VYprVPN Review 2017

VyprVPN Review

Review

VyprVPN Review

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Switzerland-based provider VyprVPN boasts many great features, including a worldwide server network, strong encryption protocols, plenty of exclusive proprietary software, and great customer service. While its price is a little above average, I think its benefits justify the higher cost. Read on for a more detailed analysis in this VyprVPN review from BestVPN.com, or click on the link below to try out VyprVPN now.

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• USER REVIEW
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• EDITOR REVIEW

• PROS
• Fast speeds
• Tough encryption
• Great customer service

• CONS
• A bit pricey if you pay monthly
• Does not accept Bitcoin
• No P2P support

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Pricing & Plans

VyprVPN has two personal subscription plans on offer: Pro, and Premier.


Each plan boasts unlimited data usage, with features such as the number of simultaneous connections variying between the two. The Pro plan doesn’t come with Chameleon or a dedicated cloud server: so if these are features you would like, go for Premium.

Plan prices clock in at $5 per month for the Basic plan and $6.67 per month for the Pro plan (if you choose to pay annually). If you want to pay monthly, the premium plan will cost $12.95 per month and basic $9.95. As such, paying monthly makes the service fairly pricey.

You can pay for your VyprVPN subscription using Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, JCB or Alipay.

I was disappointed to see that while VyprVPN accepts the most popular modes of payment, there is no option to pay anonymously. I’d be happy to see it accept Bitcoin or cash via snail mail in the future.

Features

VyprVPN is owned by Golden Frog, a company founded in 2010 by Ron and Carolyn Yokubaitis. Golden Frog claims to be passionate about online privacy and keeping a free and open Internet. This sentiment is reaffirmed by their decision to base the service in Switzerland, a country renowned for its favorable privacy laws.

VyprVPN boasts several exclusive features and plenty of proprietary technology. It claims to be the “World’s Fastest VPN” (a claim which I’ll investigate in the speed section of this VyprVPN review) due to being engineered to have the highest level of speed and security. Its speed is also given that extra bump thanks to the fact that VyprVPN owns and manages its own data and servers – no third parties involved!

Another speed-friendly feature of VyprVPN? Its Tier-1 server network, which includes 200,000+ global IPs, 700+ servers, and 50+ server locations across five continents.

Other noteworthy features include easy-to-use Apps across platforms, no download caps, no server switching fees, multiple encryption protocols, a NAT Firewall, Chameleon Technology, and VyprDNS. Confused about what the latter two are? No worries, I’ll be going into more detail below.

Chameleon

Chameleon is proprietary technology of Golden Frog. It is available for Windows, Mac, Android, and supported routers.

Chameleon uses unmodified OpenVPN 256-bit encryption and works by scrambling OpenVPN packet metadata to ensure that it’s not recognizable via deep packet inspection. The result is an open and uncensored browsing experience, as users who enable the feature can bypass restrictive networks (such as those put in place by oppressive governments) without sacrificing security.

Best yet? Chameleon is included in the Pro and Premier accounts at no extra cost. It’s even included in the free trial!

VyprDNS

VyprDNS is Golden Frog’s proprietary DNS software and is available exclusively to VyprVPN users. The zero-knowledge service was developed to increase user privacy and defeat censorship, and is built into VyprVPN.

If you’re wondering how VyprDNS differs from a third-party DNS service, Golden Frog explains it all in the simple graph below.

Something to keep in mind: VyprDNS cannot be used separately from VyprVPN. This is because when you connect to VyprVPN, you will automatically use VyprDNS.

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Security & Privacy

Being based in Switzerland takes VyprVPN’s security and privacy off to a great start. The country is famed for its strong privacy laws, including the Swiss Federal Data Protection Act (DPA) and the Swiss Federal Data Protection Ordinance (DPO). This makes it a safe zone within Europe and immune to its mandatory data retention laws. It also adds credibility to VyprVPN’s alleged no usage logs policy.

However, it must be noted that VyprVPN’s parent company, Golden Frog, is at least partially based in the US. As such, it is under US jurisdiction and subject to US laws. This is troubling, as under both the FISA and the Patriot Act, US companies can be compelled to hand over information, even if the data is stored overseas. This makes VyprVPN’s claims of absolute privacy grossly misleading, as it cannot completely protect users’ data like it claims to be able to.

