An In-Depth Review of SOAX

SOAX’s residential proxies stand as the cornerstone of their service offerings, representing both their primary focus and their most cost-effective solution. Boasting a monthly pool of approximately 5 million addresses sourced from diverse countries worldwide, these proxies are tailored to meet the needs of various industries and applications.

SOAX’s residential proxies claim to boast an impressive 99.9% network uptime. This, coupled with the availability of unlimited concurrent sessions, allows these proxies to cater to diverse use cases without restrictions, ensuring optimal performance for tasks such as market research, ad verification, and web scraping. These proxies are designed for seamless integration, eliminating the need for complex setups, allowing users to start leveraging their benefits within minutes.

Moreover, SOAX also adheres to ethical sourcing practices for their IPs, ensuring that their proxies not only deliver reliability but also adhere to ethical standards.

SOAX simplifies proxy management through its intuitive dashboard, offering users effortless access to usage data, network coverage insights, and API integration. Automatic IP rotation mitigates the risk of scraper blocks, ensuring uninterrupted operations. Multiple protocol support, including HTTP(S), SOCKS5, and UDP/QUIC, further enhances connectivity options.

SOAX has a residential IP pool of over 5 million IPs spanning across 150+ countries. This allows it to provide relatively comprehensive coverage across the globe, with a notable presence in diverse regions, even though some remote African locations may pose challenges. Users can conveniently verify coverage using the interactive map feature on SOAX’s dashboard, which displays available Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs) for enhanced targeting.

One notable feature of SOAX’s residential proxies is the comprehensive targeting and rotation options available. Users enjoy the flexibility to target specific ASNs—a rarity among proxy providers—without incurring exorbitant costs. Additionally, users can customize rotation preferences, choosing to retain IPs until they go offline, rotate with each connection request, or specify custom duration intervals. However, it’s worth noting that while SOAX offers a high level of granularity, their IP coverage is not as extensive in diverse regions as those of established industry giants.

While marketed as unlimited, SOAX’s residential proxies do have certain limitations, particularly concerning concurrent requests. Basic plans offer 300 ports for simultaneous access, with recommendations to cap concurrent connections at 30 each. Advanced packages offer increased port allocations to accommodate higher demands but this will incur higher costs.

Support for HTTP(S) and SOCKS5 protocols ensures versatility in usage, albeit with certain port restrictions for accessing website traffic. Nonetheless, users can expand port availability within SOAX’s terms of use.

SOAX offers a unique pricing model for its residential proxies, considering both traffic usage and the number of concurrent ports available—a departure from conventional approaches. Plans start at $99 per month, providing 15 GB of data at approximately $6.6 per gigabyte, along with 300 ports. The largest plan offers 5 TB of data at $2.2 per gigabyte. Customization options are available for users requiring additional data or ports.

In addition to the listed prices, SOAX offers subtle upgrades like increased whitelisted IP slots to enhance user experience.

To sum it up, SOAX’s lower and mid-tier plans offer excellent value for money and are great cost-effective workarounds to some of the more expensive proxy providers on the market. However, besides increasing the traffic and adding more whitelisted IP slots, SOAX’s higher-tier plans don’t offer much else of significant value. SOAX also lacks a pay-as-you-go option—a potential limitation for users seeking flexibility.

SOAX’s residential proxy network boasts a substantial pool size, with over 50,000 unique IPs in most locations and over 7,000 unique proxies in Australia. When compared to previously conducted assessments from 2022, this indicates significant improvement.

However, it’s worth noting that nearly 40% of SOAX’s US proxies were identified as non-residential addresses, possibly due to the inclusion of ISP proxy servers in its pool. While this may affect IP database accuracy, it doesn’t necessarily impact overall performance.

In terms of infrastructure performance, connection requests consistently reached their targets with response times under one second in all European locations. Again, this is a considerable improvement from previously documented assessments, with SOAX’s network now rivaling some top residential proxy providers in terms of speed.

Performance with popular targets was also impressive, with minimal connection errors even when accessing challenging platforms like Google or photo-focused social media networks. This demonstrates SOAX’s reliability and effectiveness in handling diverse tasks, showcasing its competitiveness in the proxy market.

