Are you looking forward to buying datacenter proxies from Webshare and you need to know both its strengths and weaknesses before making an informed decision? Then you should read our expert review on Webshare and discover its pros and cons to help you make a decision.
The datacenter proxy market is the most proliferated market with more than enough providers that you can keep a tab on. What this leads to is that you cannot make a choice based on all of the providers in the market — you will have to settle for doing such on a few providers. Webshare is one of the providers in the market on the watchlist of many marketers.
If it is also on yours and you want to know all that needs to be known about it in other to make an informed decision whether you want to buy proxies from them or not, then stick around on this page and discover both the pros and cons of this service. Before going into that in detail, let take a loo Kat an overview of the service.
Webshare Proxy Service Overview
Webshare is a datacenter proxy service that is quite popular. This provider is known for its affordable and fast proxies that help marketers get their tasks done faster at more affordable pricing than its competitor. Interestingly, it does have good location support covering some of the most sort-after countries in the world.
This provider is also one of the few providers that offer free proxies that work. The proxy network is an anonymous proxy network that utilizes detection evasion techniques such as DNS leak, TCP fingerprints, and open port scans. Its proxies are compatible with both HTTPS and Socks protocol and you can even download proxy lists for each of the protocols.
The service provides an easy-to-use dashboard and does have support for a proxy API that you can use as a developer. Make no mistake about it, Webshare is one of the top providers.
However, it does have its weaknesses which range from having high ping rates, and it proxies being detected when abused on top websites on the Internet. You will discover all of the major cons of Webshare in the cons section of the article. We would start the review by discussing its pros and the reason you might want to consider them.
| Parameters | Features |
| IP Type | Datacenter IPs |
| Price Charged | Number of proxies |
| Price Sample | $35.64 for 25 proxies for their deviated proxies |
| Proxy Protocol | HTTP(S) and SOCKS |
| Authentication | Username and password, and IP authentication |
| IP Locations | About 26 locations |
| Instagram Compatibility | No |
| Sneaker Compatibility | No |
| Speed | Fast |
| Support | Email support |
| Refund Policy | Available |
| IP Replacement | Yes |
| P2P/Torrenting | No |
| Jurisdiction | United States |
Webshare Pros
Webshare is quite popular among small marketers and this is not without reason. Lettuce a look at why the service is popular and has a lot of loyal customers below.
Affordable Pricing
The number one reason most users of this provider stick to it is because of its pricing. There is no doubt that pricing is one of the major factors that determine the proxy server a user ends up with especially if such a user is on a tight budget. If you visit the official website of Webshare you will see it boldly written that their proxies are affordable.
But how affordable are their proxies? The pricing depends on the package you go for. Their rotating proxies are the most expensive and come at a starting price of $6.76, rotating between 10 proxies. For their dedicated plan, pricing starts at $35.62 for 25 proxies.
They also have a low-powered dedicated proxy package known as the private proxy package that has a starting price of $14.25 for 25 proxies. The cheapest proxies offered by Webshare is their proxy server package that comes with a starting price of $2.99 for 100 proxies. Surprisingly, the most popular plan is their proxy server which is the cheapest — confirming that their users are small marketers looking for the cheapest proxies they can afford and that would work.
One thing you will come to like about the service is that it allows its users to enjoy unlimited bandwidth for all of its paid plans. In terms of the number of threads, you are allowed to create as much as between 500 to 3000 threads.
Free Proxies and Friendly Refund policy
As a first-time user of a service, there is that fear that the proxies will not work for you and you might end up just wasting your money and running your project even though the service has an impressive review and as such, you will want to protect yourself in any way possible. Many proxy providers will offer you free trials you can use to test out their service before making an informed decision.
In the case of. Webshare, you do not get a free trial, you get a free plan you can always use each month. This plan is available only for their “Proxy Server” plan and provides you with 10 proxies with a monthly 1GB bandwidth limitation. The quality of service you would get from their paid plans should be the same or more if you subscribe to their private, dedicated, or rotating plan.
Usually, ion you are a marketer, you should only use the free plan to test out the service and not depend on it for running your business. With Webshare, you have nothing to worry about if their proxies do not work for you as they have got a friendly refund policy that would help you get your money back. You need to know that there is usually a period you have the right to ask for a refund after which you lose such right. For Webshare, you have 2 days and you are expected not to have used more than 1GB and the total number of proxies used shouldn’t exceed 1000.
