VPNPrivacy review

VPNPrivacy is a minimalistic VPN service that primarily advertises to individuals, small and medium businesses. That said, although it supports torrenting and gives no restriction on speed limit it falls behind in basic functionality considering the price it is set at. But make no mistake - VPNPrivacy is not the best VPN on the market. It’s not even close. It has a lot of drawbacks, and is not at all recommended for use.

Since its establishment in 2007, the Canadian-based VPNPrivacy has served thousands of users, including individuals, small and medium-sized businesses, by providing them with online privacy, freedom, and security. The company has offices in Montreal, Canada, and Scranton, USA.

VPNPrivacy has ten VPN servers in four countries, including the US, Singapore, Canada, and Europe. Compared to big-name businesses in the sector like ExpressVPN, which has thousands of servers spread across 94 countries, this is a relatively small number of servers. 

We also found it quite strange that VPNPrivacy website does not have a security certificate, which means any information you send or receive using that page is unprotected and may be stolen, read, or altered by attackers, hackers, and government agencies. This is incredibly absurd, coming from a business offering privacy tools. Also, VPNPrivacy has not undergone a VPN audit, so if you intend to use this VPN, you should do so with caution. 

• You can sign up for VPNPrivacy here.

Pricing & plans

VPNPrivacy offers a one-month subscription at $10, a six-month subscription at $8.60 per month, and finally a one-year subscription at $8.10 per month. Even though the 1-year plan should be the least expensive, it costs more than almost every other VPN service we've used.

The service can’t even compete with the best free VPN providers. There’s a ‘free trial’ - but it’s not quite as it seems. It costs $3.50 for a one-week VPN account, which contradicts the purpose of a free trial since you're not supposed to pay. This indicates that there is no free trial available for VPNPrivacy, which is odd given that other VPNs offer generous free trials. 

Another drawback of this VPN is that, in contrast to other VPNs that give you access to all of their servers, you are only given the option to choose one of their four servers when you want to purchase VPNprivacy’s subscription plan.

That said, the provider accepts Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, AliPay, and UnionPay as payment methods. All plans come with stealthy VPN technology, no speed limits, three simultaneous connections, multi-platform support, and a 3-day money-back policy, but only in the event that you can’t connect to your selected VPN server and its tech support confirms the issue.

Privacy & encryption

Unfortunately, we were told in VPNPrivacy's terms of service that it keeps log files on its servers for five days, after which the logs are deleted from its servers. However, they claim that neither monitoring nor censorship of your online activities takes place using these log files. Instead, they are used to track server performance, find software bugs, spot potential security vulnerabilities, and track down abusive customers.

According to the privacy statement of the service provider, they do not keep a record of your browsing history, traffic destination, data content, or DNS queries. They also assert that they will never keep a record of your connection, including your IP address, outgoing VPN address, connection time, or session length.

Although it might sound enticing, in today's privacy-unfriendly world, it is not enough for a VPN to merely claim that it does not keep logs or that the logs kept are secure; instead, we expect each VPN to hire an impartial auditor to verify any claims it makes, to prove if they are accurate or not.

VPNPrivacy uses the 256-bit AES encryption algorithm and supports the OpenVPN, PPTP, and L2TP encryption protocols, but as always, OpenVPN is highly recommended for maximum performance. It’s touted as a VPN for torrenting, but the service lacks a VPN kill switch, which would help you conceal your IP address if you lose your internet connection while using the VPN. 

Streaming

The best streaming VPNs let you access well-known platforms services like Netflix and BBC iPlayer - particularly in regions where such content is unavailable. It’s a big deal. Many people seek the feature to be able to access content that is exclusive to certain locations. 

Unfortunately, VPNPrivacy is not the best VPN for Netflix or other streaming sites. We found it’s currently unable to grant access to these streaming services. It’s a big point of difference compared to major competitors that help you to defeat geo-restrictions. 

Speed & experience

One of a VPN's most crucial characteristics is speed because it enables you to access various websites, download torrents for gaming, and other uses. A slow network would render a VPN useless for even the most basic tasks.

That said, due to the restriction of choosing just one server, we were only able to test the speed of the USA server and were unable to try servers in other locations. We started testing the service with a baseline speed of 48.32 Mbps on the USA server, which is close to our physical location. We were very dissatisfied with what we got after running a few tests—the download speed was only 8.48 Mbps, which is incredibly slow considering the price of this VPN. If you want a far better option in terms of speed, we recommend that you choose a different VPN provider, such as ExpressVPN, which we have tested in the past and has faster speeds to suit your needs.

Support 

Despite not having a native app, VPNPrivacy is compatible with Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and routers. Instead of native apps, they provide setup instructions on their website for using their VPN on these operating systems.

Although VPNPrivacy has an FAQ section on its website, it is very sparse and won't help you if you encounter any serious problems while using the VPN. They also don't have a live chat feature to easily connect with a customer service representative, nor do they have a troubleshooting guide to assist you. Instead of offering you a 24/7 live chat, what they offer is a phone number for financial inquiries as well as an email address where they promise to provide technical support. 

We attempted to test the customer support responsiveness by requesting technical support via email. We never received a response. 

Alternatives

To be very candid, VPNPrivacy is not suitable for use, especially considering all of its disadvantages and the price it comes at. There are far better services available at better prices, such as NordVPN, CyberGhost, or Surfshark. We’ve found these provide you with better privacy and more reliable services than VPNPrivacy.

Additionally, you can test out ExpressVPN, the market leader, which is a much better choice than VPNPrivacy and will provide you with a more sophisticated platform, support for Netflix and torrenting, thousands of servers, round-the-clock customer service, detailed information on the website, and a no-logs policy that has been independently verified.

Also, all of these VPNs come with native clients for the apps they support, reasonable price, money-back guarantees and generous free trials so you can try them out risk-free. 

Verdict

Put bluntly, VPNPrivacy isn't worth your money if you take into account all of its drawbacks, such as the slow speed, limited customer support, strange website without a security certificate, small servers, and lack of a native client.

Given the absence of a free trial and the scant information available on its website, it is safe to conclude that this is an unreliable choice for a VPN. We can’t overstate this enough: more dependable VPN providers are available. 

• Also see: the best business VPN.