SwitchVPN review
It’s not easy for small providers to make an impression in the VPN crowd, but US SwitchVPN does a better job than most.
The company may only have a modest 250+ servers, for instance, custodia cover huawei p8 lite 2017 but they’re well distributed across 43 locations across North America, Europe, Asia and Oceania.
The service seems to score well on the privacy fundamentals with 256 bit encryption and support for PPTP, L2TP, OpenVPN, SSTP, and IKEv2 protocols; the company’s own secure DNS servers, and a kill switch to protect you if the VPN drops.
P2P and port forwarding support is available everywhere; apps for Windows, Mac, Android and iOS make it easy to get started, and 24/7 live chat is on hand if you need help.
Want to try SwitchVPN Check out the website hereMonthly billed plans are decent value at only $6.99 to cover up to 3 devices, $9.99 to cover up to 6.
Annual plans don’t compare quite so well at $3.99 a month for up to 3 devices, $5.99 to cover 6. Elsewhere, Private Internet Access’ annual account protects up to 10 devices for $2.85 in year one, $3.33 on renewal; Surfshark has cover samsung s3 no limit on simultaneous connections, and it gives users two years of protection for less than custodia cover samsung a70 SwitchVPN charges for one ($1.99 a month, $47.78 total, vs $3.99 and $47.88.)
If you’re intrigued, SwitchVPN offers users three days to sample the full service for just $1. coque iphone We would prefer a free trial, but with most VPNs dropping these due to abuse, SwitchVPN’s approach seems like a fair compromise.
SwitchVPN claims to keep no logs on its users but this is cover samsung galaxy s8 coniglio hard to verify without an independent audit (Image cover samsung s9 naruto credit: SwitchVPN)PrivacyThe SwitchVPN website makes familiar promises how it ‘will never collect your activity or Internet connection logs’, but we’ve learned not to take VPN zero log claims at face value, and headed off to immagini per cover the privacy policy to find out more.
Unfortunately, power bank cover iphone 6 there’s no real logging policy detail at all, with the only relevant clause being a single sentence: ‘Company does not collect or log any traffic or use of its Virtual Private Network (“VPN”) service or cover samsung a50 glitter Proxy.’
Vagueness about logging is commonplace with VPNs, but there are some exceptions. NordVPN, VyprVPN, TunnelBear and a few others have put their systems through public audits, showing real transparency pulire custodia iphone 5s and providing potential customers with solid evidence to back up their claims. It’s a much better approach than making vague promises in a privacy policy, and we hope more VPNs will take the audit route in future.
Creating a password for our account proved quite difficult as SwitchVPN doesn’t provide any rules on what symbols and characters can be used (Image credit: SwitchVPN)SetupThe SwitchVPN signup process looks like it should be straightforward, but a couple of issues caught our eye.
The custodia cover huawei p30 website begins by asking you to choose a username and password. We allowed our password manager, Dashlane, to automatically generate a secure password, and. SwitchVPN complained ‘VPN Password value is not valid.’ We repeated the process with the same result.
This kind of issue usually means you haven’t followed the site’s password rules (‘must use a mix of upper and lower case letters’, ‘can’t use any of these symbols’), but, unfortunately, SwitchVPN doesn’t tell users what these rules are or what the specific problem is. We manually entered a password with a single symbol, same issue; no symbols, it finally worked. A security company which required us to use a less secure password Not a good start.
We reached the payment screen, chose the PayPal option (cards are also supported), and found SwitchVPN still required entering our country as well as email address, as well as prompting for our full name and postcodes. The last fields were marked as optional, but anyone not paying full attention might easily fill them in (our Dashlane installation did so automatically), and we’re struggling to see why they’re necessary in the first place.
At the very bottom of the screen, where you might never see unless you keep scrolling down, a ‘Join our mailing list’ is set to ‘Receive Emails’ by default. coque huawei A VPN is supposed to help us avoid marketing trickery, not use it itself.
