I am working as a Tester, testing web and mobile applications. Functionality is location dependent (certain features are available to customers based on the country they register or connect from.
Is there any particular providers people would recommend for both manual and automated testing?
If it is an internal application and the different locations are work locations, there might be VPN servers in the different work locations. If not VPN servers, maybe you can just remote log into machines are the different locations then run the tests from the remote machines.
If this is more testing an application accessible to the public from different locations around the world, the you can always look into VPN providers. I just did a quick Google search for “vpn provider” and found https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-vpn-services.
The free VPN solutions tend to give you the security without the different locations. Having the VPN server physically in Hong Kong is guaranteed to replicate a general user accessing your site from Hong Kong. Trying to fake a user in Hong Kong might not fool your website software and create issues that are not real.
That depends on, for example:
What do you want to test.
Wether it will be some kind of a streaming service, or something more static.
Maybe you’ll need something with a big and stable bandwith.
What are your services looking for while checking the “location” of the user.
Simulating GPS coordinates is something completely different than IP address, but I guess you’re trying to register only via IP address or maybe CDNs and something more?
What countries you want to use.
Countries and regions vary between service providers.
What type of connections you’ll try to use.
Terms of service sometimes prevents you from using their services for a specific activities.