Why developers choose the IPWhoIs.io geolocation API

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A good geolocation API can help help you serve users -- and your own bottom line -- better.
A good geolocation API can help help you serve users -- and your own bottom line -- better.
Photo: Monstera@Pexels.com

If you want to give visitors to your website or app a personalized experience and also boost your bottom line, it pays to use a fast and versatile geolocation application programming interface (API) like IPWhoIs.io.

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This post is brought to you by IPWhoIs.io.

We’ll get into the benefits of geolocation services via IPWhoIs.io below. And it even has a free version that suits many users, or a flexible choice of inexpensive plans.

Why use the IPWhoIs geolocation API?

On a basic level, an API lets two or more computer programs communicate and share information. In recent years, IP geolocation APIs have grown exponentially as developers strive to serve online customers and users based on their physical locations, aka their IP addresses.

The main reason a developer would want to use an IP geolocation API is to provide a personalized experience for users. That’s because it can help a business gain new visitors and also keep them.

Why? One reason would be language. If you have international users, an API like IPWhoIs.io can tell you how many you have and where they’re coming from. So if that number is big enough, you may improve their experience and gain more business by offering content and transactions in their language.

Give the people what they want — when they want it

But geolocation can help with more than just language. You can also use it to target certain products or services to certain people that make sense for where they live. If someone lives in a tropical country, you probably don’t want to tempt them to buy a winter coat on the first page they see, for example.

Knowing visitors’ locations also lets you know their time zone. That’s useful for timing content to have the most impact. You can run promotions when you know traffic is usually highest.

And of course, if you know what country a person is in, you can offer them sales in their own currency.

If you target visitors in that way, you’re more likely to build both traffic and revenue by giving people what they want and not wasting their time.

And localization doesn’t just apply to the front end a user sees. You can also use IPWhoIs.io language options on the back end to code in the language you prefer. And what’s more, IPWhoIs.io can deliver results in JSON, XML or CSV formats, so you can pick the one you like best.

Accurate data

One of the problems geolocation APIs can face is outdated information. This can arise simply because people move around a lot with their mobile devices. Because of that, a request might result in data from hours ago, not now.

Fortunately, IPWhoIs.io has so many channels integrated into its system that it avoids the problem. It has global server coverage robust enough to give you near-real-time responses with minimal lag. The average response time across the system is 90 milliseconds, according to the company.

Security benefits

Security is always an issue with business conducted online. That’s why IPWhoIs.io uses 256-bit SSL encryption for the data/responses it sends you, protecting that data and your security.

But there are also security benefits to using the service. Geolocation makes it easy to locate malicious attempts before they cause harm. If you see a huge spike in IPs from somewhere unusual, for example, you can track and even block them as a potential attack for investigation.

And you can also use geolocation to uncover attempted fraud. With the data it provides, geolocation simply helps make it easier to quickly spot payment fraud and registration fraud because you’ll know if the attempt does not match up with the user’s geolocation information.

Pricing and flexibility

IPWhoIs.io excels at helping with the factors described above, but there are other reasons to choose it. Namely, low costs and flexible plans.

Depending on your needs, you might get all the help you require from the free version. If you need only up to 10,000 requests per month because you’re just starting out or simply testing geolocation APIs, the free version will suffice. And better yet, you don’t even have to register to use the free version.

The three paid pricing plans track with the number of geolocation requests your site makes, which corresponds with your overall site traffic.

Here’s what you’ll pay for each plan and what you’ll get:

$10.99 per month

  • 250,000 requests/month
  • Usage statistics
  • Fast network with 19 PoPs
  • Priority support
  • Currency Data
  • 99.9% SLA

$39.99 per month

  • 1,500,000 requests/month
  • Usage statistics
  • Fast network with 19 PoPs
  • Priority support
  • Currency Data
  • 99.9% SLA
  • Security Data
  • Bulk Endpoint

$89.99 per month

  • 6,500,000 requests/month
  • Usage statistics
  • Fast network with 19 PoPs
  • Priority support
  • Currency Data
  • 99.9% SLA
  • Security Data
  • Bulk Endpoint

Where to download: IPWhoIs.io

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