On the technical side of things, VyprVPN offers a number of protocols: OpenVPN, L2TP/IPsec, PPTP, and Chameleon. You can choose which one you’d like to use based on your preferred level of encryption and speed.

We here at BestVPN.com would personally recommend OpenVPN and Chameleon. They both use tough 256-bit AES encryption and authenticate data with digital certificates, in addition to being fast and reliable. Chameleon, however, has an extra edge thanks to its defeat of deep packet inspection and masking of VPN traffic.

If you’d like to learn more about the different types of encryption, check out our helpful guide.

Another great VyprVPN security feature is its NAT Firewall, which blocks unrequested inbound traffic when you’re connected, therefore giving your Internet an additional layer of security.

The major caveat of VyprVPN? The provider is adamantly against P2P filesharing and torrenting, so users who are looking to use a VPN for this reason might want to look elsewhere. There is also the issue of the fact that VyprVPN keeps connection logs for up to 30 days. Not exactly uncommon in the VPN market, but something I’m not a fan of and hope to see Golden Frog do away with sometime in the future.

The VyprVPN Website

The VyprVPN website is stylish, easy to navigate, and incredibly user-friendly. Much of the important information can be found either on the homepage or on links leading from it. In addition, its production information, resources, support, company information, privacy policy, and terms of service can be easily found at the bottom of the page.

Social media channels for both Golden Frog and VyprVPN – which include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram – are linked from their website and are regularly updated with company and industry news.

Support

VyprVPN has a solid customer support system set up. In addition to an FAQ, a troubleshooting section, and manual setup instructions, they also have an active community which includes a forum full of Golden Frog members.

If you can’t find the answer to our question in any of the above, VyprVPN has a support staff available 24/7, 365 days a year. You can get in touch with them through email (support@goldenfrog.com), via their online contact form, or by using their live chat.

To give VyprVPN’s customer service a test run, I decided to use their live chat option to inquire about encryption. After entering my details I sent my query and immediately received an auto-reply saying that my question was under review. I received a response within seconds which fully answered my question. In addition, I was prompted to contact them if I had any further queries. While the exchange felt more than a little robotic, it was a pleasant experience overall.

The Process

Signing Up

Signing up for VyprVPN is simple. To sign up for an account, you have to enter your name, email address, location, and billing information, including your chosen method of payment. Afterwards, you will receive a confirmation email and be directed to setup.

For this VyprVPN review, I opted for the 3-day free trial of its Pro plan.

The VyprVPN Windows VPN client

After downloading and setting up VyprVPN for Windows, I was immediately struck by how sleek and user-friendly the client is. It displayed the real-time details of my connection, IP address, time connected, VPN protocol and encryption, and status of my NAT Firewall.

Clicking on the gear icon in the upper right corner and then on Options will take you to your configuration options. The first tab, Connection, allows you to setup things such as connecting on Windows start up, and a kill switch in case your connection drops. You also have the option to automatically connect to VyprVPN when using untrusted Wi-Fi networks – a must for those who use public Wi-Fi!

The Protocol tab allows you seamlessly switch between encryption protocols, depending on your needs. As I said in the security section of this VyprVPN review, OpenVPN and Chameleon are by far our top picks for online browsing. L2TP/IPsec and PPTP are far less secure, and so we here at BestVPN.com discourage individuals from using these.

The DNS tab allows you to select your DNS of choice, as well as enable DNS leak protection.

The General tab is for managing settings such as sound, desktop notifications, and language, while the Account tab allows you to update and logout. The Advanced tab is for configuring settings like route delay, verbosity, MTU, and TLS timeout. We’d recommend leaving these settings to people who are very experienced with VPN software. That, or to change them only under the guidance of Golden Frog experts. However, should you toy around with it and regret it, you always have the option to restore VyprVPN’s default advanced settings.

Performance (Speed, DNS, WebRTC and IPv6 Tests)

Graphs show highest, lowest and average speeds for each server and location. See our full speed test explanation for more detail.

Tests for this VyprVPN review were conducted in Central Europe using a 30 Mbps connection as a baseline. On the whole I was impressed with the results. While I’m not sure they’re good enough to back VyprVPN’s claim that it’s the fastest VPN on the market, both European and US servers were speedy.

