Shifter Review 2023

Shifter.io is often touted as one of the best proxy server providers when it comes to residential proxies.

A segment of users will say that Shifter is a darn good service, while another segment will say they had a bad experience. 

In this Shifter review, we will find out whether you should go with their proxy service or look for a better alternative. 

Why Choose Shifter?

Shifter is one of the oldest proxies’ service providers on the internet. They were known as Microleaves and entered the market under this name back in 2012.

But since then, the service has become one of the leading entities in the proxy world. It also has one of the largest proxy networks on the market today, and some unique features keep it separate from its competitors. 

One thing that separates it from other residential proxy providers is that it doesn’t provide metered proxies.

All back connect proxies available here are unmetered. So, your internet connection will not cut off even if you have consumed your allotted bandwidth.

Apart from that, Shifter also has cheaper pricing plans, which is why it has gained so much popularity in recent times.

However, some users have also experienced connection errors, and connection speeds are not that powerful, especially when compared with similar service providers.

Shifter Specs

Parameter	Features
IP kind	Datacenter and residential
Price charged	Per-port ($125 a month for 10 ports)
IP pool	Over 26 million
Proxy protocol	SOCKS 5 and HTTPS
IP authentication	Username and password, IP
Speed	Average
Refund policy	3 days
Support	Contact form

One of The Largest IP Pools

As mentioned before, Shifter.io entered the market back in 2012 under the name Microleaves and Reverse Proxies.

After that, they rebranded themselves to become a more robust proxy service provider. Since its inception, Shifter.io has become one of the biggest proxy service providers on the market. 

It has been around for quite some time. It has attracted many customers with its exemplary services. And most of them have decided to stay as well. So, it has been serving them with over 26 million IPs all across the globe. 

Only a couple of proxy service providers have a bigger pool of IPs – Bright Data (over 40 million) and Oxylabs (over 32 million).

So, Shiter.io gets the third position in terms of IP pool, which is quite an impressive feat to achieve. 

No matter the purpose of using these proxies, they will refresh them, and any bad IPS will be removed from the pool if they are discovered to be nonfunctional or blocked. 

As they have such a large pool, they have proxies throughout the globe in different countries. Now, what is the last of those countries in which these proxies are available?

Their website does not expressly mention that. 

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Pricing and Bandwidth 

Pricing is one of the primary selling features of the service in addition to their pool size. You will notice that they have pretty affordable plans for three proxies.

In addition, most of these proxies available on the market are metered. So, you will be able to access them in bandwidth. 

You will have to pay some additional fees if you want to continue using them after you have consumed the data.

But here at Shifter.io, they charge per port and not by bandwidth, so you can continue enjoying your unlimited internet connection for the sports you have subscribed to. 

At Shifter.io, you have unlimited bandwidth, and the proxies are unmetered as well. In addition to that, you are not paying any high price for them.

The smallest plan available here at Shifter will cost you $124.99 a month, and it will have a bundle of 10 ports. 

You can use each of these 10 ports individually, and you can connect to one of the residential IP proxies for about five minutes before changing it to another.

Therefore, the session control in Shifter’s residential proxies is only around 5 minutes.

If you are looking for more session control, then you need to look for another proxy service. 

Want more? You can get a discount with a Shifter.io coupon.

Top-Rated Proxy Providers

These proxies providers have been voted as the best consistently in user ratings across various websites.

First we collated the user review data, then we performed our own tests to ensure 100% legitimacy of the proxies.

These are by far the best proxy providers on the market today.

Money-Back Guarantee

Shifter.io provides a refund policy of 3 days. You won’t be able to get any free trial here.

But the good thing is that you can purchase a plan, and if you don’t like the service, you can always cancel the plan, and within 72 hours, you will get your money back.

If you don’t like their services, then you can go for a refund right away. 

Accepts Scraping for Some Sites 

Furthermore, Shifter also performs well on some scraping sites but doesn’t perform well on others. So, it’s a 50-50 score here.

But, again, you need to focus on specific sites that you can use for scraping using the services provided by Shifter. 

Acceptable Speed 

The proxies that are available here come with a pretty good response time as well. They will not outmatch some premium service providers on the market, but they perform pretty well.

The proxy connection speeds they have are also pretty much acceptable, even though it’s not that fast either. But this service is something that will get the job done for you. 

User-Friendliness

They don’t have a straightforward dashboard, though. But once you get to use it, you will get familiar with it in no time.

Things there are quite straightforward, and you can conveniently hit the ground running. They only have single authentication, and that is through IP addresses.

So, you won’t have to keep any username and password to log in here and use the proxies. 

Drawbacks of Shifter.io

One of the significant drawbacks of this service is that you will have to deal with many connection errors. It is going to be especially the case when you are using those scraping sites.

So, you will have to deal with a lot of captchas here. If you are a technical user, this might not be that much of a problem for you. But for a regular user, it is going to be a pain in the neck. 

You will also have limited session control. Shifter only has residential proxies that change over time. Therefore, there are not many high rotating proxies available in the pool.

It means you are tied to using an IP for about 5 minutes. After that time, you will get a replacement or if you get blacked.  

Another issue with their service is that they don’t have awe-inspiring customer support. There is no live chat support, and you will only have to get in touch with them using their contact form.

Again, this Is something pretty outdated. 

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Review Verdict

Shifter.io is an excellent proxy service provider. Their proxies are cheap, and there are different plans available as well.

As our Shifter.io review has shown, they have one of the largest IP pools on the market, and they also offer unlimited bandwidth.

Theu do lack in some areas, but overall, your experience using their services will be great. 

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