Are you looking for an honest Webshare review to help you make the decision whether to purchase their proxies or not? As in the case with most other services, this provider does have its pros and cons, and you will discuss these in the Webshare review below.
The Webshare service is one that has been on my radar from the beginning. I got to know of the service for its free datacenter proxy offering. But that was the bait for everyone that knew about it then. It has grown to become a full-fledged proxy network that offers you some of the most advanced proxies, such as static and rotating residential proxies.
But the question here is if what it offers is good for you to use for your serious project. The answer to this question will be provided in this Webshare review article. Before that, let’s take a look at an overview of Webshare.
Table Of Contents
Official Website: Webshare
| FEATURE | DESCRIPTION |
| Datacenter Proxies Offered | Offer dedicated proxies for one user, private proxy for 2 users, and proxy servers for more users |
| Affordable Pricing | The service offers cheap private proxies with multithreaded support. But the rental period is quite rigid. |
| Free Proxies | Webshare is one of the paid proxies that offer you free proxies — not a trial. As a user, you are entitled to 10 free shared proxies |
| Multiple Countries | Webshare has datacenter proxies in about 40 countries, making it one of the services in terms of location support |
| Protocol Support | The network supports only SOCKS5 and HTTP. There is no support for HTTPS and SOCKS4 protocols. |
| Customer Support | You are sure to be disappointed here. No live chat support, and email communication is slow with no indication of your wait time |
Webshare is no longer the low-quality free proxy provider you must have known it for. It now offers some of the competitive proxies out there. The focus of this Webshare review is not on their static and rotating residential proxies —- it is on their datacenter proxies. For this network, you get the option to choose between their dedicated or shared proxies.Even if you go for their shared proxies, the network has devised a system where you and the other users of the IP won’t be using them on the same website.
The service does support HTTP and SOCKS5 proxy protocols, and you can purchase their proxies at affordable prices. From the content on their website, you are told the service is the fastest you can get, which is quite debatable after testing out the performance of their proxies.
However, you can’t help but give it to the service for the high level of security and privacy it provides. Based on my tests and research, I do have reservations in terms of their performance, most notably speed when multithreading is used. I also do not like the fact the service does not have responsive customer support and a few other reasons. Below is the pros and cons section before I move into the detailed review of the specific features and aspects of the service.
One of the big flex for proxy networks is the number of IPs they route their client requests through — this is known as proxy pool size. It might interest you to know that this number for static proxies is not as important as it is for rotating proxies, as you only get the number of IPs you purchase. However, this can give you an idea of how large the network is. Webshare states that It has over 100K IPs in its pool.
As with other providers, this number is an advertised number, and it will be difficult for one to know the truth. However, doing a little more digging, I discovered the service has more IPs than it states. When I took a look at the location coverage area. I discovered that from the US alone, there are over 150K+ IPs. Aside from the US, there are other countries where you can get more than 10K IPs, including France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, and Italy.
This put the number of datacenter IPs in their over 200K. The only major problem here is that the actual number for their dedicated, private, and shared proxy network is not stated. That aside, it is safe to say Webshare owns one of the largest datacenter proxy pools in the market. These IPs are not from the same network or subnet. This is quite useful in the case of subnet bans.
The Webshare service is one service you will come to like if you need a datacenter proxy provider with support for a good number of locations. The service does have support for all countries across the globe since they don’t need to have their servers in all countries — they use devices of real Internet users in those regions. But for their datacenter proxies which are the main focus of this article, it is not the same.
The service has refused to use the same model except when necessary. That is why about 80 percent of their IPs are from the United States — their area of jurisdiction.
Aside from the United States, the service does have IPs from over 40 other countries across North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. From the section on proxy pool size above, I mentioned countries that have more than 10K IPs.
