In this blog, I am going to share my honest Microleaves Review.
Several security solutions are employed today to protect websites against malicious actors, particularly at the proxy and browser layers.
A few examples of techniques that address proxy and browser layers are browser fingerprinting, IP address fingerprinting, geo-fencing, and so on.
As a result, if you want to extract data from the open web at scale, then you need a technology layer that can provide your system with the maximum amount of data without slowing it down.
Shifter (Formerly Microleaves) Review 2024: in Detail
Technology such as residential proxies, which are provided by various proxy providers, is one such solution, such as Shifter (formerly Microleaves).
With a focus on delivering high-quality residential proxies for data-driven marketing, Shifter is one of the world’s largest proxy networks. It was founded in 2012 under the name reverseproxies.com and then rebranded as Microleaves in 2016.
It has amassed more than 31 million backconnect residential proxies that are spread across more than 200 countries and cities around the globe.
The peer-to-peer network that these proxy servers utilize allows them to bypass geo-restrictions and ensures you will never be blocked.
Besides their unmetered connections, Shifter back connects proxies also stand out. With their low-cost plans, you will never have to worry about your internet being disconnected regardless of how much bandwidth you use.
As part of our review, we discuss their different proxy types, their pricing, features, performance, ease-of-use, and customer service, as well as what makes them ideal for crawling sneaker sites, verifying ads, and scraping the web privately. Take a look.
Proxy Types
Proxy networks that use Shifter can be classified into three types. Back connection residential proxies, datacenter IPs, and shared IPs are all options available.
Backconnect Residential Proxies
Shifter specializes in back connecting residential proxy servers. In spite of having over 31M+ residential IP addresses at its disposal, Shifter remains one of the best and largest residential proxy providers on the internet, second only to Oxylabs and Bright Data.
Unlike datacenter proxies, Shifter provides only residential IPs that are provided by ISPs for home users so proxy users can scrape the web undetected.
Additionally, Shifters’ Peer-to-Peer network is entirely based on P2P technology, offers 100% anonymity, and is guaranteed to work.
As a result, there are two types of Shifter residential proxy. In particular, there are basic and special back connection proxies, each of which has its own pricing plan.
Basic Backconnect Proxies
Geo-targeting is not available on Basic Backconnect Proxies. They’re designed for general web browsing. Furthermore, they assign residential IP addresses randomly, except for those from Tier 1 countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
Consequently, these proxy servers can only satisfy a limited number of high-demand websites.
Special Backconnect Proxies
Your residential IP addresses can be geo-targeted using Special Backconnect Proxies, allowing you access to websites that are locked down by the Basic version.
They’ve been specifically designed to have extended functionality, which makes them perfect for high-demand use cases.
Additionally, Shifter’s Backconnect Proxies automatically switch IP addresses every 5 minutes, though you can change the settings as needed. Web crawlers and data miners can take advantage of this feature.
Additionally, the system supports HTTPS and SOCKS protocols, meeting all the needs of most providers.
Datacenter Proxies: Both Dedicated and Shared Proxies
Besides providing high-quality residential proxies, Shifter also provides dedicated and shared data center proxies to scrapers in need of fast and cheap access to valuable data.
You can keep your information safe by using dedicated proxies. Their exclusive nature makes them safer and more reliable than shared ones that are accessible by multiple people simultaneously.
A 99.99 percent network uptime guarantee is provided by highly secured US-based datacenters and these proxies offer unrestricted bandwidth, rapid speeds, and gigabit speeds.
Furthermore, their proxies support both HTTP and HTTPS protocols, as well as multiple subnets, non-sequential IPS, and multiple subnets. Their service also includes an easy-to-use control panel for managing and tracking proxies. Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter restrictions can be circumvented with these proxies.
Pricing of Microleaves
Shifter has excelled at pricing as well as offering a huge pool of residential proxies. The company’s pricing is also reasonable.
