Shifter.io Proxy Review 2023

Shifter.io – formerly known as Microleaves – is one of the oldest proxy service providers on the internet. Shifter is one of the world’s largest agency networks focused on quality private agencies for data-driven marketing. If browsing anonymously is your top priority, consider proxy provider Shifter.

Shifter has over 30 million residential agents in major cities and countries around the world. Their rotating private proxy has an impressive Backconnect server. The server connects to the website using a pool of private proxy IPs that changes every five minutes. Backconnect Proxy offers unlimited sessions, 99.9 uptime, and impressive gigabyte speeds.

You can also use Datacenter’s dedicated or private servers and shared proxies. However, Shifter only offers dedicated and shared proxies in the United States.

Shifter Solutions

• 99,99% Uptime
• Ultra Fast Speed
• 24/7 Customer Support
• High Success Rates
• Global Coverage
• Unlimited Sessions
• Easy to Configure
• Developer Friendly

Use Cases

• Ad Verification
• Sales Intelligence
• Brand Protection
• SEO
• E-commerce
• Web Scraping

Locations

Shifter operates from multiple locations, ensuring global accessibility and performance for websites hosted on its platform. With a distributed infrastructure, Shifter leverages various data centers strategically located in different regions. These locations may include major cities and regions worldwide, enabling efficient content delivery to website visitors across the globe.

By leveraging a network of geographically dispersed data centers, Shifter minimizes latency and ensures fast-loading times for static content. This distributed approach allows users to optimize their websites for a worldwide audience, delivering an exceptional user experience regardless of the visitor’s location.

Whether you have a local or international audience, Shifter‘s multi-location infrastructure contributes to the scalability and reliability of your website.

Pricing

Shifter provides two layers of private proxies: basic Backconnect connection proxy and special Backconnect connection proxy.

Both plans start at $299 per month and you get 25 basic Backconnect connection proxies or 10 special Backconnect connection proxies. The price increase depends on the number of agents assigned. Dedicated data center proxy pricing starts at $30 per month, giving you 10 private, shared, high-speed, US-based HTTPS proxies with unlimited bandwidth and multiple subnets.

Payment

Shifter offers convenient payment options for their services, making it easy for users to subscribe and manage their accounts. Typically, Shifter supports secure payment methods such as credit cards or online payment processors, and cryptocurrencies, ensuring a smooth and hassle-free payment experience. It’s important to review the payment details and terms on their official website to understand the billing cycle, pricing plans, and any applicable fees.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that Shifter may offer flexible subscription options, allowing users to choose monthly or annual billing cycles based on their preferences and budget. By providing a straightforward and reliable payment process, Shifter ensures that users can focus on optimizing their websites without any payment-related inconveniences.

Dashboard

The Shifter dashboard provides users with a user-friendly and intuitive interface to manage their website optimization and hosting. With a clean design and easy navigation, the dashboard offers a centralized hub for accessing and controlling various aspects of your website. From deploying and updating static content to configuring custom domains and managing backups, the dashboard provides a comprehensive set of tools to streamline your workflow.

Additionally, the dashboard may include insightful analytics and performance metrics, allowing you to track the performance of your website and make data-driven decisions.

Overall, the Shifter dashboard simplifies the management of your website optimization process, empowering users with a powerful and efficient control panel.

Proxy Connection Speed

In terms of speed, Shifter‘s residential proxy scored mediocre. While they’ve never fared better than other premium home proxy providers, they’re not far behind. Their average reaction time was 4.426 seconds. We also tested Shifter on Speedtest.net, and the results were acceptable, though not the fastest.

• Average ping: 54 ms
• Average download: 48.21 Mbps
• Average upload: 25.92 Mbps

As we gradually increased the number of simultaneous connections and overloaded the proxy, the number of connection errors increased significantly. After running the same test multiple times, we can definitely say that it has a huge connection error rate issue. Search engines like Google and Yandex thwart us a lot. Yandex’s Shifter proxy was especially blocked. On Google, we also get a lot of 503 bad blocks (Recaptcha). When we connect to Amazon through this proxy, we receive numerous 503, 403, and 401 errors and CAPTCHA confirmations.

Therefore, we had to extend the package to more than a hundred ports to break through the Amazon firewall. It’s the same thing we’ve seen with Best Buy and eBay. But with Aliexpress, the connection is very smooth and straightforward.

Scraping Performance 

According to our crawl performance tests, Shifter performed very poorly on some sites. For others, the results were just average, not particularly good, compared to other competitors.

However, that doesn’t mean it’s not functional. It just means that it works on other sites and fails on other sites. By looking beyond the average performance score (77 in this case) and focusing on specific website performance tests, you are doing yourself a favor.

Performance on 300 Concurrent connections
Test	Success Rate (%)	Error (%)	TimeOut (%)	Block (%)
Amazon	70	5	8	17
Adidas	72	0	10	18
Booking	92	0	4	4
Bing.com	70	4	1	25
Craigslist	80	0	2	18
Instagram	85	2	3	10
Nike	89	0	3	8
Linkedin	78	0	4	18
Google	62	2	6	30
Youtube	67	2	10	25

The crawl performance results table above isn’t impressive, but for some sites, it’s acceptable, at least for the content they serve.
We realized that if we reduce the number of concurrent connections, the number of errors drops dramatically. However, tests done for other proxy providers were done with 300 simultaneous connections, so we had to stick with that. This means that if your concurrent connections are low, you will get less blocking and errors.

Customer Support

While Shifter offers a wealth of valuable documentation for optimizing websites, it’s worth noting that some users have reported challenges with customer support. Occasionally, there have been concerns about response times and the overall quality of support provided. It’s important for users to be aware of this aspect and manage their expectations accordingly. However, despite occasional issues, the extensive documentation and resources available from Shifter can still greatly assist users in navigating the platform and optimizing their websites effectively.

Documentation 

The documentation is a valuable resource, providing clear and comprehensive guides for optimizing your website. From setup to troubleshooting, the documentation covers various topics and is easy to navigate. It’s regularly updated, ensuring users have the latest information to make the most of the platform’s features. Empowering and efficient, Shifter documentation is an essential companion for website optimization.