Do you need to scrape thousands of web pages without getting blocked?
Blazing SEO offers to help you do just that.
But can this proxy provider deliver on its promises?
In this review, we’ll be trying out Blazing SEO’s dedicated and ISP proxies to see if
it has what you need.
But first things first.
What is Blazing SEO?
It’s a US-based provider of proxy servers.
The company is famous for its dedicated datacenter proxies, though recently it introduced residential
and ISP proxies as well.
Blazing SEO started out in 2015.
The founder, Neil, would go around online forums, promising fast and affordable datacenter
proxies that would make your SEO… well, blazing.
They did, for as little as .65 cents apiece.
And just like that, Blazing SEO found its foothold in the market.
Today, Blazing SEO is no longer run by a few guys from their basements.
It’s grown into a bustling company with 30-something people and hundreds of thousands
of proxies in dozens of locations.
So, we can safely say it’s become one of the largest proxy providers in the US.
For most of its history, Blazing SEO sold datacenter IPs only.
Early in 2021, it started offering ISP proxies, and then rotating residential proxies.
At around the same time, it also rebranded.
The new direction highlights ethics and openness – some of the things the proxy industry
isn’t really known for.
The third aspect is flexibility – the ability to offer something for everyone, whether you
need five or five thousand IPs.
Not too shabby.
So, what exactly can Blazing SEO sell you?
Unsurprisingly, its flagship product is datacenter proxies.
As I’ve mentioned, they include around 300,000 IPs.
Few providers can match this scale, save for maybe Oxylabs and Bright Data.
Blazing SEO stresses that it has end-to-end control over the infrastructure, which gives
it a lot of control over the service (and potentially faster fixes when things go down).
The datacenter IPs branch out into three types: dedicated, semi-dedicated, and rotating.
What’s the difference?
The dedicated proxies come in a list and are yours to control; the semi-dedicated proxies
work the same, but you share them with 2-3 other people.
The rotating proxies give you access to a pool of addresses that automatically change
every 10-100 minutes.
Any other differences?
Yes.
The dedicated proxies offer the largest number of locations – 30, mostly in the US.
The semi-dedicated proxies cover ten, and the rotating plans only four.
All three types support HTTPS and SOCKS5 protocols, allowing you to send all kinds of traffic
through them.
No matter which type you choose, you get unlimited bandwidth and fast 1 Gbps connections.
Next, we have ISP proxies.
These are datacenter addresses registered under internet service providers.
So, same performance, better anonymity.
Blazing SEO claims to source these proxies from major consumer ISPs.
For now, only American ones.
The format is IP list.
Finally, there’s rotating residential proxies.
These IPs come straight from the phones and computers of real people.
The product is still in beta, so let’s not grill the newbies for now.
I’ve mentioned that Blazing SEO used to be a pretty great deal.
Is it still, now that the company’s grown so much?
Kind of.
The pricing depends on three factors: plan, duration, and location.
Plans first.
There are four to speak of:
Starter, Personal,
Corporate, and Enterprise
Each covers a range of IPs.
For example, Started applies between 5 and 99 IPs, Personal – between 100 and 999 addresses,
Corporate – between 1,000 and 5,000 IPs.
The bigger the plan, the less you pay.
By default, all plans last for a month.
Buying a longer subscription reduces the price, up to 15% for a year.
As for locations, some countries are half as cheap as others.
Generally, you’ll pay the least for US proxies, as they’re easier to source.
So, how much can you expect to actually shell out?
Assuming you’re buying monthly, the semi-dedicated proxies cost between .34 cents and $1.20.
The dedicated proxies range between .65 cents to $3.50 per IP address.
The rotating proxies charge between $2.10 and $3.50 per port.
The ISP proxies cost the most, between $3.74 and $5.
That’s because they're way harder to source.
Overall, the pricing can be pocket friendly, as long as you buy in great quantities.
Otherwise, it’s reaching into the premium territory.
A lot depends on which end of a plan you end up in: they’re so broad that the same plan
can be both cheap and pretty expensive for different customers.
If you don’t want to jump straight in, there’s a 2-day free trial to test the service.
Now, let’s talk performance.
We had the opportunity to test both dedicated datacenter and ISP proxies – 100 each.
Here’s what we found.
All the proxies came from the US.
We used three IP databases, and they identified most IPs correctly.