The proxies provided by Shifter are unmetered, unlike most proxy providers. As a result, there are no additional charges once you have used up the allotted bandwidth.
Rather than charging per port, they charge per gateway, so you won’t be locked out, even after you’ve consumed all of your bandwidth. You’ll also have more control over your load if you have more gateways.
Shifter Residential Proxies Pricing
Nevertheless, Shifter’s residential proxy services are divided into two categories – Basic Backconnect Proxies and Special Backconnect Proxies. The prices start at $249/Month and increase depending on how many proxy servers are assigned.
For example, with Basic Backconnect you can get 25 Basic Backconnect Proxies for $249/month. Meanwhile, the special backconnect proxy plan provides you with 10 special backconnect proxies at the same price.
Pricing for Shifter Shared Dedicated Datacenter Proxies
Moving forward. Additionally, Shifter offers dedicated shared data center proxy services. However, they are more affordable than their residential counterparts and are well suited to smaller applications.
The monthly fee is $30/month, which provides you with 10 US-based private HTTPS shared proxies offering unlimited bandwidth.
Money-back Guarantee
We at Shifter go out of our way to ensure you are satisfied with our products. Even though Shifters does not offer free trials due to spammers, its refund policy guarantees customers that if the proxies refuse to perform the tasks they have been given, the money spent on them will be refunded.
This has made them a popular proxy service among web users. They offer a 3-day money-back guarantee.
Scrapping Performance and Speed
Shifter’s backconnect residential proxies were put to the test. On average more than 94% of successful connections were made to a US Cloudflare server over the course of a month using thousands of connection requests.
We also tested the proxy speeds of Shifter. The response time and the connection speed of the proxy were tested. Response time refers to the total amount of time it takes to respond to a request.
In general, however, residential proxies have a slower response time than data center ones, despite varying server locations. Using these types of proxies will cause pings and latency. Residential Shifters proxies are fast, to say the least.
The server response time for Shifter was 4.45 seconds, a remarkable achievement considering it’s a low-cost proxy service provider.
Shifter proxies were also examined along with connection speed. By proxy connection speed we mean how much data you can upload and download using Shifter.io in a second.
Because of this, we were able to test Shifter’s residential proxy servers using Speedtest. While we didn’t get the best download or upload speed, this is still a great result for most scrapers. In terms of speeds, download speeds were 20.47 Mbps, and upload speeds were 10.71 Mbps.
Ease of Use
One size does not fit all when it comes to proxy management. Scraping shouldn’t be taken lightly. Choose a fast, reliable, and affordable solution. It must be easy to use as well.
It is easy to find what one needs by following a few steps on Shifter, one of the best proxy sites in the market, so even beginners will have little trouble finding what they need.
On the website, for example, you can access the Client Area from the top right corner. From here, customers can access their accounts. Account settings can also be changed here. You can also find here a list of Allowed Ports and Authorized IP addresses.
In addition, online tutorials have been added to the dashboard for easier use. The ease with which proxy authentication can be done makes this provider different from others today.
Whitelisting your IP address is one method of authenticating with the providers.
Customer Support at Microleaves
Any proxy service needs to provide excellent customer service. A serious user can suffer exasperating effects when one of them fails.
Proxy servers act as extensions to your website. Therefore, it is important to choose a company that offers 24/7 customer support.
A ticketing system is used by Shifter to provide customer service. Their main limitation is that response times can’t be guaranteed.
Email addresses and social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook appear on the site, but they do not appear to be associated with customer service.
You can read the Frequently Asked Questions if you have any questions. This section provides answers to the most frequently asked questions for those who are unfamiliar with what they’re getting into.
They also answer any basic questions you might have about proxy voting in addition to solving any concerns you might have.
Microleaves Pros- Microleaves Review
1. Large Pool of IPs and Locations
Over 26 million IP addresses make this pool excellent for ensuring deliverability. Microleaves rotates its proxy servers every five minutes. In comparison with other back connect proxies, this is pretty impressive.