SOAX’s mobile proxies represent a specialized solution tailored for targets that traditional residential IPs struggle to penetrate. Among the relatively few peer-to-peer-based mobile proxy networks available, SOAX stands out, boasting control over approximately 3.5 million monthly IPs.

SOAX’s mobile proxies offer fast and reliable connections across 3G, 4G, 5G, and LTE networks. With features like Mobile Rotating Proxies, users can effortlessly obtain fresh IPs for each request with a simple click. Alternatively, users have the flexibility to customize their IP refresh rates according to their specific requirements.

Moreover, SOAX ensures seamless continuity by automatically assigning new IPs in the event of connection loss, maintaining uninterrupted progress. For tasks demanding consistency, users can opt for sticky IPs that persist even amidst connectivity disruptions.

SOAX maintains a unified system for both its mobile and residential IPs, ensuring parity in features across the board. This means you benefit from identical granular targeting options, encompassing criteria such as city and ASN, as well as flexible rotation settings tailored to individual preferences, as well as some of the previously mentioned drawbacks.

While the number of ports available may be limited, particularly in comparison to other proxy types, this restriction typically poses minimal concern for mobile proxies. Given their more reserved usage patterns, the port limitation seldom proves to be a significant hindrance in practical applications.

It’s worth noting that, akin to its residential IPs, SOAX’s mobile proxies support the SOCKS5 protocol. However, by default, only a select few ports are open for this protocol. Therefore, it’s advisable for users with specific port requirements to inquire with SOAX regarding the possibility of enabling their desired ports prior to purchase, ensuring seamless integration with their workflows.

SOAX operates its mobile proxies on a subscription basis, utilizing an automatic monthly renewal system unless canceled by the user. Given the nature of its peer-to-peer network, the primary pricing consideration revolves around traffic usage. Additionally, SOAX incorporates the allocation of ports into its pricing structure, with the number of ports increasing proportionally as users scale up their subscription plans.

Remarkably, the entry-level mobile plan is priced at $99, mirroring the cost of access to SOAX’s residential proxies. This pricing parity makes SOAX an exceptionally attractive option for users seeking both residential and mobile proxy services. In fact, the rates for both types of proxies are identical. As a result, SOAX’s mobile proxies currently stand out as perhaps one of the most cost-effective premium-level offerings available.

SOAX’s mobile proxy network boasts a substantial pool size, particularly notable in popular locations such as the US where it outperformed some industry giants in terms of unique IPs. SOAX boasted nearly 40,000 unique IPs in the US, surpassing several competitors. Moreover, its presence is particularly robust in Eastern Europe, where it maintains a significant foothold.

In terms of infrastructure performance, SOAX’s mobile proxies demonstrate a high success rate, indicating the reliability of the provider’s infrastructure. While response times are slightly longer compared to residential proxies, they remain relatively fast when benchmarked against other mobile proxy networks.

Performance with popular targets also yields favorable results, with nearly flawless performance indicating minimal abuse experienced by the IPs. Overall, SOAX’s mobile proxies exhibit reliable performance across various metrics, making them suitable for a wide range of applications and use cases.

SOAX now also offers a Web Unblocker, an advanced proxy solution meant to facilitate data collection from the most challenging websites that make use of JavaScript rendering or other anti-scraping and anti-bot measures.

SOAX’s Web Unblocker offers an array of features aimed at streamlining the scraping process, reducing costs, and maximizing efficiency. In order to bypass restrictions and ensure a seamless scraping process, the Web Unblocker tirelessly retries requests and dynamically switches IPs, automatically retrying requests through different nodes. The Web Unblocker also facilitates the seamless extraction of data from interactive websites (making use of JavaScript), ensuring no valuable insights are left undiscovered.

It is also fairly easy to integrate. If you’re already making use of proxies, all you have to do is replace your current node with the one from the Web Unblocker. You also only pay for successful results, meaning that you only pay for the volume of traffic per successful request, aligning costs with actual usage.

The Setup Process

To get started with SOAX, you first have to register on their site (You can do so by clicking on the ‘Sign Up’ button). Enter your relevant details or continue with your Google Account. This will take you to a form which you need to fill out with basic information about yourself and your use case. Once done, you’ll need to undergo a verification process, this can be done via Phone (through an SMS code) or via ID (by uploading an ID document).