Good Location Support
Datacenter proxy providers do not find it easy to support many locations as residential proxy providers do. This is because they will need to set up data centers in all locations they want to support or have partner data centers there. For this reason, most datacenter proxy providers only support 2 – 3 locations to keep the cost of maintenance low.
However, in the case of Webshare, they went all out, supporting many countries. Currently, the service has got support for about 20 countries from which you can get proxies for. On the website of this provider, there is a deviated page that lists the countries supported.
As at the time this article was written, the top countries with the highest number of proxies include the United States, Netherlands, UK, France, and Germany. The last time we reviewed this provider, which was a year ago, the number of countries supported is quite smaller than this, which shows the providers are actively adding support.
Easy to Use
The Webshare service follows the simple and feature-based design approach which takes away the unnecessary details. The dashboard and User Interface in general is fluid and user friendly even for first-time users. You do not need human help to get anything done except there is a problem somewhere.
All you need to get started is to create an account. If you want to use the free plan with. 10 proxies, you wouldn’t even need to add a payment detail or buy any package.
However, you would most likely need to do but the process is also straightforward, and not you will find it difficult if you have purchased any item online in the past.
Proxies are delivered instantly and you can use them the same way you use regular proxies. For the authentication method supported, Webshare has support for both the username/password authentication and IP authentication, otherwise known as IP whitelisting.
Webshare Cons
Are you tempted to pay for a package with what you read above? Before you do that, read this section and know whether they are truly the best for you as they have got downsides you will need to make an informed decision.
Proxies are Detectable and Quality Questionable
Make no mistake about it — even though you would be told the pricing of a product does not matter — it does especially if it is too cheap. Proxies cost money to set up and manage and as such do not think you can get high-quality proxies that would give you a smooth experience at a free or near-free price.
Webshare has its eyes on being one of the cheapest providers in the space and if you take a look at its most popular package, you will see that it is the cheapest. With this, you shouldn’t expect anything close to the service you will get from the premium providers in the market. You can only use Webshare service on websites with weak to no proxy detection systems.
If you try using them for automating your tasks on social media platforms or e-commerce platforms with strict anti-spam systems that detect proxies, you will easily be sniffed out. However, if you do not abuse the proxies and send too many requests without rotation, you can still use them on some of the sites.
Webshare is developed to be undetectable but there is a level datacenter proxy that can be detectable compared to residential proxies. While the speed is quite acceptable and can even be termed as fast, it could get slow sometimes. There are sometimes that you will also experience downtimes too.
Slow Customer Support
No matter how perfect a product seems to be, it maker is supposed to have a team ready to provide support as there would be the need for that at some point. In the case of Webshare, the product is not even perfect enough to even bring about the argument of whether they need a support team or not — they do. And yes, Webshare has a support team.
However, the team is slow at responding to customer queries. For now, the service does not have support for live chat. This means that the best way to reach them is by email — they do have social media accounts too. For the email support they provide, the response time is discouraging as it takes hours to a day sometimes to get a response from them.
Rotating Proxies Not Good Enough at the Moment
If you intend to use their rotating proxies, I will advise you to think twice before using them and only do that if it is efficient enough to get your job done. This is because they limit the number of IP address you can rotate between which make the whole process ineffective in many cases as the same proxies would still get repeated frequently and as such, give a clue. For rotating proxies, there are many other providers that allow you access to millions of IP addresses across different countries of the world at affordable pricing.
Smartproxy though, residential service is the best rotating proxy service that small marketers can use. It has over 40 million IP addresses in its pool, offers the best response time in the market, and allows you to use it for just $75 but with bandwidth limitation.
Do I Recommend Webshare Proxy?
Webshare has carved a niche for itself in the market — a DC provider with a focus on cheap proxies. If what you are looking for are dead cheap proxies that you can use to access websites that do not have an effective proxy detection system, then you can go ahead and use Webshare. In fact, as you already know from the above, many of their users go for the cheap plans that they can get a handful of proxies for a few dollars.
However, you need to know that they are only useful for sites that have released anti-spam systems. If you try using them on many of the popular websites on the Internet with anti-spam systems that detect proxies, you will get detected after a while and get your accounts banned.