vpn.ac Review

First of all, I must note that I am no networking expert or anything. My review is purely based upon a simple user experience.

I just signed up with vpn.ac since they are ranked #2 in the UK for speed

I contacted their customer service to ask them about how they take privacy and DMCA warnings and got a reply within 20 minutes that they just throw DMCA warnings in the bin, where they belong.

So I signed up for a yearly plan with a discount coupon as well that I found using a simple Google Search (VPNC45) and paid $43.50 for the entire year.

I downloaded their app and this is the best thing about their VPN. After having have used Private Internet Access and LiquidVPN, their app is the simplest to setup/use. They also have a portable version of it which is a nice feature.

I tried many different servers ranging from OpenVPN to L2TP but the latter was the fastest. Speeds were very close to my ISP speed minus about 10% which is fine by me.

Browsing speed is amazing and so are downloads.

No disconnections encountered during the 3 hours that I used it so far. I also set it up on my iPhone (iOS 9.3.2) and it's working great.

I love how fast it is to disconnect from one server and hop to another unlike the other VPNs I used where this could take some time

They have many servers all around the world and what's awesome is that some of the servers are marked as (P2P Optimized)

They have a 7 day refund policy

 

I told you that VPN.ac was awesome.

I personally use OpenVPN ECC and the Amsterdam 2 cluster... usually about 1.4MB/sec downloads but that's plenty for the privacy. L2TP I wouldn't use for anything secure, its been cracked and compromised a long time ago.

 

oh I totally forgot you mentioned it when I made my LiquidVPN review, me buying it was a co-incidence after reading the fastest VPN speeds article!

 

I personally prefer OpenVPN 256-bit. VPN.ac client software, both Windows and Android, does have some room for imporvement - but overall it's a great VPN service with zero-logging policy and no stupid restrictions.

 

I switched to ECC, since you guys use it, and it could theoretically affect battery life less than 256-bit. (=

 

I like that they give you 5 connections too. I share my account with my roommate and I can be on my phone, PC, and he can be on his PC as well.

 

@Starlight5 @downloads @Ethrem

VPN.AC v3.6 has just been released = Download

 

iOS app released today for VPN.AC making it much easier to connect rather than having to manually create the connection as before, the app was only available on Android

 

I've been wanting to get a home VPN service for a while, but hadn't seriously looked until recently. I signed up with Private Internet Access first. The speeds over Ethernet were great, and the iOS app worked amazingly well. WiFi was a different story: I couldn't get more than 25-30 Mbps versus the 125 without the VPN. I cancelled and got a refund, which the company was surprisingly quick to process - only a couple hours from when I requested it did I get the confirmation that the account was closed and the payment reversed.

I then went with VPN.ac. The client software is nice and simple. No issues with performance over Ethernet or WiFi. Steam games download at the full 10 MB/s limit I have imposed, and I'm not seeing any issues with Youtube or other streaming media. In order to test their customer service, I sent a question asking if I could connect to their service using the Cisco Anywhere connect VPN client installed on my work laptop, as I otherwise can't install any software on the machine myself. I got an answer back in a couple hours (it was probably outside business hours in their home country) saying that it wasn't possible, but they directed me to a browser extension that would work with their service. Their iOS app needs some polish, though. It takes a while to automatically reconnect to the VPN over WiFi when waking my phone from sleep, and when I'm only on cellular data, I always have to manually restart the app and connect. I'm willing to cut them some slack on that front since the app is only at version 1.0 - I'm actually impressed that it works as well as it does.

So far, the experience with VPN.ac has been a very positive one.

 

my experience is just like yours. as for the iOS app, it's been stable on my iToy 7 with no dropouts whereas when I setup the connection manually, it would disconnect randomly. give it a while this is the first version as you said.

The app on Android is super stable though

This VPN has given me the best speeds + privacy to be honest I actually renewed for 2 years since they have a 35% sale recently on the annual plans

 

Can someone with this service connect to one of their US-based servers and attempt to access Amazon.com? For some reason, it won't connect, but it appears to work if I'm logged in to a non-US server. I'd have to cancel my subscription if there's nothing that can be done about this.

 

connected just fine on the US - New York server

Check your DNS Settings

also try closing the app and running it as admin as that ensures it is able to properly change the DNS settings for you to its own DNS servers

 

It was an issue on their end that was fixed within 24 hours of my reporting it. I continue to be impressed with the quality of support and the service itself.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

yeah man, they have one of the best/fastest customer support out there. I feel like it's a live chat, the moment I send a ticket I get a reply within minutes if I send that ticket in their working hours

@saturnotaku @downloads

Double-hop support

Source: https://www.vpn.ac/announcements.php?id=38

 

Another big vpn.ac fan here, it even puts the likes of airvpn to shame for performance, support and cost. I pay around $30 for a 12 month sub.

However one excellent thing i've noticed when using their iOS app is that the vpn connection doesn't drop once the phone goes to sleep. Whereas if you're using the built-in vpn app on iOS, your vpn connection drops once the phone goes to sleep.

 

@psychopomp1 I actually prefered to pause VPN when screen is off - there is an option for this in VPN.ac client - until moved to new smartphone wih great battery life. Always great to have a choice.

 

Btw, vpn.ac doesn't have zero-logging policy.

The only 2 that I found worth it with total privacy are private internet access and nordvpn. The later is based in Panama if you are paranoid about dealing with a US company (the former).