If you go for the phone option, you’ll get access to a whitelist of pre-approved domains. If you go for ID verification, you’ll be able to apply for custom domain access. Regardless of what you choose, click on continue and then finish the process. Once done, you’ll be taken to the dashboard.

How to Manage Subscription and Usage

Designed with user convenience in mind, the SOAX dashboard encompasses all essential functionalities expected from such a platform. Users can seamlessly navigate through various tasks, including authentication, proxy server setup, plan purchase, access to help documentation, and customer support.

A standout feature of the dashboard is the Online Check tab, which offers valuable insights into the status of ASNs (Autonomous System Numbers) across different countries. Notably, it not only displays the number of active ASNs but also provides information on their connection status.

Moreover, SOAX exhibits a commendable commitment to enhancing the user experience, particularly for new users. The dashboard incorporates multiple interactive onboarding wizards across different tabs, guiding users through the process of familiarizing themselves with the service. Additionally, the Intercom-based chat feature aims to assist users further through a drip message campaign.

When it comes to proxy management, SOAX involves a comprehensive setup process. Initially, users must whitelist their IP address for authorization, a step they claim to take for security reasons. Once whitelisted, users can establish a proxy server via either the Login & Password or IP Whitelist method, selecting rotation times, specifying locations or ISPs, and mapping them to designated ports.

Additionally, users have the option to create and export proxy lists. SOAX also offers an API, albeit with limited functionality, primarily restricted to fetching lists of locations and ISPs. It’s worth noting that the API is disabled by default and requires explicit user request for access, and all in all, it’s not very impressive or useful.

When it comes to managing subscriptions, SOAX offers a streamlined and user-friendly experience, allowing customers to purchase plans independently through self-service options. However, it’s important to note that cryptocurrency payments require contacting support.

SOAX’s dashboard incorporates wallet functionality, enabling users to pre-load their accounts with funds to prevent multiple card charges. While this feature is convenient for topping up traffic without acquiring a new plan, users should exercise caution as the process is manual, and failure to monitor balances could result in account suspension.

Furthermore, the dashboard includes a dedicated tab for users to conveniently view their balance, and transaction history, and download invoices, facilitating efficient subscription management and financial tracking.

However, one area for improvement lies in the visualization of data use. The graph SOAX provides is small and limited, offering only a basic overview of traffic expended over a given period.

SOAX provides a comprehensive documentation hub covering various aspects of its service, including an FAQ, quick-start guide, proxy setup instructions, billing information, API documentation, integration tutorials, and video guides. With around 40 different integration guides available, some covering multiple tools, the documentation hub offers extensive resources for users. Notably, SOAX has noticeably improved its documentation since initial testing.

For hands-on support, users can reach out to SOAX via live chat, email, phone, or Telegram. While the provider specifies tickets in the SLA, you can also select the Support tab in the dashboard to activate the live chat.

While still a relatively new player in the proxy provider landscape, SOAX has emerged as a formidable competitor, offering a compelling blend of reliability, versatility, and ethical sourcing practices. With its extensive pool of residential and mobile proxies, SOAX caters to a diverse array of industries and applications, from market research to ad verification and web scraping.

For a relatively newer company, its commitment to ethical data collection practices also helps set it apart in an increasingly scrutinized industry. Moreover, the company’s competitive pricing model, offering a balance between cost-effectiveness and performance, makes it an attractive option for businesses of all sizes.

However, some potential drawbacks should be considered, such as the limitations on concurrent requests and port availability, particularly in basic plans. Additionally, while SOAX offers some great enterprise grade plans that can certainly be considered value for money, its proxy pool is comparatively lower than that of several industry giants catering to that particular niche. Newer features like SOAX’s Web Unblocker are a welcome addition but its relative newness in the market may raise concerns about its maturity and robustness compared to established alternatives.

Nonetheless, all things considered, SOAX’s rapid evolution and dedication to providing rich features at cost-effective prices highlight its potential to continue making a significant mark in the proxy industry landscape. As it continues to grow and refine its offerings, SOAX stands poised to carve out an even more substantial presence in the industry, potentially posing a challenge to other established industry giants in the future.