For the other countries, the number is quite small, ranging from between 200 to 5000 IPs. If you intend to purchase IPs from any of the countries with fewer IPs, then you need to make an inquiry and know if they have the number of IPs you need. This is the only problem I see with their location support. Aside from that, most other datacenter proxies do not have as many counties supported as this service.
The moment you decide to make use of a proxy service, then just know that the possibility of reduced performance is there. But still, a good private proxy should be fast, regardless. In this section of the article, I didn’t test the performance of their shared proxies — I only focused on their private proxies.
Instead of using the speedtest.net tool, I decided to use a custom speed testing tool. The goal here is to check its performance across websites of my choice as opposed to doing a generic speed test using speedtest.net. I chose Amazon, Instagram, YouTube, Google Search, and Booking as my target sites. Below is the result of the test.
| Website | Download Speed (Mbps) | Upload Speed (Mbps) | Ping (ms) |
| Amazon | 59.76 | 6.66 | 159 |
| 48.93 | 1.96 | 202 | |
| YouTube | 54.09 | 5.17 | 186 |
| Google Search | 61.63 | 14.94 | 216 |
| Booking | 47.11 | 3.07 | 286 |
From the above, I conclude that Webshare is just an average private proxy provider — not the fastest as it claims. There are faster providers out there, including Proxy-Seller, Proxy-IPV4, Proxy-Sale, and Proxy-cheap, among others.
However, this performance is not bad in itself. The only thing I observed is that if I increased the number of threads, the performance began going down — but not too much. You have to avoid sending too many concurrent requests. Even though the network supports up to 3K multithread, you should avoid getting to that number. It will be OK if the provider cap it to a minimum like the likes of MyPrivateProxy does.
If you have been reading our review on this blog, you will be expecting a scraping test section. However, I did swap it for a streaming test. This is because these proxies aren’t good for web scraping — but they are good for streaming. Looking at the location coverage, you can see that it also offers IPs for a good number of locations which makes it perfect for accessing geo-blocked streaming content.
Unfortunately, this service didn’t work for streaming Netflix US. This was heartbreaking. Interestingly, I tried using it on YouTube and for playing online games and it worked and was also fast with no glitch. If you really need to stream Netflix content, you will have to make use of their static residential proxies.
| Website | Avg. Response Time (sec) |
| Amazon | 0.79 |
| 0.99 | |
| YouTube | 0.85 |
| Google Search | 0.73 |
| Booking | 1.02 |
The table above shows the response time for each of the target sites as measured by me. You will agree with me that this is not the fastest out there. However, the performance in terms of response time is also not bad, looking at the average data in the industry.
This response time goes with the data for the speed test. This goes to show that Webshare performance is average — not high-end as the service will want you to believe. But it works and is fast for your use case, not just as their marketing team will want you to believe.
One of the areas you will get a shocker if you have known this provider for a while is in the area of pricing. When most hear of this provider, what comes to their mind is a provider they can get proxies for almost free. Yes, to date, you can even get 10 shared proxies for free from this provider.
But just like their service has upgraded with better features, so has their pricing. Now, the pricing for the service is much more competitive but also quite affordable compared to the average pricing for proxies that work. Let’s take a look at the pricing for each of their datacenter proxy offerings.
These are known as Dedicated Proxy on the Webshare website. With this, an IP is assigned to only you. However, you pay the highest for these proxies. The starting price for these proxies is $26.60 for 20 proxies, keeping the price per proxy at $1.33. Interestingly, the more proxies you purchase, the cheaper the price per proxy becomes. Take, for instance, if you purchase 100 proxies, the price is $199, which translates to $1.19 per proxy.
Webshare also offers semi-dedicated proxies. For this, you share an IP with one other person. On their platform, this is known as a private proxy — a misleading name if you ask me. For this service, the pricing starts from $13.89 for 25 proxies which makes it $0.55 per proxy. This pricing is quite competitive. The good thing here is that you and whoever will be sharing it won’t be using it on the same site.
