Wanting to start my own Proxy Server Company

hello, i am new to the forum. i am interested in starting my own proxy server company so that i can provide DC, residential and ISP residential proxies and subnets to mostly small businesses and the average consumer. I personally spend about $500/month on ISP proxies and $300/month on residential proxies. i feel that most of the proxy re-sellerss are taking advantage of me with their pricing so i am looking to see what it would take to get started up. i have a computer science degree so i am versed in the computer space in general. however, i have never specialized in servers. i understad the basics and am most knowledegable in hardware. i guess i am more of a hardware nerd. i am looking for help as to where i may go to learn how i can accomplish starting my own proxy server company. i know at first i will most likely have to rent out rack space, which is fine. but my biggest questions are how do i actually get the proxies and when i buy these proxies i hear the re-sellers telling me they have to wait for Sprint or ATT to ‘announce them’ and that is one of the biggest mysteries to me as to what that means. i have been trying to research this topic and there seems to be absolutely no help. i find seminars on understanding servers, which i pretty much get. but how the heck do i get DC/residential/ISP residential proxies and what do i need to do in order to re-sell them? i watch your news every week now and i see that you guys post a lot about servers so i thought this might be a good place to start. i would greatly appreciate any help in getting me going in the right direction and even suggestions of classes or courses or certificiates i need to take in order to help educate me on how this all works. thanks!

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First marketing tip for your new company: formatted text.

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one post and the toxicity begins… wow

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hello, i am new to the forum.

i am interested in starting my own proxy server company so that i can provide DC, residential and ISP residential proxies and subnets to mostly small businesses and the average consumer.

I personally spend about $500/month on ISP proxies and $300/month on residential proxies. i feel that most of the proxy re-sellerss are taking advantage of me with their pricing so i am looking to see what it would take to get started up.
i have a computer science degree so i am versed in the computer space in general. however, i have never specialized in servers. i understad the basics and am most knowledegable in hardware. i guess i am more of a hardware nerd. i am looking for help as to where i may go to learn how i can accomplish starting my own proxy server company.

i know at first i will most likely have to rent out rack space, which is fine. but my biggest questions are how do i actually get the proxies and when i buy these proxies i hear the re-sellers telling me they have to wait for Sprint or ATT to ‘announce them’ and that is one of the biggest mysteries to me as to what that means.
i have been trying to research this topic and there seems to be absolutely no help. i find seminars on understanding servers, which i pretty much get. but how the heck do i get DC/residential/ISP residential proxies and what do i need to do in order to re-sell them? i watch your news every week now and i see that you guys post a lot about servers so i thought this might be a good place to start.

i would greatly appreciate any help in getting me going in the right direction and even suggestions of classes or courses or certificiates i need to take in order to help educate me on how this all works. thanks!

There we go. A bit easier on the eyes.
While Exark could’ve been a bit nicer, he is right. Large blocks of text generally deter people from reading them.

I could’ve gone full grammar nazi, but that’s probably gonna make you never log in again :stuck_out_tongue:

Either way, the idea seems great. I wish you all the luck.

Welcome to the forums! We’re a nice bunch, I promise.

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I understand all the words (regardless of formatting :wink: ) … but…

… by “proxy company” you mean like a CDN like cloudflare or fastly or similar… or something else?

If you’re looking to start a business, I don’t think reacting this way when someone directly in your target market suggests a minimum level of professionalism/forum etiquette is going to turn out well for you.


I’m making the assumption you’re using the term ‘proxy server’ correctly here and don’t mean a CDN or something similar. One thing you should be aware of, if you’re going to do this as a paid service - there are legalities when acting as a traffic proxy that I recommend you look into before you start serving someone else’s traffic.

  • The ISP is going to hold you liable for traffic entering from your connection; they’re going to cover their own ass before yours. If you’re running an enterprise that primarily hosts network traffic, you will have to work very closely with them, and they will be the source for most of your answers here. Any type of traffic from your customers that could lead to a claim against them will cause them to take action against you.

