How to Use a Proxy: A Setup Playbook for Teams
Teams rarely buy proxies for their own sake. Behind most orders is a specific job: viewing a competitor’s product page the way shoppers in another country see it, confirming that a client’s ads appear in the right market, or giving a rank tracker genuinely local results. Whatever the job, setup is the same short routine.
Your order supplies four values — a host, a port, and either a login or an approved IP address. Each browser or tool on the team needs them entered once, a couple of minutes’ work. This playbook covers browsers, the scripts and tools your analysts run, and a final check before anything client-facing depends on the connection.
If the team hasn’t settled on a proxy type yet, read what are proxies first, then how to choose a proxy. Keep every use legitimate: gather publicly available information, and stay within each site’s terms of service and applicable law.
We write these guides for e-commerce, marketing and agency teams that pay for proxies by the gigabyte.
Gather the four connection details
Once an order is delivered, everything the team needs sits in your dashboard. Store the values in a shared password manager, not a chat thread or a spreadsheet:
- Host (gateway) — the address every tool connects to, for example
gateway.cheapest-proxies.com. - Port — chooses the protocol or rotation mode;
8080, for example, carries HTTP/HTTPS. - Username and password — a login that works from any network, whether that is the office, a home connection or a laptop on the road.
- IP whitelist — the alternative to a login. Approve a fixed address, such as an office line or a server, and requests from it need no username or password.
Each setup uses one of the two login methods, never both together. Proxy authentication explained covers which suits which part of a team.
Set up browsers for hands-on checks
Manual work — a marketer reviewing a landing page abroad, an account manager looking over a client’s storefront — is easiest with the proxy set at system or browser level:
- Windows — Settings → Network & internet → Proxy → Manual proxy setup. Type the host into the address field and the port beside it, then save.
- macOS — System Settings → Network → your connection → Details → Proxies. Switch on the protocol your tools use, then add the host and port.
- Firefox — Settings → Network Settings → Manual proxy configuration. Only that browser uses the proxy; the rest of the computer is unaffected.
With a login, the browser asks for the username and password when the first page loads. Agencies juggling several clients often use a multi-profile browser instead, giving each profile its own proxy so that one client’s work never mixes with another’s.
Connect the tools and scripts your team runs
Rank trackers, price monitors and in-house scripts all take a proxy in the same shape: a URL written as http://USER:PASS@HOST:PORT. Tools that support proxies usually have a settings field for that URL, or for the four values separately.
For an analyst working in Python with Requests, the change is two lines:
- Define the proxy once for both web protocols with
proxies = {"http": "http://USER:PASS@HOST:PORT", "https": "http://USER:PASS@HOST:PORT"} - Then hand it to every call, as in
requests.get("https://example.com", proxies=proxies)
Anyone checking from a terminal can pass the same URL to cURL as a single flag, as in curl -x http://USER:PASS@HOST:PORT https://example.com. Scrapy, Playwright, Puppeteer and Selenium accept the same details. Keep the reference table below handy for whoever configures the tools.
| Field | Example | What it controls |
|---|---|---|
| Host | gateway.cheapest-proxies.com | The gateway every tool connects to |
| Port | 8080 | Carries HTTP/HTTPS traffic |
| Protocol | HTTP / HTTPS / SOCKS5 | The kind of traffic you can send |
| Auth | User:Pass or IP whitelist | How the gateway knows a request is yours |
| Rotation | Per-request or sticky | A new IP per request, or one IP held |
Choose protocol and rotation per job
Two settings change how a job behaves. The protocol — HTTP/HTTPS or SOCKS5 — sets what kind of traffic the proxy carries. Almost all web-based marketing and e-commerce work runs over HTTPS.
The rotation mode sets whether every request gets a new IP or one IP is held for a few minutes; rotating vs sticky sessions compares the two. A workable rule for teams: rotate per request for read-only collection such as price or rank checks, and hold a sticky session whenever someone signs in and moves through several pages.
Test once, then roll it out
Before a client report or a scheduled job depends on the proxy, send a single request to an IP-echo service. The reply should show the proxy’s address and country rather than your office’s. When it does, copy the same settings to the rest of the team’s tools.
To budget the work, size the data on the proxy calculator, check rates on the pricing page, or buy now. Plans start at $3.50/GB, delivery is instant, and coverage spans 55+ countries.
Match the pool to the workflow
Every pool is billed per GB and run from the same dashboard, so one team can keep low-cost volume work and high-trust checks side by side.
High-volume collection from unprotected sites, automation, SEO tools
Market research, ad verification and geo-accurate checks on protected sites
Phone-first platforms, app and mobile ad testing
Hard targets where every failed request is costly
Covering several markets in one report? MIX packages combine multi-country residential traffic in a single order. Agencies buying on behalf of clients can apply for the reseller programme.
Get your team running
Per-GB pricing from $3.50 · 55+ countries · instant delivery · 30-day validity · no traffic logs · 24/7 human support
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1
Size the job
Pick a proxy type in the proxy calculator and enter the gigabytes you expect to use to see the order total.
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2
Order and pay
Choose the pool on the proxies page and pay by card through Stripe or in crypto through Cryptomus. Each order is billed per GB and does not renew on its own.
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3
Share access
Credentials appear in the dashboard as soon as payment clears. Add them to each tool with a login or an IP whitelist, then send one test request before the real job starts.
Questions team leads ask
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