I’m happy to report that no DNS leaks were detected during my testing for this VyprVPN review. To check your own computer for both DNS leaks and WebRTC leaks, you can use ipleak.net. You can also use test-ipv6.com to check for IPv6 leaks, or doileak.net to run a mix of all the aforementioned tests. We here at BestVPN.com strongly recommend you run these tests every so often to ensure the strength and security of your VPN.

Other Platforms

In addition to the standard Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android support, VyprVPN is also compatible with many TVs and routers. These include Android TV, OpenELEC, Apple TV, and Tomato.

Setup instructions for each supported platform can be found by navigating to their dedicated pages via these icons, which are found on the VyprVPN homepage.

Mobile Devices

VyprVPN has mobile apps that support iOS 8 and higher, and Android 4.0 and higher. Specs for each include VyprDNS and 3rd party DNS. Unfortunately for Apple fanatics, the Android App is considerably better-developed than its iOS counterpart. The Android App offers automatic or manual port selection, while the iOS App offers neither. Moreover, the Android App offers both the OpenVPN and Chameleon protocols, while iOS is restricted to IPsec.

Other/ Free Services

VyprVPN Server

Currently in its beta phase, VyprVPN Server is an easy to use Cloud VPN that is available for a limited time with Business, Pro, and Premier accounts. In short, it provides a secure access point that protects your connection and safeguards your Cloud infrastructure.

The VyprVPN Server’s flexible design means that you’re not locked to any proprietary system or platform. Moreover, no hardware is required. It is also quick and easy to set up, configure, and deploy – uncommon for VPN servers! Once connected, it secures your cloud deployments so that you don’t ever have to expose your servers to the public Internet.

While VyprVPN Server may seem to have mostly corporate appeal – it provides a secure access point through which your employees can access your company’s internal network – it can also be used at home for remote access.

The Cloud platforms that are currently supported by VyprVPN Server are DigitalOcean, Amazon Web Services, and VirtualBox. However, Golden Frog notes that more are on the way. The minimum server hardware is 1 GB memory, and applications are available for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS. Protocols are quite impressive – OpenVPN, IPSec, and Chameleon – and Pro and Premier are understandably limited to one server while Business plan users can have unlimited.

Need some more convincing? Check out VyprVPN Server’s key features.

Cyphr

Cyphr is VyprVPN’s answer to private messaging. Accounts are free to create for both Android and iOS. Once downloaded, all you have to do is generate your public and private key pair and you start sending encrypted messages.

Cyphr is a zero-knowledge messaging App, which means that only you and whoever you’re chatting with can read, decrypt, or share your messages. This is due to the public and private key pair generated by Cyphr, which protects your conversations from being seen by third parties, your cellphone provider, and even Golden Frog.

Sadly, Golden Frog does still need to collect some metadata for their messaging service to work. However, they clearly state what is collected and for how long in the Cyphr section of their website.

Cyphr works by sending your messages through multiple layers of security. It starts with a public key verification stamp that is added by Cyphr every time you send a message so that the recipient knows that it’s from you and not an imposter. Afterwards, Cyphr protects your message with symmetric key encryption so that it cannot be read by third parties. Cyphr will then use your friend’s public key to deliver your message into their mailbox. The message is then opened using private key decryption – only your friend has the private key to the mailbox so only they can unlock your message.

Like VyprVPN Server, Cypr is still under development. Golden Frog promises that more features are on the way, including multi-device support, desktop Apps, and rotation of encryption keys.

VyprVPN Review Conclusion

I liked

• Keeps no usage logs
• Based in Switzerland
• Tough encryption
• Worldwide server network
• Fast speeds
• Exclusive features and proprietary software

I wasn’t so sure about

• No P2P support
• Above-average pricing
• Does not accept any anonymous payment methods
• Keeps connection logs for up to 30 days
• Parent company at least partially based in the US

I hated

• Nothing

Let’s sum up this VyprVPN, shall we? Swiss provider VyprVPN a great solution for users who don’t want to sacrifice privacy for speed. It has a server network that spans the globe, a number of strong protocols on offer, and its software is a breeze to setup and use. Best yet, its sleek client is largely identical across platforms. While a large amount of trust is necessary when using VyprVPN, as the majority of its software is proprietary and its parent company is at least partially based in the US, I’d personally put my faith in the provider. This is due to its decades of experience, great reputation, and outspoken commitment to customer privacy. See how VyprVPN performs for yourself by trying out the 3-day free trial of any one of their plans.

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