VPNSecure review

VPNSecure is an Australia-based provider of virtual private network (VPN) services that will help you stay anonymous and secure online with the help of a wide range of tools, protocols, and other mechanisms focused on users’ privacy.

In this day and age, there are many reasons why one should always have a good VPN service at their side. These include protecting yourself against organizations and individuals intent on getting your sensitive information and using it to their advantage, being able to access websites and services unavailable in your current location or blocked by your government or ISP, and more. You can discover which VPNs are the best at what they do if you check out one of the best VPN services on the market.

While VPNSecure isn’t among these top services (yet), it’s still a very good choice for everyone who wants to stay anonymous and safe on the World Wide Web. Let’s get a closer look at its most noteworthy features.

Price

When you first decide to check out VPNSecure’s pricing, you’ll see three options - 1-month subscription at $9.95/month, a 6-month option at $8.32/month (billed every six months), and a 3-year one $2.99/month (billed every three years). However, dig a bit deeper and you’ll find that these are only default plans offered on the homepage, and that VPNSecure offers plenty of other pricing options for its various services. For instance, there’s 7-day VPN access for $4.95 (one-time payment), 2-month access for $19.90, 4-month access for $34.95, and one-year access for $79.95. 

You can also get various amounts of IP addresses at different lengths. The same goes for SSH Tunnel, PPTP, HTTP Proxy account, Smarter DNS Access, or even combinations of different products. Having such a large choice is a breath of fresh air in this business, considering most competitors only offer two or three subscription options, and only for one type of service.

Those users who’d like to test the service out without paying for it can take advantage of the 30-day free trial with one server in the US and 2GB of bandwidth. For $2.00, you can test all of the provider’s servers during two days. 

If you end up disappointed with the service, there’s a 7-day money-back guarantee. VPNSecure accepts payments made via credit cards, PayPal, Payza, Cashu, Bitcoin, Perfect Money, and Paymentwall.

You can use your account on up to five devices simultaneously. The only condition is that you are connected to a different server on each device, which isn’t a difficult thing to adhere to.

Alternatives

VPNSecure is a strong security service, but it lacks some of the important features, like access to the popular streaming services like Netflix, something that the industry heavyweights like ExpressVPN and NordVPN provide without any problems. 

Others, like Surfshark and CyberGhost, will also give you access to Netflix and everything else you might need from a VPN service and at a lower cost - $1.99/month and $2.75/month, respectively.

Streaming

The ability to provide access to popular streaming channels like Netflix, Hulu, BBC iPlayer and Amazon Prime Video, otherwise unavailable in certain regions is among the reasons why some users get a VPN in the first place. Unfortunately, these services have lately been successful in blocking VPNSecure’s attempts at unlocking them for their users. This is why, as we were told by the very helpful customer service agent, the company has decided to move away from promoting such features and go back to its roots - Internet security with its VPN products.

About the company

VPNSecure Pty Ltd is the Trustee for VPNSecure Trust in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Users signing up for its services will get access to over 80 VPN servers in 50 countries in every corner of the world, including Egypt, Chile, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, Isle of Man, Mexico, Panama, Russia, South Africa, Taiwan, UAE, Vietnam, and others.

The website is quite good at presenting all the products this provider offers. However, at times one can feel a bit overwhelmed by everything, so it would be helpful if the products, features, and subscription options were more neatly arranged into, say, tables or some other, more organised view.

Privacy and encryption

To protect your privacy, VPNSecure deploys advanced protocols and tools including OpenVPN, PPTP, HTTP proxy, and SSH SOCKS. Premium users can also take advantage of the email monitoring tool that will check for data breaches online and notify you if your email address is found in any of them. Users even have the freedom to choose their encryption cipher, from a low cipher or 64bits, to high encryption using AES-256.

All the premium plans also include the Meta Search engine, which doesn’t share users’ IP addresses or search history with the search engines from which it gathers results (including Google, Bing, DuckDuckgo, and others).

As an additional privacy measure, you can activate a killswitch. This is a handy mechanism that prevents the leaking of your IP address and other sensitive data in case of a VPN connection interruption, by immediately shutting down your entire Internet access.

Also, if you’re connecting in China or Iran, countries that restrict the use of VPNs on their soil, you can activate the built-in Stealth VPN feature that will connect you to an obfuscated server and mask your traffic as HTTPS.

The provider’s Terms of Service state that: “We do not log any personal information when connecting to our service. 'Any data' means but is not limited to the following:

IP Address NOT logged

Connection timestamp NOT logged

Disconnect timestamp NOT logged

Bandwidth used NOT logged

DNS Requests NOT logged.”

Furthermore, the ToS states:

“We do not have the technical means to identify users based on DMCA notices and therefore any DMCA Notices will not be forwarded to end users due to the above outlined no-logging policy.”

This all sounds good but there’s no way to confirm unless the company invites an independent auditor to analyse and report on the truthfulness of these claims, which is something other VPN services have already done.

Torrenting is enabled, although not openly advertised, as can be confirmed in the provider’s support centre where it shares tips for using Vuze. This feature was also confirmed by the customer service, and we were told that P2P/torrents are supported across 90% of the vendor’s servers and there are currently only a few servers (in the UK and US) on which torrenting is blocked.

Support

VPNSecure has user-friendly native apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and Linux, as well as a handy Chrome extension. The Android app was rated 3.9 stars by 599 people, it recorded 50,000+ installs, and was last updated on March 28, 2020. The iOS app wasn’t as successful, with only 2.2 stars, but rated by just nine people whose complaints mainly referred to the user interface. It was last updated on May 18, 2018.

If you don’t want to use the native apps, VPNSecure also provides OpenVPN keys and configuration files for all of its servers, which you can generate from the Members area and use open-source versions available to the public. The platform can also be installed on routers with the help of the provider’s installation guides on the website or you can buy a router pre-configured with VPNSecure, with links also provided on the website.

Should you find the support centre inadequate for answering all of your questions, the helpful  and very friendly customer support is available at any time of day or night via live chat, email, and ticket on the web and in the app.

Speed and experience

We were somewhat disappointed with the download speeds as they only reached up to 10Mbps on our 45Mbps testing connection. That said, the free trial server we used was located in the US, which is a bit distant from our physical location, so servers in the near vicinity might perform better.

The apps are very easy to set up and use, although manual installation can be a bit tricky. However, all the setup information is available on the website or you can contact the customer support via chat should you need any assistance.

Verdict

Like its name suggests, VPNSecure is dedicated to users’ security and privacy, and is very capable in this task. It gives its users a robust platform, with P2P support and various products to purchase, mix, and match, and plenty of subscription lengths and payment options. Speaking of which, its pricing puts it among the cheaper VPN vendors.

On top of that, the customer support is detailed, friendly, and always available, which is something that many pricier providers cannot boast with. However, it does have some pain points, such as its very low number of servers and lack of Netflix support, where heavyweights such as ExpressVPN perform much better.