What to check before you pay

What the price is attached to

A price on a landing page describes one configuration. Before comparing two sellers, pin down what each figure is for: traffic by the GB or an IP by the month, a shared plan or a dedicated one, a single unit or only a large bundle, a month or only a year paid up front, and whether the country, region or city moves it.

Names vary between sellers too: what one calls static residential, another sells as ISP proxies. Compare the product, not the label.

Here: the pricing page lists every rung, plan and term on all three lines, read from the catalogue the order form uses. On the per-IP lines the country does not move the price; line, plan, quantity and term do, and the cheapest entry is $1.25 for one shared datacenter IP for 30 days.

How long it lasts, and what renewal costs

Ask how long an order runs and what the second payment costs compared with the first. A low first price followed by a higher renewal is a familiar pattern, and you only see it if the renewal price is written down before you pay.

Here: per-IP orders run for 30, 60, 90 or 365 days, with discounts on the longer terms of up to 20 percent. Residential renewals are charged at $5.50 per GB, the one-GB rate, whatever rung the first order reached; the traffic guide shows what that means for the size of your first order.

Caps on traffic

A per-IP plan can still meter traffic. Ask how much each address includes, what extra traffic costs, and what happens at the cap: is the address cut off, slowed, or billed for the excess?

Here: residential is bought by the GB, so the order size is the cap. On the per-IP lines, shared plans include 1 GB per IP and extra traffic bought with the order is $0.35 per GB, while dedicated and virgin plans are not metered by the gigabyte. All of it is printed under the price tables on the pricing page.

Refunds, and where the money goes

Find the refund policy before paying. Four things matter: what can be refunded, such as unused balance, unused traffic or an address you never used; how long you have to ask; how you ask; and where the money goes, back to your card or into credit with the seller.

Here: the refund policy covers unused top-up balance if you ask within seven days of the top-up, and it says how to ask and where the refund is sent.

What you are allowed to do with it

A seller that publishes no allowed-use policy before you pay can still enforce one afterwards. Look for a written list of what is banned, what happens after a complaint, and a public way to report abuse, so that reports have somewhere to go.

Here: the allowed-use page and the terms are public before sign-up, and the report-abuse page says what to send and what happens next.

Paying, getting help and receiving the proxies

Last, the route from payment to a working proxy. How do you pay, and is the payment confirmed without leaving the page? Where do you ask a question, and is a response time promised? How does the proxy list reach you, and how do you authenticate?

Here, line by line:

• Payment: by card, confirmed in the page on the order form.
• Ordering: self-serve at any hour, from a minimum top-up of $5. That describes the order form, not when a person reads your message.
• Support: by email, at the address on the trust centre. This site publishes no support hours and no response time.
• Delivery: the dashboard hands you the proxy list once the order completes. Proxies authenticate with a username and password, with allowlisting as the fallback.