ipstack for Web Apps

A powerful IP location platform made for developers

ipstack is a handy utility service that enables you to locate and identify your website’s visitors by their internet protocol (IP) addresses. Developed by APILayer, this IP geolocation platform is one of the leading global IP database services around and offers real-time geolocation API service for web developers and companies.

Formerly known as the community-funded open-source project, freegeoip.net, ipstack has become a reliable provider of IP geolocation—allowing businesses to cater to their websites’ users with ease. This service has a free version designed for testing its capabilities, while its subscription plans come with more features and extended customer support.

What is ipstack used for?

ipstack is an online service that offers developers an IP-to-location Application Programming Interface (API), providing them with the real-time geolocation—or real-world geographic location—of a user who accesses their website. With this API and geolocation data, you can identify several key information points about your website’s visitors like their current country, time, language, and currency. This is important data for businesses, as they can customize their users’ experience by enabling their website to behave in certain ways, such as displaying specific ads and changing the interface language to their preferences.

ipstack is especially popular in its field due to its fast and accurate real-time geolocation API service—all thanks to its longstanding partnership with large internet service providers (ISPs). The API can cover over two million unique places around the world and supports IPv4 and IPv6. It’s also designed to be easily scalable depending on your business needs while still maintaining its ease of use. You get extensive API documentation and a quick-start guide to help you begin using this service in a matter of minutes. 

How accurate is ipstack?

ipstack is best known for providing highly accurate IP geolocation data since its ISP partners constantly give information regarding new and existing IP ranges. Additionally, its IP data is updated with up to 24 regular database updates. Needless to say, it can handle large volumes of API requests and these are secured via 256-bit SSL encryption (HTTPS). It even has various modules to help collect the information you need from your website users. 

You can implement geographic restrictions and ad optimization on your site. With users’ locations, you can display their primary currency if you’re operating an e-commerce platform. Their time zones and activity times can also be used to program the site further. Plus, you can figure out if your users are actual people or simply proxies and other suspicious entities. The service even provides reliable customer support. The only real downside to it is that it only supports one language in general and eight for its language codes. 

Nevertheless, this platform is highly flexible when it comes to pricing. It has a free version that offers 100 requests per month, limited tech support, and the Location Module. Simply register for an account to avail of it. Meanwhile, there are four premium plans available: Basic, Professional, Professional Plus, and the customizable Enterprise plan. These plans vary in what they offer but they can all either be monthly or yearly subscriptions. You can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel anytime.

IP data-gathering made easy

All in all, ipstack is one of the most popular IP database services around for a good reason. While it has limited language support, that doesn’t stop it from providing accurate user geolocation data that developers can make good use of for their websites. It’s pretty easy to use and has great scalability—not to mention that its subscription plans offer a variety of feature coverage and even have custom solutions for you.