In a Nutshell
Storm Proxies are one of the leading proxy service providers in the market. It has maintained its position on the top charts. Here, In this review, we are going to discuss all the features, tests, results, pricing, and usability of the Storm Proxies.
Storm Proxies Overview
We have reviewed many different proxies and given clients recommendations for which proxies to use. This review will cover all you need to know about StormProxies’s residential proxies.
Storm Proxies started its services as a proxy provider in mid-2016. In just a few years of its launch, it has won the trust of its users who were using other service providers till then. While service is not as premium as other providers provide, it has a loyal customer base and is considered one of the best.
Its proxies are blazing fast as per residential proxies and don’t hurt your wallet. They have good customer service. They provide effective and functional web scraping tasks. However, they are quite limited in their area coverage, geo-targeting options, and authentication method, as compared to other proxy providers.
Storm Proxies Advantages
Pricings
It is one of the low-cost Residential IP providers. Storm Proxies are a comparatively cheaper alternative. The general belief is that residential proxies are more secure and trusted than commercial proxies, and thus, they are more expensive. However, you can get the residential proxies without shelling off much money from your pocket.
Storm Proxies are not metered and are provided with unlimited bandwidth connection. ( Which is limited to one device per package though but with Multithread support). Their proxies prices are based on port (also known as proxy gateway). They have plans ranging from 5 ports to 50 ports.
Their 5 ports plan is priced at $50 a month which makes the price of a port $10. However, if you opt for their 50 port plan, the price of a port drops down to $6 a month. No matter which plans you choose, you are given access to a residential IP pool of 40,000 residential IPs.
Easy Usability
It is one of the easy-to-use proxies that comes with a minimalistic approach.
Scraping Performance
When it comes to scraping and crawling the web, Storm Proxies has a good performance. They work well for a number of websites but sometimes struggle a lot in establishing a connection to some websites. This happens because of the website’s anti-spam software and captchas. Despite this performance issue, it works fine with maximum websites and provides satisfactory scraping performance.
Response Time & Proxy Speeds
● Response Time
When you compare datacenter proxies to residential proxies, you will find that the performance of the residential proxy is not comparable. This is because there is a delay incurred as requests are rerouted every time. Although Storm Proxy’s residential proxies don’t perform as well as datacenter proxies, they’re fast enough for most uses.
The average response time for Storm Proxies is 6.147
The average response time is a decent amount of time, and although it is not as quick as other major companies, it is still good enough.
● Proxy Connection Speed
While performing proxy performance tests one must include the download speed and upload speed, as well as latency. We have to consider the data size that can be transmitted through Storm Proxies per second. In our test results, we got the following results.
Average Ping: 100ms
Average Download: 19.98 Mbps
Average Upload: 12.86 Mbps
IP Rotation
Storm Proxies may not have achieved the superiority in IP rotation. However, that does not mean it does not have support for rotating IP- It is lesser than its counterparts. Storm Proxies offers minimal IP rotation but does not have any by-session. 5-minute rotations are acceptable for some situations.
Responsive Customer Support Team
When it comes to customer support and communication, Storm Proxy has a good reputation. But it lacks diverse communication channels, the only way you can get quick support is via email. It generally takes 2-3 hours to respond, sometimes up to 24 hours.
The advantage section of the article is still mixed with some negatives. However, there are still more negatives about using Storm Proxies, and as such, it would be wise to say Storm Proxies have room for improvement. Here, we are going to discuss some of the disadvantages of Storm Proxies.
Storm Proxies-Disadvantages
Limited Geographical Coverage
Although Storm Proxies is new in the industry, it contains a limited number of server locations. For some reason, their servers are located in only two locations. The United States and the European region. Unluckily, because they don’t have much presence in other areas, they don’t publicly state their locations as other providers do.
Storm Proxies only has regional location targeting. Other locations, like cities, are not an option. This lowers their accuracy level and has a major disadvantage because they don’t have city targeting or any way to broaden the reach of your campaign.
Small IP Pool
If you are the type that wants more than 10 million IPs, you are going to be disappointed with Storm Proxies. They only have over 70,000 in their pool of residential IPs and you have only been given access to a pool of 40,000 residential IPs no matter the plan you subscribe to.
No Free Trial
Unlike other proxy service providers who give a 7- 30 days money-back guarantee, Storm Proxies provides a free trial for 24 hours only. When you purchase any of their plans, you need to contact their customer service within 24 hours who will help you get a refund if you are not satisfied.
No Authentication
Storm Proxies only allows one IP address to log in per subscription. This means that for people who prefer a “username and password” instead of the IP address system, it can be less convenient because they have to remember more information.
Additionally, there is a limit on the number of IP addresses that can be whitelisted. This makes it less convenient for people who would prefer other methods of authentication
Final Verdict
There is no such perfect proxy service provider. Each one comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. However, looking beyond the cons, we have discussed what they offer, and can you sacrifice the cost for the good aspects? That should be the question. No doubt, Storm Proxies does not meet the bar set by premium proxy providers.
However, because of its pricing, speed, and scraping performance, it is fairly usable. You can make a choice and buy their plan if you feel that their advantages overshadow the cons.
