SwissVPN review

SwissVPN, a division of the Swiss telecom company Monzoon Networks AG, promises users the chance to secure their internet traffic using a VPN tunnel that is encrypted. 

Early in 2000, the telecommunications company introduced SwissVPN which is one of the first VPN service providers ever. To learn more about SwissVPN, how it functions, and whether it lives up to its claims or if it can compete with other VPN services on the market, we tested it. 

In contrast to top competitors who offer thousands of servers, SwissVPN's server coverage is unfortunately a major issue because there aren't many server locations in its offering, and it only has one server in Zurich.

SwissVPN: Pricing 

With SwissVPN, there is only one basic monthly subscription plan available, and you only get access to one server. After making this purchase, you can choose between one and twelve additional months to continue using the provider's services. There is no free VPN option.

The privacy tool only allows you to test the software for 24 hours before making a purchase, in contrast to other VPNs on the market that offer a 30-day free trial. When manually configuring the VPN, input "connect-test.swissvpn.net" as the server address and "swissvpntest" as the username and password to access this trial.

You can pay for their service using Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Swiss PostFinance, PayPal, and Twint. However, unlike most VPNs, they do not accept Bitcoin payments for anonymity, nor do they provide a money-back guarantee.  

SwissVPN: Privacy and encryption 

Although SwissVPN states that your data is never logged, it should be noted that Swiss has not requested a VPN audit, where an independent auditor can examine its servers for logs. 

Also, according to Monzoon Networks' privacy strategy, your specific identification information, such as login, password, session ID, location address, hardware MAC address, IP address, and request information, will be collected to grant you the network's access. When compared to other VPN services, this is a significant amount of data, and it might use your logged data for marketing purposes.

All the data is kept in the industry's data centers in Zurich and Frankfurt, though it is stated that data may be stored in another country if the handling is particularly complex. This means that your data might eventually wind up anywhere without your knowledge. Because it is not part of the 14-Eyes surveillance network and is not governed by US or EU law, SwissVPN has an immediate privacy advantage over the majority of the competition. Regardless of that, Monzoon states in its privacy policy that it can provide your data to Swiss law enforcement if demanded!

The VPN employs the OpenVPN, L2TP/IPSec, PPTP, and SSTP VPN protocols for security, AES (128-bit) tunnel encryption, and the Diffie-Hellman (1024-bit) key for strong encryption. This ensures that your information remains private. The service lacks advanced features such as a VPN kill switch, which means that if your connection to the server is lost, you can prevent a DNS leak. If you're a more advanced user who wants more control over your internet connection, this won’t be sufficient.  

SwissVPN: Streaming 

Most VPN providers take pride in providing access to today's popular geo-restricted streaming services like Netflix and BBC iPlayer. 

This is not the situation with SwissVPN, as the VPN cannot unblock websites outside of Switzerland and can only stream Swiss content because of its IPs. If this is what you want to do, check out the best Netflix VPNs and streaming VPNs instead.  

SwissVPN: Speed and experience 

SwissVPN's inconsistent speeds make it too slow. When we ran a speed test with SwissVPN using the basic service, which indicates that the speeds could be limited to up to 15 Mbps, we received 12.05 Mbps in the course of our tests on a 65.25 Mbps testing connection. 

The SwissVPN Speed Boost feature, which costs a couple  dollars extra, claims to be able to increase the maximum speed to 30 Mbps. When we purchased and used it, we didn't get much speed improvement.

SwissVPN: Customer support 

The SwissVPN website's help section is extensive and has 31 helpful articles (the majority of them are FAQs) to give you basic information about the software. Although they do not have a live chat system feature to assist you as quickly as possible, there is email support on the website help section as well as a screen grab upload function, so you need to be definite if your problem is of a specific nature. We believe that SwissVPN should improve in this area and create a live chat feature. 

SwissVPN: Apps 

Since SwissVPN doesn't have a mobile VPN app available for download, you may find the manual setup process of it on a computer or smartphone to be very frustrating, unless you follow the helpful instructions on SwissVPN's website. Additionally, SwissVPN offers a multi-device mode that enables simultaneous use of their VPN service across multiple devices. 

SwissVPN alternatives 

ExpressVPN

ExpressVPN is one of the best VPNs for Switzerland. It's super fast, has 24/7 live chat support, has servers in over 94 different countries, including a SwissVPN server, and has strong security features. It allows for five simultaneous connections on devices, and it unblocks everything. It also has a strict no-log and privacy policy, so be assured that your data will not be shared. to help you when you need it.

Read our full ExpressVPN review

NordVPN

With more than 100 servers in Switzerland and a long list of useful features, NordVPN is a colossus in the VPN industry. The service has more than 5,200 servers (100 in Switzerland) spread across 60 nations, offers live chat support, 24/7 email support, military-grade online security, and allows 6 simultaneous device connections.

Read our full NordVPN review

Private Internet Access 

Private Internet Access is a fantastic all-arounder with a focus on privacy. It has servers spread across the world, including in Switzerland. If you enjoy streaming, this VPN is the ideal option. It has a 30-day money-back guarantee, is simple to use and install, and effortlessly unblocks popular streaming services.

Read our full Private Internet Access VPN review

SwissVPN: Verdict

Since there are less expensive options with more features, we think SwissVPN is overly expensive for its limited functionality. We only advise using SwissVPN to obtain a Swiss IP address.