SimplyNode Review
The SimplyNode proxy service is one of the providers that works but has yet to become popular among proxy users. When I heard the name, my mind went to a VPS provider until I dug deeper to discover it is a proxy network — offering residential and mobile proxies specifically.
First visiting the site, it looks quite minimalistic and simple, just as its name suggests. However, using their proxies, you will discover the punchline on their homepage is true. And what is this punchline? “No fancy design, no bells and whistles – just a proper product that does its work”. Join me as I provide an honest SimplyNode review, exposing the core strengths and weaknesses of their service delivery and offers.
No Fancy Affordable Proxy that Works
- Over 50 million ethically sourced IPs in the pool
- Global IP location support
- Support both country-level and city-level targeting
- Support both rotating and sticky ports
- Comes with a proxy list generator
- High concurrency support
- Support both username/password and IP authentication
- 14 days refund policy
- HTTP, SOCKS & UDP support
From my research, this provider seems to be a new provider in the market. However, it is already making a statement, focusing less on having a fancy website with nothing to show for it and more on a simple and minimalistic website that gets the job done.
From this service, you get only rotating proxies — no dedicated or static IP support at the moment. You can choose between their residential or mobile proxies depending on your specific use case considering they are meant for almost the same task but one (mobile) costs slightly more than the other.
One thing you will come to like about the service is the huge size of its pool great for not just mid-scraping projects but also larger ones. It does have support for IPs from most countries around the world and allows you to choose IPs not just from specific countries, but also cities and regions.
This makes it great for scraping localized and geo-fenced content. However, while it is great for scraping and does come with some advanced features, it has its limitations including the type of sites you can use their proxies on.
Currently, they do not allow usage of their proxy network on government sites, financial services, and some specific news sites. Aside from these sites, you can use their network on all other domains.
“Is SimplyNode worth it? Let’s dig deeper and discuss it further”
Expert Review & Guides
The SimplyNode Solution
The SimplyNode proxy solution as stated earlier offers only rotating proxies but with limited sticky sessions. With this, their proxy network can be used for a variety of use cases. Below are some of the popular use cases of the SimplyNode proxies with a focus on their residential proxy offering.
SEO Scraping
Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) scraping is one of the use cases you can use their proxies for. I have tested their proxies on Google and Bing which are the popular search engines for SEOs and it worked without getting detected and blocked.
You can use them for collecting keywords and monitoring your ranking and that of your competitors automatedly without getting blocked. The key this succeeding here is to make sure you randomised delays between requests and rotate headers. You should use their high-rotating support so each request gets a new IP address..
E-Commerce Scraping and Ad Verification
The SimplyNode solution is built for e-commerce scraping tasks. This includes scraping e-commerce platforms for reviews, ratings, product descriptions, and even price monitoring. It is a great choice for retail monitoring and can be used to keep a tab on your competitors without getting blocked as you will appear as a regular customer to them.
It can also be used for general marketing research and ad verification, thanks to its global IP support, allowing you to see verified ads across different cities and locations.
Social Media Scraping
Unlike in the case of the two use cases above you use high rotating proxies in most cases, for social media scraping, it depends. If you have to log in and maintain a session to scrape, then you need to use their sticky sessions. You can set IP to rotate every 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, and one hour.
There is also support for a custom rotation period. Using this, you are able to scrape with the session maintained. You get the best result when you use this together with an anti-detect browser and multiple accounts to share the scraping loads and avoid exceeding request limits per account.
Brand Protection and General Privacy
Sometimes, you don’t need proxies for web scraping or any specific use case. All you need is to use proxies to hide your real IP address away from spies online. This is great for brand protection and makes it difficult for your competitors to monitor your activities online. You can use the rotating proxies from this provider and get new IPs assigned to you frequently to keep you anonymous online. It is also great for email protection.
General Web Scraping
Aside from the specific scraping use cases such as e-commerce, SEO, and social network scraping, if you have any other scraping needs, you can use their proxies. This is because of the features it comes with which make its usage diverse. You can use it for scraping any site provided it is not a government domain, a financial service, or a selected news site.
