Many years ago, a single IP address was enough for most of us.  After all it’s all we needed to engage in the world wide TCP/IP based network that is the internet.  However nowadays many of us need many more, to do research, protect our anonymity and operate in a world where a single digital identity is rarely enough.

Yet a single address is actually what most of us of have, and if we’re connecting from home there’s the added issue of that address being monitored and tracked everywhere we go too.  Yet internet privacy is not the main driving factor for many people who work online – having one IP address is extremely limiting and prevents many of us working properly.

For those of us who run multiple websites, social media accounts and other platforms having access to a variety of different addresses is essential.  For example I currently run over 50 Instagram accounts, a mixture of mine and some of my customers.  Most are for restaurants and local businesses but if I was to actively manage all these from my home IP address they’d soon be shut down.   The simple matter is that if you do anything online in any quantity then you need an appropriate number of digital identities to match.  Effectively this means getting access to multiple IP addresses

Cheap Backconnect Proxies Often Mean Bad IP Addresses

It’s not really feasible for most of us to get hold of lots of different IP addresses directly so we use a different option – proxies.  By routing our internet connection through a proxy server, it’s possible to both hide your actual address and utilise other addresses linked to that server.  An obvious option is to use the myriad of free proxies available online, however for any entrepreneur this would be extremely risky.  Not only are they extremely slow but any IP addresses will be being used by thousands of others concurrently.

You should also be aware that these free proxies are also extensively used to steal and farm personal data. They may look legitimate when listed on various proxy scraping sites, but this is rarely the case.

Basically I could say goodbye to mine and my clients accounts pretty quickly if I attempted to manage any social media accounts through these sort of proxies.  Unfortunately many of the paid proxies aren’t much better either despite having to hand over money to use them.

It’s a real issue for more and more companies and individuals particularly marketers and those who operate with social media.  The safest method is to use dedicated proxies with reserved IP addresses that only you can access.  Unfortunately this is extremely expensive especially if you need a large volume of residential IP addresses.   What’s worse is that often these addresses will be sitting idle while you pay for the privilege of reserving them.

Another Complication – Proxies must have Residential Addresses

For many tasks these standard proxies aren’t actually enough either even the paid ones.  What has happened over the last few years is they’ve become to easy to detect.  Most standard proxies use IP addresses which are registered to large datacenters across the world.  Unfortunately these can easily be looked up and connections made through these addresses can be flagged as ‘proxies’.  Sometimes this won’t matter but increasingly these addresses are being blocked, filtered or flagged.

Nearly all VPNs and proxies use these sorts of IP addresses which is a significant problem if you’re trying to stay anonymous.  Most accounts for places like social platforms, e-commerce sites and such will be flagged if you use these sort of addresses. The solution is to use the same as standard home users,  that is residential IP addresses.   The problem is that these addresses are difficult to obtain and hence can cost significantly more than cheap standard proxies.

There is a solution though which can significantly bring down the cost of decent quality IP addresses by sharing them more efficiently.  They are called dedicated backconnect proxies which effectively share IP addresses safely between lots more people.  It’s meant that many people can now buy proxies with these addresses without braking the bank.

Here’s one of the leaders in this technology –

Despite the banner, this company has both EU and US based proxies.  They don’t really have any worldwide options currently so you’d better look somewhere else if you need global coverage (try Luminati!).  However there boast seems well founded as their IP addresses are astonishingly reliable in my experience.  The company’s name is rather hopeless – RotatingProxies yet their service seems to be of the highest quality.

Can I Buy Backconnect Proxies at a Discount ?

Instead of having just a small number of IP addresses assigned to each server like traditional proxies.  Backconnect proxies are assigned a pool of IP addresses to use for all their outbound communications.  Which means that the proxy can control when an IP address is used and who it’s assigned to.  This means that it can be configured to avoid concurrent connections so every user effectively gets exclusive access to that address while they are using it.

This means that you can provide a much more effective service than simply reserving blocks of IPs for individuals, whilst still protecting those addresses.   If you haven’t come across backconnect or rotating proxies you should check them out, they can be terrific value.

For social media promotion including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram then I can thoroughly recommend Rotating Proxies.   The IP addresses on these have been carefully chosen and have caused me no problem whatsoever in managing my accounts.   This is very unusual as I normally have loads of problems with many other proxy companies.

AT the moment there a couple of places where you can buy backconnect proxies with a discount.   But please be sure to check their current offers, as they do change.  Both providers have real residential proxies and provide a very reliable service in my experience.

• Storm Proxies – Great residential proxies at a decent price, good trial options to test out too.
• Rotating Proxies – These are superb proxies and currently offering 50% bonus (so you can buy half as many as you need).