BoxPN VPN review

Headquartered in the Seychelles, BoxPN is a growing VPN provider that has sleek and user-friendly apps, unblocks all the popular video-on-demand services, supports torrenting on some of its servers, and accepts all sorts of payment methods.

It doesn’t have dozens of handy features or thousands of servers like some of the best VPN products in today’s market , but it’s getting better all the time.

Price

BoxPN offers three subscription options, starting at €2.08/month ($2.46) for the 2-year subscription. The annual plan, meanwhile, comes in at €2.99/month ($3.54) and the monthly option at €9.99/month ($11.82).

All the plans are accompanied by a risk-free 7-day money-back guarantee which you can use as a free trial, giving you a chance to see what this platform is all about.

Accepted payment methods include credit/debit cards, PayPal, Perfect Money, WebMoney, Sofort, Ukash, Mint, bank transfer, and an assortment of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero, etc. Under one account, you can run this VPN on up to 5 devices at the same time.

Alternatives

Although BoxPN is very good at what it does, it still isn’t on the same level as some of its competitors - such as NordVPN, Surfshark, and CyberGhost - and will certainly need to improve if it ever plans to dethrone ExpressVPN.

The main advantage that these providers have over BoxPN is the sheer size of their server networks, consisting of thousands of units all over the world. They also boast additional features and extras, as well as clients for all major platforms.

Streaming

Being able to provide access to prominent streaming services like Netflix, BBC iPlayer, and Hulu that may be unavailable in certain regions is one of the major advantages of using a VPN service like this one.  BoxPN can unblock these services (and more), in whatever region you may be.

About the company

The company behind BoxPN is headquartered in Seychelles, a place with no mandatory data retention laws that require organizations to collect and keep their clients’ data.

It provides access to over 200 servers across 33 countries that include China, Israel, Malaysia, Turkey, UAE, UK, US, and more.

Privacy and encryption

BoxPN deploys 2048-bit encryption and the standard list of protocols - OpenVPN (UDP and TCP), PPTP, SSTP, L2TP/IPSec, as well as the new WireGuard technology - to ensure your privacy is protected online, not just when browsing and streaming, but also when sharing large files via P2P and torrenting clients. 

It's worth noting that not all servers allow torrenting, but you can check which ones do in your member area on the website, as well as by asking customer service.

As an additional level of protection, you can turn on the app’s kill switch - a mechanism that jumps in whenever your VPN connection is terminated and blocks off your internet access to prevent the leaking of any sensitive information. The kill switch can be activated for all online services or just for selected programs.

According to the provider’s privacy policy, it never keeps “online activity logs or store private information about individual user activities on our network.” The FAQ section specifies that this means it doesn’t log your location, internal IP address, your real IP address, the amount of bandwidth you use, or when you connect to BoxPN servers. It only collects submissions on the ‘Contact Us’ page, user’s cookies, Google analytics data, payment data, and email address it receives from the user.

The privacy policy does say, however, that it may disclose its users’ personal information to third parties in two cases: if BoxPN is sold to a third party, in which case all personal data about its users are transferred to it, or if it has to comply with any legal obligation, to enforce its Terms of Service, “or to protect the rights, property, or BoxPN.com safety and BoxPN.com”. We have no choice but to trust the vendor on this as the platform hasn’t yet been checked by an independent auditor.

Support

BoxPN has native clients for Windows, iOS, and Android, and supports manual installation on other devices, including Mac, AppleTV, Roku, Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV, PlayStation, Xbox, smart TVs, routers (DD-WRT and Asus).

If you need help with installing and/or using the platform, there’s a knowledge base on the website, with general information, troubleshooting articles, answers to frequently asked questions, setup manuals, and more.

However, sometimes there’s no substitute for human contact. You can reach customer support via web form, email, or online chat. Do note that this isn’t a 24/7 service.

Speed and experience

BoxPN is installed quickly and we had no problems with the user interface. The apps are responsive and look nice, with a list of servers, a selection of protocols to choose from and some basic settings. Switching between servers is quick and easy as well, and it doesn’t require disconnecting from the active VPN server and connecting to a new one.

We first tested a server in the US, which was selected randomly by the app. The download speeds were mediocre but usable: 9.3Mbps on a 72Mbps testing connection. We also tested India and registered 6.1Mbps.

Then we tried a location closer to us physically, Italy, which delivered a faster but still slower-than-average speed of 17Mbps. Finally, Germany delivered speeds of 30Mbps.

Verdict

BoxPN is a VPN service with great potential to stand side-by-side with the industry heavyweights such as ExpressVPN, but it will need to improve first.

It features solid speeds on nearby servers (and still usable speeds for servers further away), user-friendly native apps, and some of the lowest prices in the industry, although it doesn’t have many servers and Mac users might be disappointed with its lack of a native client for their devices.