortunately, customization of user permission is limited, but the dashboard perfectly serves its primary purpose.
Subscription management
Its self-service model allows you to purchase and use the proxies independently. Besides, there are some straightforward steps, like choosing a product, setting the traffic volume, naming the plan, and paying.
Proxy management
You’ll find a dashboard widget for creating proxy lists on the go and an API for programmatic use. This simple interface allows one to select countries, connection protocols, rotation types, and output formats.
Luckily, the proxy offers options to alter, remove, and copy login, passwords, live code, snippets, and easy copy/export of lists.
Usage tracking
It’s very easy to track data usage because of DataImpulse’s graphical representation and detailed tables. You can easily filter the metrics by plan and date range to see the funds spent, requests, and traffic.
Documentation center
The service’s documentation involves API instructions on the dashboard and integration tutorials for different OSs and tools. Although the documentation is comprehensive, it could be diverse, with few integration tutorials using particular programming libraries.
Hands-on support
The customer service at DataImpulse works around the clock over live chat. You can be assured that you’ll get all the help you need in a timely manner. The response time is good, but sometimes, they take time to answer your query.
Pricing models
| Proxy type | Format | Starter plan | Cheapest plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Residential proxy | Pay per traffic | $5 for 5GB | $800 for 1TB |
| Datacenter proxy | Pay per traffic | $5 for 10GB | $450 for 1TB |
| Mobile proxy | Pay per traffic | $5 for 2.5GB | $1600 for 1TB |
DataImpulse offers one of the affordable options that you can get. It uses a pay-as-you-go type of pricing model, which offers flexibility to the users to buy traffic as needed.
Here’s a general overview of DataImpulse pricing:
- Start price – It’s $50 for 50GB, the most affordable option you can get in the market
- Premium plan – This plan allows users to get 1TB of data for just $800.
- Trial – It has a paid trial for $5 with 5GB of data to test the service
- Payment options – The service offers various payment options like PayPal, credit cards, and cryptocurrencies
The rates are attractive ($1 per gigabyte) and ($0.8 per gigabyte) if you opt for the premium plan. However, the minimum transaction of $50 might not be ideal for some users. So, they can opt for the basic plan and renew it when it ends.
DataImpulse use cases
DataImpulse service is merely a general-purpose proxy network whereby usage can be adapted according to the user’s specific use case. Here are some of the common tasks that you can use DataImpulse’s residential proxies for:
- SERP scraping – For any SEO looking for the cheapest proxy network that will help power their keyword scraping; DataImpulse can be a good choice.
- E-commerce scraping – Scraping e-commerce websites like eBay, Amazon, and Alibaba is straightforward using DataImpluse proxies.
- Ad Verification – Anyone who does Ad marketing in different regions needs to verify how ads are placed and how they appear in several regions. DataImpulse’s geo-targeted feature will help users view the ads in various countries and verify whether they appear and behave as they should.
- Web Automation – You can also use DataImpulse proxies for web automation and botting.
Our Verdict
After diving deep into DataImpulse, we’re pretty impressed overall. The service delivers on its promise of undetectable IPs with solid automatic rotation. Plus, you can keep a session going for a bit if you need to. While they’re not quite at Bright Data’s level yet, they’re holding their own against most proxy providers out there.
The big downside? There are no major flaws in the service. However, if you’re not in a rush and want to save some cash, especially for smaller-scale proxy use, DataImpulse could be your ticket.