These restrictions are for legal reasons. For other sites, you can scrape them without getting detected. If you need IPs from specific regions for accessing geo-targeted content, they are a good fit for that. You just need to configure the proxy geolocation, and rotation period before getting the proxy credentials and you are good to go.
back to menu ↑
How Does SimplyNode Residential Proxy Work
The SimplyNode service has over 50 million IP addresses in its pool through which your requests would be routed through. But this number is not the interesting part, what’s interesting is that it does not own these IPs. So how is it able to provide them to you? Well, the IPs are sourced via P2P networks where user join and allow their device to be used as a proxy endpoint either for financial gains or in order to use an app for free.
When you send a web request using the SimplyNode it goes through two journeys to get to the target website. First, it is routed to the SimplyNode server. There, the server chooses from the available IP pool based on your settings and routes the request through to the website. This second journey is the most important as the IP/device your request is routed through is seen by the target website as the originator of the request.
The response is sent to this device/IP which then forwards it to the SimplyNode server which, in turn, forwards it back to you. Depending on your settings, there might be slight changes to this workflow as using the geo-targeting option and session proxies will make things less random and more systematic.
Take, for instance, if you need to maintain a session and use the sticky IP option, the service will choose an IP for you, based on historical data on IPs that stay active longer online in other to provide you session support. However, this is never a guarantee as sessions can get cut off if the IP goes offline but the chances based on historical data are low.
back to menu ↑
Pricing and Features
Pricing is one of the areas the SimplyNode service shines. Interestingly, it is also one of the important factors that help one decide whether to use a proxy service or not. The proxies offered here are rotating proxies and like most rotating proxies out there, pricing is based on consumable bandwidth otherwise known as traffic measured in GB.
However, one thing I find great about their pricing is that unlike most of its competitors that sell their proxy bandwidth with expiry dates, their own does expire unless you consume the quantity purchased.
The SimplyNode service has a flexible and affordable pricing structure. It starts from $6 per GB and comes all the way to $4.45 and even lower depending on the quantity of bandwidth purchased. There is no free trial here — the closest to that is the discount you get on your first purchase where 1GB is sold for you for $3.
Interestingly, there is a 14-day refund policy to help you get your money back in certain circumstances. In terms of payment methods supported, the SimplyNode network has support for card payment, Apple Pay, cryptocurrencies, and even direct bank transfers upon request.
However, I wouldn’t advise you to use crypto payment until you get comfortable with them. This is because there is no refund for users that pay via crypto and you are also required to do a KYC to pay via crypto.
Get 25% Discount for 50GB+ purchases - put promo code “Proxy25” to check out!
Get 15% Discount for 10GB+ purchases - put promo code “Proxy21” to check out!
back to menu ↑
Features of SimplyNode
Let’s take a look at some of the features of the SimplyNode proxy solution.
Features of SimplyNode
- Bandwidth never expires. This is a nice-to-have feature and is even perfect for small users. When you purchase proxy bandwidth from them, you are free to use them anytime you like without being in haste to finish it up before the expiration date.
- Has a large pool of IP addresses. There are over 51 million IP addresses in the pool of this provider with most of them located in the most sought-after countries. With this size of an IP pool, their proxy network is fit for use in both mid to large-scale scraping projects.
- Extensive location support with granular targeting features supporting both country and city-level targets. You can choose IPs from specific cities and even ISPs, giving you better control over the IPs assigned to you. However, using the targeting feature reduces the number of IP addresses you have access to.
- Support multiple protocols ranging from the HTTP(S) to SOCKS5 and even UDP. This makes its usage quite versatile compared to other competitors as only a few providers have support for the UDP protocols which are meant for time-sensitive tasks.
- Both rotating and session proxies are supported. With rotating proxies, you get a new IP address after every request and this is great for web scraping and general automation. However, if you need to maintain a session for a period of time, then you need the session proxies which support session management up to one hour.
- Customer support is fast and responsive. I was able to speak to their team member in less than 3 minutes using their live chat support feature. If there is no customer support member online, you can communicate with them via email.
