Proxy vs VPN: What to Choose For Your Business?

We are all aware that we live in an interconnected world where all businesses need to access the required content in order to advance their commercial interests, no matter whether we talk about online marketing, sales intelligence, or market surveys.

And since the Internet is no longer an accessible place, users need to find the right tools and means to reach the targeted information from the online environment.

This is where residential proxies and VPNs come into place allowing users to acquire the desired content while managing to keep their private details safe.

But what is the difference between a VPN and a residential proxy server? When should a company use one over the other? What are the advantages and disadvantages of residential proxies and VPNs for companies?

These are some of the main questions that keep popping up in our customers’ minds and we are here to provide some answers so that interested parties may be able to make the best choice when choosing between a VPN and a residential proxy.

Since we are a proxy server solutions provider, it is only normal to begin our comparison (between VPNs and proxies) with the products we are offering and use their advantages and benefits as a starting point for our discussion.

However, as there are many details to be revealed about proxy servers and VPNs which exceed the scope of our article, we will focus our analysis on revealing the benefits residential proxies and VPNs bring to companies that need to use these solutions for business reasons.

What are residential proxies and how they can help your business

A proxy server can be imagined to act as a connecting door that intercepts the online traffic directing it towards a user’s system. What is important to remember is that a proxy server directs the traffic through a different IP offering the user not only the necessary privacy in the online space but the possibility to access the targeted content.

For instance, a user who is physically located in Greece may be trying to obtain information from a geo-restricted website that can be accessed only by people from the United States. In this case, we can easily realize that the user is most of the time a business that needs to obtain reliable data and the only solution for them is to reach the targeted site via a residential proxy server.

Now, are all proxies the same? This is an important question many users have when looking to go online to target the necessary content.

There are numerous types of proxies in the market, but for the sake of simplicity, we will restrain our discussion to the most popular proxy servers that are used for business purposes. We are obviously thinking about why use a residential proxy.

From a general perspective, residential proxies are some of the most popular tools for businesses involved in data extraction projects. These proxies are many times used as information gateways by companies that run demanding projects to access the right type of content. 

Therefore, it’s no wonder that users prefer to take advantage of these proxies to hide online traces and reach the targeted information in online scraping campaigns.

Nevertheless, these proxies do not offer exactly the same benefits as they do not come from the same sources and provide different advantages for companies that require data from the online space.

So, how do we manage to reach those sites that are difficult to access?

One of the best solutions to access websites from geo-restricted locations is to take advantage of residential proxies that use IP addresses from real individuals. 

Companies that are interested in web scraping jobs and do not afford to fail will always prefer the safety of residential proxies as the IP addresses they provide come from people living in geographical locations all over the world.

What is a VPN and how it can be useful for your business

Now that we know how proxies can help a company with its business projects, we may easily imagine that a VPN - Virtual Private Network - is not far from doing the same thing.

However, though it’s true that a VPN works similar to a proxy server in the way it redirects your online traffic to make it look like coming from another IP address, the main difference between a proxy server and a VPN resides in the fact that a VPN covers the entire operating system, while a proxy server covers the user application, which may be the browser or a torrent program.

So, if a proxy acts as a middleman for your browsing activities, the VPN manages to offer an enhanced level of protection by covering all incoming and outgoing traffic from the system, from browsing to online gaming or even operating system operations.

To offer this high level of online security, a VPN ‘creates’ an encrypted tunnel between a user system and a virtual network. This type of connection is generally preferred by companies that look for complete security in the online environment.

When using a Virtual Private Network, the user system, and all traffic cannot be intercepted by malicious actors from the Internet. If we are to look for examples, it is well known that many companies that allow employees to work remotely prefer to install VPN solutions on their laptops so they can access the company’s private data in complete privacy and security.

Another popular example where VPN solutions can save the day is represented by people who travel to foreign countries and do not trust the local Wi-Fi networks. We have to imagine that many tourists who reach other countries still need to access their online banking accounts and insert their credentials at some point. 

So, in this case, again, a VPN solution is more than required if we want to sleep at night without any worries that our banking details might have leaked to someone monitoring the local Wi-Fi network.

Another great example that reveals the usefulness of a VPN solution is of course people who live in undemocratic countries and have the local Internet networks restricted or directly surveilled by the enforcement agencies. Now, you wouldn’t want a police officer knocking at the door to investigate your latest online struggles for freedom?

Though VPNs sound great for companies that look for online protection and privacy, there are several drawbacks that we need to consider before we rush into buying the best VPN solution in the market.

First of all, as with any other software, we have to know first what that particular product is great for and if we need it for personal or business purposes.

As for VPNs, though they offer high levels of security in the online space, we need to emphasize that a VPN solution generally comes at a higher price and they do demand some hardware and software system resources in order to provide the required performance.

Residential proxy vs VPN: What to choose for your business

Proxy or VPNs? This is probably the main question you need to answer before purchasing one solution over the other.

When talking about a VPN solution, several major questions need to be answered.

• Do you need the high level of security provided by a VPN for your online browsing activities? 
• Do you access essential work-related information that is for your eyes only? 
• Are you trying to protect your financial details when browsing in a foreign country? 
• Are you living in a country that keeps its citizens under surveillance?

If the answer is yes to the questions above, then you may need to consider a VPN solution that can offer a high level of protection and privacy in the online space. Since a VPN has been designed to encrypt all incoming and outgoing traffic from your system - browsing, applications, OS updates, etc. - no outside parties can take a look into the data you access or you search for.

When talking about residential proxies, several major questions need to be answered.

• Are you trying to access geo-restricted websites?
• Do you need web data for business purposes?
• Do you engage in resource-demanding scraping projects where reliable data is vital?
• Are you interested in price comparisons, data extraction jobs, market analyses, SEO, sales intelligence, web design, e-commerce, or travel content aggregation?

If the answer is yes to the questions above, then you may need to consider a proxy solution that can allow you to access the targeted websites and benefit from a high level of anonymity and a low block rate.

Proxy vs VPN - Conclusions

Users need to understand that VPNs and proxies have been designed to work for different purposes. 

If we are to draw a line between a proxy server and a VPN, we can say that while a VPN is built for protection, a proxy server is designed to open doors in the online environment.

If we are to express a hypothetical situation, we can imagine a company’s employees working from remote locations and using VPN solutions to access work-related materials and resources. At the same time, it's only natural to see the same company engaging in web scraping and data extraction jobs using residential proxies to obtain the necessary information for business projects.

Therefore, though it may initially seem like a company has to choose between residential proxy servers and VPNs, the two alternatives do not necessarily exclude each other and can be easily used in a complementary fashion. You can never have too much security or privacy in the online space.