A business without an internet presence is practically non-existent or at most, barely surviving. Everything is going digital. The pandemic has done a good job in shifting many consumers’ orientation to online shopping as well. Whether for products or services – everyone is searching for them online.
Therefore, for business owners, an internet presence is not just a means to an end. Proper internet presence management is important to hitting profit goals. But how can you establish a good internet presence for your target audience?
The answer is with digital market research. This research entails a lot of data gathering and web scraping. This allows marketers to know what their target audience wants and needs. However, it is not as easy as it sounds.
Web scraping can be risky if your connection to the internet is not secure. Thus, using a proxy server for businesses is a must.
What Are Proxy Servers?
Imagine having a middle man for your business. He delivers the products and feeds you back the customers’ reviews after which you work on them. A proxy server is the same! It is just a bunch of 0s and 1s of a computer program serving the same purpose.
It is computer software that serves as the middle man between your business network, which is an endpoint device, and your customers’ network requesting a service.
Proxy services come with various packages which may include anonymity. If you are on a budget or unsure about getting paid proxies, there are easy ways how to get free proxy services.
However, there are many seemingly free proxies that are just baits to steal personal information by hackers. Therefore, it is not just about getting proxies or free proxy servers. But, getting reliable as well as affordable ones.
But can proxy servers really help businesses?
Importance of Proxy Services for Businesses
Proxy services are integral for businesses as they will save you a lot of data encroachment and legal battles. Much more than that, there is a long list of positives that proxy services add to businesses.
Here are 6 important reasons why you should consider adding proxy services to your business.
- Data Security
Accessing the internet while using the company’s IP address is the surest way to expose your company to cyber attacks. With the improvement of technology came the deep-seated scourge of hacking and information leaks.
A growing or an established business would definitely have one of the following; a bitter competitor, an angry customer, or just an unreasonable employee. Proxy servers hide your IP address with a perfect camouflage and change your location to an entirely different one, thereby leaving hackers to their imaginations!
- Anonymity
A good market survey helps businesses thrive. The market survey may involve checking what your closest competitors are up to.
And yes! You can do it without leaving any trace!
Much more than keeping your data, keeping your identity for obvious reasons is equally important. For private news companies, scandals, or whistleblower pages, the best thing to be done is to keep being unknown!
- Internet Performance
Devastating damage to your business brand would be your website’s homepage crashing. Normally, if you are religious, you pray for a booming business. But what happens when the website cannot take the traffic it’s getting?
Proxy servers step in by rerouting this traffic, thereby giving a lag-free browsing experience. Sometimes, the servers intentionally reduce or cut web ads making pages load faster.
- Limit Employee Access
Employees often visit various websites and sometimes, they don’t know the safe ones or harmful ones. Your business is put in jeopardy from these dangerous sites especially when hackers can see that there is nothing masking IP addresses.
Through proxy servers, network administrators of the company can easily block access to websites that contain malware or dangerous viruses.
- Email Protection
Thousands of emails enter into the mailing address of companies. A large percentage of these emails contain malicious URLs, malware, and trap messages which when opened, expose your company’s email to viruses or hacks.
A proxy service can easily filter out the nonsense and keep good content mail.
- Software Testing
Proxy servers help to test new software or features on mobiles and PCs. With the number of IP addresses that act as camouflage, companies can try out new software as many times as possible.
At times, it helps them to properly analyze the website experience of customers from different locations.
Truths and Lies Surrounding Proxy Services
Proxy services normally come at a cost. The importance of the services does not make ‘free’ sound reasonable. However, there are servers all over the world that provide free proxy services.
A few safe browsers online claim to provide this service to their users. Sometimes, it’s advisable to try out free proxy servers for these apps before going for premium plans.
It should be noted that very few free proxy servers are reliable and pose no data breach or malware risks. Therefore, you should try to research and understand the truths around proxy services before you make any plans.
Here are some lies we’ve debunked when it comes to the usage of proxy services
- Proxy Services and VPNs Are the Same
Although they may seem similar, proxy services and VPNs are different. Out of the long list of differences between them, details of encryptions between them hold the widest gap.
VPN hides your IP address and encrypts all your business’ online activities. On the other hand, proxies successfully camouflage your IP address without hiding your internet footprints.
When you use proxy servers, what you do online is wide open for anyone to know but may not be traced to you.
- Proxies Are Expensive
There are a lot of well-priced proxy servers on the web. If you want free proxies, you can get them also on the web.
The problem comes in when you want to compare the quality of service rendered for a paid proxy to a free one.
- I Can Create My Own Proxy Server
Yes, you can! Without a domain or host site, you can actually create a decent proxy server by yourself.
However, it takes a number of steps that may only make sense to a professional. So, try getting proxies made by professionals.
No, proxy servers are made to cut out lag time in the browsing experience. Therefore, they increase internet speed. They do so by blocking unnecessary ads, compressing traffic, and caching files.
Conclusion
If you own a business and you have not considered using proxy servers for your network you should consider it right from this moment. Several business issues, legal disputes, and competitor accusations currently prevalent in business can be avoided if proxy servers are considered in the day-to-day running of the business.