- The user interface is easy to use and simple. There are no user interface elements that clutter the screen and add to your burden of learning how to use it. It is the simplest experience you will have in the industry.
- Proxies require authentication and you can either use the username/password option or the IP whitelisting authentication method. If your device IP address changes often then username and password authentication is the best for you.
- There is a 14-day refund policy which is meant to help you get your money back if you are not satisfied with their service provided you didn’t use a certain quantity of bandwidth and the issue is from their end.
- The SimplyNode service does keep a list of blocked sites that you can’t use their proxies to access. This includes government websites, financial services, and some news sites. This is done for legal reasons.
- KYC is not a requirement to use their service. However, if you want to pay via crypto, KYC is a must. For other users, they can use the network without going through KYC. Another disadvantage of using crypto payment is that you are not eligible for a refund.
back to menu ↑
How to Use SimplyNode
To use the proxies from this provided, follow the step-by-step guide.
Step 1: Visit the official website of the SimplyNode service at www.simplynode.io and create an account. You will also need to verify the account via email to make sure you are the owner of the email you used while registering.
Step 2: Log into your account and purchase a plan. When you log into the user dashboard, you have the option to select either the residential or mobile tab — the option you choose is what you will purchase. In my own case above, I already have a plan but you can still see the buy more button. Multiple payment methods available include card, crypto, Apple Pay, and even bank transfer.
Step 3: Scroll down and see the proxy configuration section. The interface is simple and you only have to configure a few things — authentication and IP rotation. For the authentication option, you can either choose username/password or IP authentication, or both. For the IP rotation period, you need to set it according to the requirements of your project. Take, for instance, most web scraping projects should set it at 90 seconds.
Step 4: After you are done configuring the proxy, you can then scroll down to the proxy generator section directly below the proxy setup section. As you can see in the screenshot above, you can set the geo-targeting, choose the specific authentication system you want, and the number of IPs you want — the above is set to 1 and I masked the proxy above.
Step 5: You can either copy the proxy directly or download it as a TXT file using the button presented.
back to menu ↑
Our Proxy Speed Testing
Speed is an important aspect of any proxy. While residential proxies are not known to be the fastest out there, there is still a benchmark below which a residential proxy is regarded as slow and that benchmark is 20Mbps. Where does the SimplyNode residential proxy network stand in this case?
I tested the speed performance of this service using fast.com — the usual for us here is the speedtest.net tool. However, there seems to be a problem with the SimplyNode server that isn’t allowing it to work so I switched to fast.com, an equally effective speed tester. First, I tested my speed without using any proxy and got the below result.
While the above is not the fastest out there, it is enough for me to use as a benchmark. Now let's see how the SimplyNode proxy stands below.
Looking at the above, you can see that it is not even up to 10Mbps. I did try it multiple times at different times and this is the average. At this rate, one can say the SimplyNode service is not one of the fastest out there.
If your task is speed-critical then an alternative such as Bright Data or Smartproxy is the best for you. For others, this speed is still acceptable as I was able to use it in the browser without any noticeable sluggishness. The latency, however, is better than what you will get from some of the popular providers.
back to menu ↑
ISP Testing — Residential or Not?
Are the IP addresses offered actually residential IPs or the mention of that is just marketing deceit? This question might sound like a joke but some services can offer you datacenter IPs as residential IPs. We checked the ISP type of their proxies and all of them tested automatically were residential proxies. Below is how they appear when tested using the IPInfo.io tool.
As you can see above, the type is “isp” which is the short form of Internet service Provider (ISP). When you see this, it means the IP is assigned by an ISP and thus, a residential IP. If the value is hosting, then it would have been a datacenter IP.
Our Verdict
Do I recommend the SimplyNode service? Well, for use cases such as web scraping and general automation, they are a great choice. Their proxies might not be the fastest out there and certainly not a great choice for speed-critical scraping. But for regular scraping and automation, I recommend them.
The service has a large pool, extensive location support, undetectable IPs, and gives you control over the session management. The pricing is also affordable, and flexible, and there is no expiry date for the bandwidth purchased which is one of the things that set it apart from its competitors.
For More Information Check More details About Simplynode.io