Are you looking for an honest review of the Geonode residential proxy service? Then you are on the right page as this page will provide you information about the pros and cons associated with Geonode.
There is a saying that all proxy services in the market have their pros and cons, and you will only get to choose the one that aligns best with your budget and use case. The Geonode proxy service seeks to put an end to this insinuation by providing you the best of proxy service you can get.
In fact, if you go through the Geonode website, you will see it pride itself as a service that offers you all of the perks of expensive proxies with none of the downsides. But are they telling you the truth, or is it just a marketing gimmick to get you to buy proxies from them? You will find out in this Geonode residential proxies review. Let take a look at an overview of the service first before proceeding,
Geonode Residential Proxies Overview
The Geonode proxy service is a proxy service in the beta phase of its development. It offers its users residential proxies at no data cap limits and monthly transfer limits. This means that with the service, you can enjoy unlimited bandwidth usage and also use as many IP addresses as you want from their IP pool.
This makes it unique as most residential proxies offer you either unlimited IPs but limited bandwidth or vice versa. If you are to look at their website homepage, you will see that their proxies have been designed for anything web scraping, crawling, and anything in-between. The pricing system is one of its greatest strengths.
However, there is more. It has got a sizable IP pool with support for IPs from many locations across the globe. Their proxies are rotating proxies but also have support for sticky IPs. It has support for a code generator for API and can be said to provide guaranteed uptime.
While this is also not all about its strengths, it is also not devoid of weaknesses, and we can regrettably said it also has its own weaknesses and has not been able to provide “all of the perks of expensive proxies with none of the downsides” and you will discover its downsides in the cons section of the article.
| Parameters | Features |
| IP Type | Residential IPs |
| Priced Charged | Number of threads |
| Price Sample | $47 for 10 threads |
| Proxy Protocol | HTTP(S)/ SOCKS5 |
| Authentication | Username/password + IP authentication |
| IP Locations | Over 100 countries |
| Instagram Compatibility | No |
| Sneaker Compatibility | Yes |
| Speed | Average |
| Support | Email + Live chat + Social Media platforms |
| Refund Policy | No refund |
| IP Replacement | Yes |
| P2p/Torrenting | Not Allowed |
| Jurisdiction Location | Singapore |
Geonode Pros
If you are looking for reasons to make use of proxies from Geonode, then there are many reasons, and they have thought it out to provide you with features you will like. Let take a look at some of the strengths of Geonode here.
Competitive and Affordable Pricing System
Geonode recognizes the presence of big players in the market and knows that it needs a unique selling point to beat the other providers that have made a name for themselves and had to do that via pricing. If you ask me, the pricing of Geonode is its greatest strength, and it was well thought out and planned.
Most residential providers in the proxy market allow users full access to their pool but limit bandwidth usage – Bright Data and Smartproxy come to mind. Others allow you to enjoy unlimited bandwidth but limit the number of endpoints you can use, as in the case of Shifter.io. Geonode sits in the middle, allowing you to enjoy both (unlimited IP and bandwidth) but limits the number of threads you can create concurrently.
In terms of actual pricing, it can be said not only to be competitive but also one of the most affordable working residential proxies. For you to make use of Bright Data, you will need $300 as a minimum. Shifter pricing starts at $249, and Smartproxy at $75.
However, Geonode starts at $47, and with this $47 subscription, you can enjoy not only unlimited bandwidth usage but also unrestricted access to the number of IPs you want. The only limitation is in the number of threads which is 10 threads for their $47 plan.
While you might not see this as a problem, it is as 10 threads is small for websites with resources many external resources like images, CSS, nd JavaScript files, among others. This would ultimately make it slow for sites that need to download external files. Fortunately, They have got other packages if you need more threads from 50 threads ($77) up to 20K threads ($8000).
Sizable IP Pool and Good Location Coverage
In terms of location coverage, Geonode is not breaking any record and cannot be said to provide support as the premium providers do. However, that does not mean we should consider this as a weakness as it is only the case of moving into the shoes of a great man. Without comparing them with the likes of Bright Data, Smartproxy, and Shifter, it can be argued that Geonode’s proxy pool is sizable enough for most people.
Currently, they have got over 2 million IP addresses in their pool. As in the case of other providers that get IPs via P2P, not all of these are always active and online, but there is always a sizable number of IPs always available for you to use.
In terms of location coverage, the service can be said to stand strong even though, again; it is not breaking any record. Currently, Geonode has support for about 140 countries across the globe.
This means that you can use IP from about 140 countries. The service has got support for country-level geo-targeting, and you can choose to use IPs from specific countries that Geonode has got many of their IPs.
One thing you need to know is that if only a few IPs are active and online from a particular country, you should not expect many unique IPs from such locations. Only country-level geo-targeting is supported. The Geonode service does not have support for state-level and city-level geo-targeting yet.
Both Rotating and Static IPs are Supported
Geonode does not own the IP addresses in their pool and, as such, cannot offer you real dedicated static ports that would not change IP addresses. For this reason, they are left with providing users rotating proxies and then charge them based on the number of ports. But how does their IP rotation system work, and why is it a plus?