  • You will need terms of service that describe exactly what information is tracked and when/how end users are identified for privacy reasons. This is a matter between you and the customers using your service. Particularly true if you’re in the EU.

  • There can be potential law enforcement implications; you need to know what information you are/aren’t expected to track in the event that a customer uses your proxy for traffic that leads to a law enforcement investigation. It will involve you as an intermediary. Again, depends heavily on region.

  • I don’t know where you live/what region this is in since it’s not in your profile, but for all the above reasons you should look into the requirements for establishing a C-corporation or the equivalent that is ‘the company’ proper. You don’t want to be an individual running a proxy server of any respectable size under their own name, as any legal action taken will be directly against you.

Things to consider, if you expect this to be a sizeable enterprise. The point I’m trying to make here is that I think you’re grossly underestimating what you’re getting yourself into. I’m sure everyone else will fill you in on the technical issues you’re looking at.

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If you’re thinking its as easy as rack n’ stack and install HAProxy then you’re in for a rude awakening.

In no particular order you must:

  • talk to a lawyer
  • pay any LLC fees
  • marketing site
  • external monitoring
  • internal monitoring
  • Ingress/Egress customer billing
  • customer support portal
  • SLA agreements
  • HA know-how
  • Log monitoring for suspicious traffic
  • willing to be woken up at any hour of the night to fix an outage

Its too much for one person.

If you want to get your feet wet, then I would suggest you establishing a line of communication with someone on an LBaaS team. (Load-Balancer as a Service)

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Another bit of trouble you are going to run into is getting your own IP space. This will cost a few grand, and chances are you will only get an IPv6 block assigned.

Once you have your own IP space, you run into an even bigger headache of getting it “announced” so those IPs are routable. This costs $$$. Think upwards of $1,000/mo per ISP per location you want to work with. You will also need equipment that can handle those BGP sessions.

Could you start by renting hardware from a larger provider and reselling your services? This way you don’t need your own IP space, and all the responsibility for the equipment falls on the upstream provider instead of you.

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First of all, in my opinion, you should evaluate not only your hard skills in the form of the ability to create proxy servers and configure them, but you also need a set of soft skills like the ability to lead a team, since you are unlikely to be able to build a business overnight. For example, my proxy provider hired a marketing specialist to help promote the company's services on the international market. And finding a qualified marketer will also be your task. First of all, think not about what you can make a proxy server but whether you know how to organize the team's work and find professionals.

We define necro as 9 months.

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My bad, I thought it was July 2020 lol

That’s before even considering bandwidth costs and hardware setup cost to handle the user base.

Plus staff to maintain it.

Plus paying yourself a wage.

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If this were Dragon’s Den you’d be BBQ by now.
You’re not being very clear what a proxy is or why someone would want one.

There are a number of Internet technologies which get around local network blockages. For instance Tor can help reach BitChute channels that are blocked in the UK, as can a Proxy as can a VPN.

Other technologies like IPFS are important because they can’t be censored (supposedly).

You might want to tell us as prospective users what your service does for us and why it’s worth £500/month and why you’re only charging £100/month. Good luck getting me to spend £100/month more on Internet.

Let me share my opinion. Firstly, your requirement is to minimize and reduce your monthly agency costs as much as possible.
You want to start a company to reduce costs, which sounds a bit absurd.
Firstly, if you establish a company, how to make a profit requires a lot of operations and marketing personnel. It is very risky and dangerous to start a company alone with only computer knowledge, as you may have spent a lot of savings.
But I appreciate your attitude, why not try joining a residential agent for some services? You can join the invitation alliance, or purchase 922proxy residential agents and other agency enterprise packages, and then establish your own marketing channels.
If you purchase a large number of agents, you can get a relatively low price, and their enterprise packages all support you to resell your IP to others. If you have your own community and fan group, then this can even earn you some money. If you need to use a lot of agents, I suggest you create a website or run your own community, and then participate in this ISP agent alliance project to become their major customer. You don’t need to start from scratch.