What Are Proxies? A Primer for Business Teams
Ask a marketing or e-commerce team why it pays for proxies and the answers are practical: to see a competitor's prices the way shoppers abroad see them, to confirm a client's ads appear in the right country, to keep several business accounts on steady connections. A proxy server makes each of those possible by relaying the team's requests, so the website answers the proxy's address and location instead of your office connection.
This primer covers how that relay works, the main kinds of proxy and what each costs here, and the two settings you will meet when you order. Whatever the workflow, the ground rules do not change: gather only data that is publicly available, and keep to each target site's terms of service and the law that applies to you.
We write these guides for e-commerce, marketing and agency teams that pay for proxies by the gigabyte.
What business teams use proxies for
Most of the proxy spend in a company traces back to a short list of workflows:
- Web data collection — gathering publicly available information at a scale no one could manage by hand.
- SEO and SERP monitoring — seeing the search results that people in each country or city actually get.
- Ad verification — confirming that campaigns appear where, and to whom, they were bought.
- Price and availability monitoring — tracking what competitors charge and what they have in stock.
- Brand protection and market research — watching listings, resellers and local offers in each market.
- QA testing across regions — making sure a localised site or app works properly in every market it launches in.
- Business accounts — running several legitimate accounts from consistent IPs.
Whichever applies, the same conditions hold: publicly available data only, within each site's terms of service and the law that applies to you.
How the relay works
Each tool on the team, whether a browser, rank tracker, price monitor or in-house script, is pointed at the proxy's gateway. It gets in by signing in with a username and password, or by calling from an address on the whitelist. The proxy then contacts the target site for you, forwards the request and passes back the reply, so the site only ever sees the proxy's IP and geographic location.
That gives a team two practical abilities. It can show a chosen address and location to the destination, which every local check depends on. And it can spread a large job over many addresses rather than one, so the work does not run into the rate limits a single IP would meet quickly.
Where proxy IPs come from
Proxies differ mainly in the network their addresses belong to, and that network decides how far a destination trusts the traffic:
- Datacenter proxies — addresses from cloud and server providers. Quick and low-cost, a sound choice for volume work on sites that pay little attention to the network. See datacenter proxies.
- Residential proxies — addresses from real home ISP connections. Higher trust, so teams use them when geo-accurate data has to come from protected sites. See residential proxies.
- Mobile (4G/5G) proxies — addresses from carrier networks, a very high-trust class that suits platforms built for phones. See mobile proxies.
- ISP / static residential — residential-registered addresses on fast hosting, combining household-level trust with speed on an IP that does not change. Here they come with Residential Premium rather than as a separate plan. See ISP proxies.
The table compares the four pools we sell, with the starting price of each.
| Proxy type | IP source | Trust | Speed | Typical price/GB | Typical team use |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Datacenter | Cloud and hosting ranges | Lower | Very fast | from $3.50 | High-volume collection from unprotected sites, automation, SEO tools |
| Residential | Household lines from consumer ISPs | High | Medium | from $3.99 | Market research, ad verification and geo-accurate checks on protected sites |
| Mobile (4G/5G) | 4G/5G carrier networks | Very high | Medium | from $4.50 | Phone-first platforms, app and mobile ad testing |
| Residential Premium | Curated pool of real-user IPs | Very high | High | from $6.50 | Hard targets where every failed request is costly |
The two settings you choose when ordering
First, protocol. HTTP/HTTPS is designed for web traffic, and SOCKS5 relays any TCP or UDP traffic. Every plan we sell includes all three, so nobody on the team has to buy twice.
Second, rotation. A rotating proxy moves to a new IP with each request or on a timer, which fits big read-only jobs such as price or rank checks. A static proxy holds the same IP throughout, which fits session work such as a signed-in account. Weighing proxies against the company VPN? The proxy vs VPN guide explains which job each one does.
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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