This service has support for high rotating proxies that would change your IP address after every request. I tested this feature in a simple way, and for every request, I got a new IP address. This has not been tested at a large scale to determine its performance, but I am sure if a large-scale test is carried out, IPs would be repeated since they only have 2 million IPs in the pool and less than 500K are active at any given time.
If what you want are static ports that will maintain IP addresses for a while so that you can maintain a session, then Geonode also has them. Also known as session ports, these ports will retain an IP for a specific period of time before assigning you a new one.
The Genode service has got support for numerous time periods, including 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, and 60 minutes. You will agree with me that these time periods are enough for any session-based project you need proxies for.
Easy to Use
Another reason you will like this service is that it is easy to use. The website and user dashboard have been designed in such a way that even new users would not find it complicated.
All you need to do is to register an account, make payment, and access your dashboard to get proxy endpoints you can use. the user dashboard is quite beautiful and friendly to the eyes while being easy to navigate.
Geonode has support for both username/password and IP authentication. I did not try it, though, but it claims that you can authenticate up to 20 IP addresses – however, the IP authentication system seems to be broken as at the time I ran my tests – username and password authentication was what I used. The tool is quite friendly to developers as it even offers an API with which you can load proxies by just sending an API request.
They also provide a code generator for developers to use if they need to integrate their proxies into their custom bot. The generator function supports popular programming languages including NodeJS, C#, Python, Java, and a few others.
As you can see from the above screenshot, your username and password are even included – I had to hide mine from the screenshot.
Free Trial and Refund Policy Available
There is no doubt that the Geonode service is not a very popular one on a global scale and has not earned the trust of users. Considering the fact that not many users are willing to part ways with their hard-earned money until they are convinced, the Geonode service has been able to offer both a free trial option and a refund policy to help you get your money back.
While you can see this as a plus, you need to pay attention to details first to avoid missing out on both. For their free trial, you are required to pay a non-refundable fee of $1, and you will be given access to use the service for 7 days, after which your connection would be cut off until you subscribe to a full plan.
The $1 cost has been introduced as a way of fighting spam and fraudulent people that would not want to pay a dime but would want to use paid proxies for free. For their refund policy, you will only get a refund if you do not make use of their free plan or have not used their service before and your first experience wasn’t satisfactory.
Geonode Cons
While the above can push you to bring out your card and make payment, I will advise you to read the cons section and find out their weaknesses first before making a monetary commitment.
It is in Beta Phase Stage
Geonode is trying to compare itself with the premium providers out there, but unlike these popular proxy services that have been tested and have proven to work, all Geonode has is a lot of promises that we hope they fulfill. In fact, it might interest you to know that it is still in its beta stage and currently under heavy development.
The true power of the Geonode will be unleashed when they fully launch. I did speak with a customer agent, and they promise they will be launching higher quality service as currently; all they offer are unmetered residential proxies that do not function with popular web services like YouTube, Google, and Instagram. They also stated that they are working on launching a better customer dashboard – personal, the current dashboard is good.
Proxy Speed and Effectiveness Need Some Improvement
Depending on your project, the proxy speed may be or may not be important to you. If it is important to you, then you might not find the Geonode proxy service as a good service you will want to use. This is not unconnected to the fact that their proxy speed cannot be said to be one of the fastest.
I tested their proxy speed, and the only thing I have to say is that it needs some improvement. The process of testing speed performance for us is simple. We use the Speedtest tool by Okla to test proxy speed without using any proxy server, and we got the below result.
While we do not expect the speed of Geonode to be the same as our Internet speed without proxies, Geonodewas disappointed – we were even unable to test the speed as we kept getting the error message below.
That is, of course, after wasting our time. This does not mean their proxies do not work or are not usable. They work quite well for low-powered websites with relaxed anti-spam systems.
For now, I will advise you do not to use them for websites like Google, YouTube, and Instagram. Currently, their proxy system can be detected and blocked by many big websites. Again, we cannot hold them to this as they are still at the beta stage of development, and we hope they improve over time but for now, avoid using them for websites with strict anti-spam systems.
Customer Service Can Be Slow
Perhaps, aside from their proxy speed, another thing that needs an improvement is their customer service. While you are sure to get your problems sorted out, you should be ready to wait a little while before getting help from them. They have got email supported, and you can contact them on social media platforms.
I used their email support, and it took up to a day before I got a response. Now, I opted to make use of their live chat support feature to see how fast the support is and look at the below screenshot.
Looking at the above, you can see that the customer service is obviously online with a green indicator. While he was away, the indicator was yellow. However, after sending in my message, I was kept waiting for over 30 minutes while the agent is still online.
I eventually closed the chat seeing that they were not responsive on time – that was even what I wanted to test. Interesting, I did get a response later, and they were quite helpful, but the speed of communication is slow and needs some improvement too.
Do We Recommend Geonode?
According to the information we gathered, the Geonode service is still in its beta stage, and from what they have done so far and what they have all lined up to be done, we are impressed and have our eyes on them.
For now, we only recommend their proxies for websites that are not very effective at detecting proxies as currently, you cannot use Geonode proxies for popular websites like Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and the other sites with effective anti-spam systems as you will get discovered and blocked. For now, you can see Geonode as a work in progress with lots of things to come.