A special network is also used for peer-to-peer connections. As a result of your P2P activities and residential IP address, you will not be flagged down.
Changing IP addresses is not necessary with Microleaves since it provides multiple IP addresses. According to its website, it offers IP addresses from around the world.
I can confirm that Microleaves proxy servers provide you with IP addresses in Europe, Asia, the USA and Canada, despite not having confirmed this.
The service also offers geolocation filters. Consequently, you can choose which countries the proxies are assigned to. Cities, however, cannot be targeted. Microleaves IPs offer a great deal of diversity in terms of features as well.
2. Unlimited Bandwidth
The only charge Microleaves makes is for port numbers and unlimited traffic. Many expensive and lucrative proxy services charge per gigabyte, but Microleaves doesn’t charge for bandwidth.
3. Regular Session Setup and Control
After buying a proxy subscription from Microleaves, you get a certain number of ports. Ports are reserved for IP addresses for five to ten minutes by default.
As the settings for these ports are quite detailed, you can choose which websites you want to work with each IP address. Upon selecting the website option, Microleaves’ support team must be contacted.
Among the oldest providers of back connection proxies, Microleaves’ proxy servers employ SOCK protocol. Ticketmaster, social websites, e-mail websites, AXS, Amazon, StubHub, and Craigslist can all be accessed through the backconnect proxies with geotargeting.
4. Organized Website and a Basic Dashboard
The Microleaves Proxies website not only offers a great deal of information about using the proxies, but it is also easy to navigate.
Even beginners can find what they are looking for on the site, as it offers a variety of subscription options. As well as the dashboard, there is a blog and an FAQ section.
A unique feature is that you can change the IP whitelist. You can add up to ten IPs.
How to Authorize IPs
Microleaves IP is easy to use. Proxy service accepts only IP addresses but supports multiple IPs simultaneously. You only need to click on your dashboard’s Authorized IPs field after logging in.
The next screen will allow you to select the proxy type, and on the field entitled add authorize IP address, you can add your local IP address.
5. Average Speed and Scrapping Performance
Prior to purchasing a proxy subscription, speed and latency should be the most influential factors. In proxy speed, data packets are forwarded through a gateway at a specific rate per second, while latency refers to the time it takes for a data packet to make a round trip from a client to the server and back.
6. Pocket-Friendly Pricing and Plans
The prices of Microleaves are reasonable compared to other proxies on the market. Three types of proxies can be found in one place; back connect proxies, shared proxies, and dedicated proxies.
For backconnect proxies, there are two pricing plans: a special and a basic one. There are also two types of plans with the lowest plan offering 25 backconnect proxies and the highest offering 5000 backconnect proxies.
You can also request a customized plan from the service in case you need one that suits your business needs.
Microleaves’ payment gateway also supports the following options. See Microleaves payment options in the screenshot below.
Cons
No live and slow email support
It took more than 24 hours for a support ticket to be answered. It was inconvenient for us. We also learned that other customers had the same issue.
Support can be reached via Skype and email, but the average wait time is quite disappointing. There is a lot of information on the service’s website, but if one has a complaint, the website would not be much help.
Do I Recommend?
Microleaves’ IP pool and low pricing make it worth a thumbs up. Performance is good and the user interface is easy to navigate.
Our only complaint is the slow response time from the support team. A proxy service that is affordable and won’t break the bank is Microleaves. If speed is a top priority for you, then you won’t like it.
It is better to find a proxy service that is faster.
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Conclusion – Microleaves Review 2024
Shifter has been in business for years. Regardless of the web scraping task, you will get the best results with its worldwide geo-distribution and high-quality residential and datacenter proxies, which are also easy to set up.
Therefore, even though some of their claims seem overblown, Shifter.io is a great service whether you require residential or datacenter proxy services.
Shifter is the best choice, however, if you are looking for a service provider that offers general-purpose services to all of its customers.