 

@topenzz

 

I read this page before commenting. It doesn't change anything. They retain logging information.

If a court order requested information or their company got hacked/siezed, then there is access to information on you.

They have access to how much you download/upload. The hacker gets all ips that use a vpn. This information can be sold.

 

It's not very interesting information though - the authorities can easily get to know how much data you transfer from your ISP. They won't know what's transferred because data is encrypted but they will know you are transferring data (and how much). If they get a court order and data from vpn.ac they will get to know exactly the same thing only just for the last 24 hours which is much less that they can easily extract from your ISP on daily basis.

Another issue is if you believe no-logging policy - I don't. If no data is retained for any period of time VPN operator will have no idea what business are they running - you need to have basic data about number of active clients, data transfers, which servers are the most popular and which servers/connections need upgrading, from what countries your clients come, how load is spread in terms of servers and hours of the day. I very much doubt anyone is running a business without that knowledge.

Anyway - it's a fair point they do admit to logging certain things. I was aware of that before and it does not change anything as far as I am concerned, but it might be different for you.

 

They can log this information on the server without any client information. Server X has Y number of connections (no ips) at peak hours and Z GB transfered. No client information needs to be recorded for this.

VPN.ac probably logs total traffic to throttle abusers (fair use) or reroute heavy users through a different server (cheaper one). Just speculation.

Anyway my original reply was to the following quote "zero-logging policy" which is not true.

 

@topenzz Fair enough - it's not a zero-logging policy, I don't dispute that.

 

but they told me they do not send users DMCA warnings and they ignore any DMCA requests

 

That's what everyone cares about

 

@saturnotaku

Windows 10 Redstone 2 Update

Just tested OpenVPN ECC while connected to the UK / London Server. It's so slow it doesn't even run the speedtest.net benchmark

I then ran it on the Romanian server



I then switched to the Romanian Server but on L2TP



this is on a 80 MBPS Down / 20 MBPS up connection in the cafe where I am right now

Finally, another run on L2TP but on the German Server:



Conclusion, their speeds are not as fast as they used to be, they need to fix this, please tell them about my findings

 

VPN.ac support provided a workaround that seems to have addressed the OpenVPN connectivity issues I was experiencing. Basically, you need to check the boxes in the client software to disable IPv6 as well as "Disable DNS on physical NIC." You may also have to disable/uninstall the IPv6 protocol from within the network and sharing center.

Of course, you could just keep using L2TP/IPSec and not worry about it at all. But it's nice to know there's at least a workaround available for OpenVPN if people need to use it.

 

As far as I understand, IPv6 is a security risk anyway. One of the first things I do after setting up a new Windows installation is disabling it.

 

@Phoenix Why are you using a VPN ?

You're not in a country with internet problems...

 

lots of legit sites are blocked here. Plus, they use a proxy server here which is very slow as it is loaded with thousands of sites so there is a big lag connecting to sites. With a VPN, the connection happens instantly so no lag. I have to overclock my internet you know @Papusan

 

LOOOL

 

New update from VPN.AC:

IP X project launched

In modern browsers there are so many bundled technologies, that it makes it very hard to keep up with all the possible ways and attack vectors that may lead to sensitive information and identity leakage.
For this reason, it's a fact that IP info and leak detection sitea are the go-to tools for VPN users who want to make sure that everything is correctly configured in order to reduce the risk of exposing their real identities online or being tracked through various ways.

A few months ago we decided to start working on our own browser IP geo-location and leak testing site, that combines several testing techniques for various technologies, and it is finally ready to use.

Give it a try at ipx.ac.

To find out more about it, please check the latest blog post.

 

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLL...

You really have lost it now! Even @Mr. Fox wouldn't overclock the internet!!!

(Jokes aside, he'll overclock anything knowing him )

 

hey don't blame me mate, Mr. Papusan wants me to overclock everything including my microwave

 

Don' expect @Mr. Fox will touch JOKEBOOKS

 

Guys, I've got vpn.ac working through DD-WRT firmware on my router (Netgear X10) using the OpenVPN protocol. This is working beautifully and obviously the main advantage of setting up the vpn at router level is so that every device automatically connects through the vpn instead of having to manually configure every device.

Here's how to get vpn.ac setup on your router:

1) First of all check here to to see if your router supports DD-WRT firmware. It it does, download & install DD-WRT firmware from here. I strongly suggest you read the attached readme notes which normally come with every build of DD-WRT.

2) Follow the instructions here on how to configure vpn.ac using the OpenVPN protocol in DD-WRT. This might look rather daunting but believe me its not, also have a look at the screenshot on that page, make sure your settings match that. You may need to reboot your router in order to activate the VPN settings.

3) In case you need certain devices to bypass the VPN and use the original IP address of your connection then this can be easily done. In DD-WRT go to Administration>Commands tab. Then type in the following in the dialogue box and press save firewall.

echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/all/rp_filter
iptables -t mangle -F PREROUTING
ip route add default table 200 via $(nvram get wan_gateway)
ip rule add fwmark 1 table 200
ip route flush cache
iptables -t mangle -I PREROUTING -i br0 -s <theip> -j MARK --set-mark 1

replace <theip> with the local IP address (preferably fixed) of the device you want to exclude from using the VPN - eg 192.168.1.29. Repeat the last line for every device which you want to bypass.

Hope this helps!