We had some issues with one database, according to which, 31 dedicated proxies had no city
assigned.
This would put them somewhere in...
Kansas.
Around a half of the datacenter proxies were identified as proxies from the get go, which
means they might get banned easier.
The other half were tagged as hosting addresses.
Not ideal, but that’s what you usually get with datacenter proxies.
The ISP proxies all came from Verizon: two subnets were residential, and the third one
commercial – much better for anonymity.
The IPs had good response times, averaging 1.77 seconds.
When we used them with popular websites, the ISP proxies were flawless 95% of the time.
This explains the price.
The datacenter proxies, on the other hand, had serious issues with Google, Amazon, and
TripAdvisor.
These are very popular targets, so the results aren’t surprising.
Other websites didn’t pose a problem.
At this point, I should note that Blazing SEO doesn’t have dedicated plans.
Instead, the system randomly assigns proxies from a variety of subnets.
So, if you get IPs that don’t work with your target (like in our case), you can ask
for replacement until you find subnets that do.
It’s largely a trial-and-error approach.
Our stress test failed to bring the infrastructure down, and the download speed was plenty fast
even for streaming in 4K.
The ISP proxies were several times slower, but still enough for websites like YouTube.
All in all, the ISP proxies we received were excellent; the datacenter IPs were also good,
but they needed tinkering to work with some targets.
But what’s it like to actually use Blazing SEO?
To register, you need to fill in a lengthy form and buy a plan.
If Blazing SEO has IPs in stock, you should automatically receive them within 30 minutes.
So, you can start using proxies pretty fast.
The dashboard includes everything you may need.
You can buy a plan, authorize and manage proxy servers, view invoices, and contact support.
I really like that you can upgrade and even downgrade a plan by yourself, without talking
with anyone.
There are no usage statistics, but without traffic limits, there’s little point in
having them.
The proxy setup here takes two steps:
first, you have to authenticate yourself.
Both IP whitelisting and credentials are supported, though the former will give you more features
(like SOCKS5 support).
second, you can copy the list of IPs into the software of your choice.
There’s a button to export the list, but that way you won’t see some information,
such as associated locations.
If the proxy server supports it, you can choose a particular city within the country.
We could do that with the dedicated but not ISP proxies.
Blazing SEO includes a handy tool to test the proxies.
We have our own methods, but you might find it useful.
There are many similar displays of care throughout.
This really leaves a good impression about the user experience.
If an IP fails to work, you can simply replace it.
Blazing SEO grants one free replacement a month for each address.
You can also manage the proxies via an API.
It allows doing many of the same things programmatically.
If you’re feeling adventurous, Blazing SEO is trying out a new tool called Proxy Pilot.
The tool does some pretty neat things: it automatically rotates IPs, retries requests,
and otherwise helps you scrape in peace.
You also get very detailed usage statistics, but that requires letting Blazing SEO read
your traffic – a pretty serious trade-off to make.
Overall, Blazing SEO puts a lot of power in your hands, and the whole experience feels
well crafted.
But no matter how much power you get, some
things will require outside help.
In those cases, good user documentation and responsive customer support are a godsend.
Blazing SEO does a great job covering the first part.
The help desk articles are aplenty and answer most questions you might encounter on the
spot.
For the other cases, or some troubleshooting, Blazing SEO has round the clock technical
support.
It’s supposed to be reachable via chat and email, but during our review, the chat didn’t
work.
We sent some email queries and received answers in two hours on average.
Not Sonic-fast, but we didn’t have urgent issues, and the response time remained consistent
even at night.
So, should you choose Blazing SEO?
If you’re shopping for datacenter proxies, this provider can really prove a good choice.
It’s flexible and experienced enough to serve most needs, no matter the scale.
If you need ISP proxies for web scraping, go for it, but keep your expectations in check.
The service is still new, so it still has limited scale and flexibility.
Overall, Blazing SEO has grown into a strong proxy provider.
With a large fleet of IPs, robust infrastructure, and competitive pricing, it’s capable of
standing up against the leading datacenter proxy vendors, Oxylabs and Bright Data.
Speaking of, you can find their reviews in this playlist.
And now, Blazing SEO is eyeing to challenge them in their home court with residential
proxies.
But that’s a story for another time.
Thanks for watching, and don’t forget to subscribe for more reviews and tutorials!