The service picked up after we’d paid: an email arrived with links to setup guides for all platforms; we chose the Windows option, downloaded and installed the client and were ready to go in barely a minute.
SwitchVPN’s Windows app features a clean and simple user interface (Image credit: SwitchVPN)Apps
The SwitchVPN client has a familiar and straightforward interface, and if you’ve used another VPN you’ll feel at home immediately. Location list is here; Connect button is there, and there’s a Settings panel if you feel the need to tweak.
The client does stand out for its visual style, though. The Connect button is animated, with a gradient fill; the interface makes an appealing use of color; Settings panels scroll smoothly across the screen as you click their incisione cover iphone 6 tabs.
There’s plenty of functionality here, too. While some VPN location lists are little more than a plain text cover military iphone 6 menu, SwitchVPN sorts its servers into Recommended and All panels, with filters to display specialist Streaming, P2P or China Optimized locations, icons indicating server load, and a Search box and simple Favorites system to easily find whatever you need.
Unfortunately, the servers listed here change significantly depending on your choice of protocol. coque samsung Use OpenVPN and you’ll see everything; we chose L2TP, and the Streaming, China Optimized and P2P Optimized filters disappeared. The client warns users that changing protocol might reduce the server selection, but this is a much more extreme result than we expected.
You can easily change your preferred VPN protocol in SwitchVPN’s settings (Image credit: SwitchVPN)The Settings panel has only a handful of options, with simple ‘start with Windows’ options, a kill switch, a wide choice of protocols (OpenVPN UDP and TCP, L2TP, IKEv2, SSTP, PPTP), and the ability to define MTU size and cover iphonex proxy (HTTP and SOCKS5.)
Disappointingly, the kill switch works with OpenVPN only, something SwitchVPN forgot to mention on the website. That’s very much the easy option, as the client can mostly leave the OpenVPN executable to handle this itself, and indicates the developer may not be as good at cover iphone x juventus low level Windows networking tech (WFP, maybe) as he is with interface work.
Setting up encryption in SwitchVPN is optional (Image credit: SwitchVPN)The client protected our OpenVPN connections using strong AES 256 GCM encryption. coque iphone It wasn’t as careful with IKEv2, L2TP or other native Windows connection types, though, setting up encryption as optional: ‘connect even if no encryption.’ This may have little custodia cover iphone 11 or even no impact on real world privacy as the client and server should always negotiate protection, but it’s a concern because it shows a lack of attention to detail, and it’s not even slightly difficult to fix. All the developer has to do is change the initial encryption setting to ‘Require: disconnect if the server declines’, like the vast majority of other VPNs, and cover iphone xr marche even the theoretical possibility of connecting ‘even if no encryption’ is removed.
We noticed other minor issues as we explored the client, including its downloading of configuration files via HTTP, rather than HTTPS. Again, there’s very little cover iphone 8 plus antiurto chance of this having any real world impact, but users shouldn’t have to cross their fingers and hope; it’s the job of a VPN provider to pay attention to these details and eliminate all unnecessary risk.
SwitchVPN’s mobile apps have an almost identical samsung galaxy s7 hoesje interface to their desktop counterparts (Image credit: SwitchVPN)SwitchVPN’s other apps have an almost identical interface. The Android app, for instance, has the same look and feel le mie cover per iphone 5 g as the Windows client, and once you’ve looked at one, you’ll instantly know how to use the cover samsung galaxy neo s3 other.
The mobile apps are distinctly short on features, though. The Android version isn’t just lacking the more advanced features you’ll get with some of the competition (auto connect when you access insecure networks, split tunneling to define apps which won’t use the tunnel), it doesn’t even have the options you get with the Windows client: no auto start feature, no proxy support, no option to change the protocolit’s OpenVPN only.
Despite all these hassles and concerns, the core experience of using the apps isn’t bad at all. They’re easy to use, connection times are quick, and they didn’t get in our way as we used our devices.