A Year in Review: Smartproxy 2023

Market overview

This year, the proxy users continued to show interest in advanced scraping solutions. The year 2023 introduced us to a range of new tools that help collect public data even more efficiently. There was a growing interest in previously niche products – mobile and ISP proxies became the new industry standard with an increasing demand for them; however, high-quality residential proxies remained the driving force of the industry.

There weren't a lot of changes on the target list. eCommerce, social media, SEO, and advertising data were crucial for business growth in various areas.

With many new proxy providers joining the landscape, the competitive environment motivated market players to improve their offerings to meet the changing customer behavior and work around ever-advancing anti-bot systems.

Looking into the upcoming year, artificial intelligence stands out as a significant forthcoming market trend. The increasing usage of AI-enhanced apps signals that users are interested in artificial intelligence and machine learning methods. Without a doubt, proxy providers will start to introduce next-level technologies into their solutions.

Smartproxy in the market

Smartproxy continuously improved solutions throughout the past year and launched new ones to address industry shifts. We’ve been working on improving our infrastructure and pricing structure to meet the market's demands and ensure a smooth experience for our users, as we’re committed to staying at the forefront of innovation and user satisfaction.

Updates from Smartproxy camp

Growing user base

It looks like the continuous efforts to improve our infrastructure didn’t go unnoticed. We’ve welcomed over 10K new users in 2023, and we promise to continue delivering the same great value, advanced solutions, and unmatched customer service while putting every user first in line.

Awarded proxies

For the third time in a row, Smartproxy has been named the best value provider by Proxyway, the independent guide for all things proxy. 

HTTP(S) / SOCKS5 protocols

The long-awaited SOCKS5 protocol support has arrived for our residential, mobile, and dedicated datacenter proxies. You can also leverage the trusty HTTP(S) protocol with all of our proxies, including the newest addition, dedicated ISP proxies.

Mobile proxies

This year was big for mobile proxies. We started the year by introducing mobile proxies to our proxy family, a highly requested proxy type, ideal for a broad range of use cases and accessing even the most advanced targets. With the year wrapping up, we’re expanding our mobile proxies locations – you can now hop around 170+ locations around the globe. And in case you missed it, our mobile proxies got a new price tag, now with up to 70% off!

ISP proxies

Adding to the launch of mobile proxies, this year, we’ve also launched ISP proxies, allowing our users to enjoy datacenter speed coupled with the robust stability of residential proxies. If you’re looking for IPs that will last you a lifetime, the dedicated ISP proxy with the Pay per IP option is a perfect match.

Site Unblocker

2023 also brought a powerful scraping solution with automatic proxy pool management and automated unblocking capabilities called Site Unblocker. Our Site Unblocker integrates like a proxy and automatically adjusts scraping strategies based on target, enabling you to access any website and bypass CAPTCHAs or even the most sophisticated anti-bot systems.

Parsing instructions

With the recent update, manually select website elements for parsing, picking out the necessary information from the HTML and converting it into a readable format. Custom parsing instructions allow you to get only the data you need directly in a convenient JSON format.

Team roles

The long-awaited feature helps users to manage permissions and work with different stakeholders on joint projects. Ensure secure access to your Smartproxy account – no more sharing the same password. Use team roles across the whole infrastructure, including the dashboard, Chrome Browser Extension, and Firefox Browser Add-on. It’s also one of our fastest-adopted features, enabling businesses to scale projects easily and efficiently.

Proxy Checker

Smartproxy’s Proxy Checker helps you bulk-test proxies by simply copying and pasting the connection and authentication details. This user-friendly tool was built to enhance our proxy ecosystem, enabling users to test and set up proxies in just a few minutes. And the good news – Proxy Checker is coming as an app in 2024!

Open-access browser extensions

To help users make the most of our platform and tools, we’ve released our Chrome Browser Extension and Firefox Browser Add-on, which are beneficial to those using other proxy providers. These browser tools ensure speedy access to proxies directly from your browser.

Browser profiles

In addition to opening up our Chrome Browser Extension and Firefox Browser Add-on to the public, this year, we’ve introduced browser profiles, allowing users to save their proxy details and avoid having to set their proxies up each time they open and close their browsers. Fewer setup worries and easier proxy management.

Webinars

We went big this year and hosted 4 webinars covering various scraping and multi-accounting topics and answering the hottest questions. We’re happy that various industry experts have joined the discussions, including:

• Pierluigi Vinciguerra, Founder of The Web Scraping Club and CTO at Re Analytics;
• Fabien Vauchelles, Web Scraping Anti-Ban Expert at Wiremind and Developer at Scrapoxy;
• Anton Herashchanka, Marketing Manager at GoLogin.

To help out with the ever-changing scraping landscape, industry experts and our team joined forces for discussions on:

• Best tools and practices for gathering Amazon data;
• How to successfully collect public data in 2023;
• How to manage multiple accounts without bans;
• Saving your team's time and costs by scraping the web efficiently.

Visit our webinar hub and catch all the key takeaways.

Events

From Berlin to Dubai – our team was busy traveling the world to attend industry events and present keynotes. Just look at the event map!

Customer feedback

Our customer success team was working hard to help you out on your proxying and scraping adventures. And by working hard, we mean answering 67273 queries and solving over 60% of the issues in 20 minutes or less.

You ask – we deliver! Here are some of the most requested features and updates we received:

• ISP proxies;
• Mobile proxies;
• Team roles;
• Increased security features;
• Updated Chrome Browser Extension.

This year, we hit a massive milestone by reaching 1K+ reviews on Trustpilot, becoming the top-rated proxy provider on the platform. And just look at those shiny awards from G2!

Looking ahead

As we move into 2024, we’re not slowing the pace and will continue working on bringing more useful features and solutions. From time-saving scraping APIs templates to Knowledge Hub with a lot of interesting reads, there’s a range of great things coming. And as always, we love hearing from you – feedback or questions, we’re always here to help and improve.