For this package, you will share an IP with more than 2 people. This is the worst proxy you can get from this provider in terms of performance and reliability since you will be sharing server resources with a good number of people — and the issue of the bad neighborhood is also there. For this, you can get 100 proxies for $2.99.
Free Trial and Refund Policy: Aside from the 10 free proxies, which are shared proxies, there is no free trial. This means you will not get to know the true strength of their proxies until you pay for it. There is a refund policy in place — but it depends solely on their discretion. Your chances of getting a refund are higher if you ask for it within 2 days of paying and you haven’t consumed up to 1GB of bandwidth and or used 1000 IPs from them.
If you are the type that likes to talk to customer support should you face any issue, then Webshare will frustrate you. This is one of the aspects of this provider I do not like. Unlike other providers that make it easier for you to talk to them and get a response in real-time, there is nothing like that here. In fact, you will have to dig to get their email address for contacting them.
There is currently no support for live chat communication. You will have to contact them via email and then sit and wait. Some providers will give you an idea of your waiting time. For this service, you have to wait. I did try out their customer support feature, though, and got a response after one day.
To me, this is a turn-off, considering other providers, including new ones, provide more real-time support than them. Aside from the no live chat feature and the waiting time to get a response, the support team is quite helpful and knowledgeable about proxies.
The Webshare service is a really stripped-down service, providing you with just the features you need and nothing more. One clear advantage you get from this approach is that the element you get to interact with on their user dashboard is minimal, as you can only do the basic stuff on their user dashboard. This makes it quite easy to use compared to the advanced services that provide you an array of advanced features and tools that, in turn, make them not so beginner-friendly.
The user interface of this device is quite intuitive and self-explanatory. It also provides a help center where users are shown how to get common things such as account management, proxy configurations, and even troubleshooting done.
If you combine the easy-to-use nature with the helpful guide provided, you can be sure to get things going without needing the help of their support team for the most part. But if you need to, that is where things get slow as there is no live chat support, as stated earlier — you will learn to wait if you must speak to their customer support agent.
If you have known this service for a while and look at the simplicity it wants to be known for, you will think they do not have support for developers. But taking a look at their service and having th option to make use of their developer API, I will say the support for developers is not bad at all. Webshare made a developer API available — something some advanced and top providers such as Netnut with expensive pricing couldn’t provide.And the API endpoints available to you are quite numerous and useful.
Also important here is the developer API documentation, which provides you with all of what you need to get started with the service. For the period I tested and used this service, the API didn’t experience any downtime. However, the period I tested the API was too short to make a sound claim to the performance, but based on my usage, the developer support of this service is great.
Yes, Webshare still does offer free proxies as it used to in the past. But unlike in the past, the quality of its proxies has increased, and so is its reputation. However, this does not mean I recommend their free proxies. In the article, I stated that the performance still needs to be improved. If the performance of their paid proxies still needs improvement, then you can tell their free proxies are still not the proxies you should use.
Yes, but not the proxies discussed in this review. Webshare has recently introduced rotating residential proxies, which you can use for web scraping, and the pricing is quite competitive. But for their datacenter proxies, you will be wasting your time trying to use them for web scraping — they are not fit for that.
Webshare as a service, as stated earlier, is undergoing a series of changes, and that includes even the locations where you can get IPs from. Currently, about 80% of their IPs are from the United States. However, it has presence outside of the United States, as you can get IPs from South American countries, Europe, and Asia.
The Webshare service, based on my experience and research, is a service that has a bad name in the past but has done alone to redeem its name. It now provides better proxies and can now stand to say it is a good proxy provider. However, there are still some areas it needs to redeem its name, and that is in the area of performance. To be frank with this, this service is an average proxy provider that works, and for many users, it will serve them well. However, if performance is of great importance to you and you can shell out the money to go for the expensive providers, I will recommend you do so. And if you don’t, Webshare will also serve you. At the end, you will have to make the decision in your case here.