VPN Reviews

TorVPN Review – A No-Frills VPN Solution

By Paul Liu
Monday, January 27th, 2014

TorVPN (not related to the Tor Project) is a VPN provider from United Kingdom. Launched in 2010, the company provides a no-frills privacy and anonymity solution to its customers. In this exhaustive TorVPN Review, we will reveal the features of the service and determine if it is worth subscribing.

Server Locations and Site Access

TorVPN has VPN servers in just one country; Hungary. While the service does not allow its customers to unblock premium American and British services like Netflix, Hulu and BBC iPlayer; it can help Hungarian expats and tourists to access IP restricted services like Eurosport, MTV Hungary, Euronews, Viva TV, ATV, Viasat 3, Sport1, TV 2 and DigiSport from anywhere. Additionally, the service offers an easy way to bypass institutional and government censorship and access sites like Twitter, Gmail, Facebook, Skype and YouTube from restrictive environments (even from Saudi Arabia, China, Kuwait, Qatar and Brazil).

VPN Speed and Bandwidth

The VPN servers of the company are connected to Gigabit plus nodes which ensures up to 99.99% uptime. Although the company offers only metered VPN plans to its customers, it does not count traffic to popular sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Gmail and Rapidshare as a part of bandwidth usage for some plans. Also, the company counts only the higher value from uploaded and downloaded data numbers towards the overall bandwidth usage so you get significantly more bandwidth than you sign up for. The company even permits bittorrenting activities so you can shield your P2P sessions from the higher authorities.

Privacy Settings

TorVPN provides security via PPTP, OpenVPN and SSL protocols. While the PPTP protocol is not considered very secure, it offers better compatibility with almost all kinds of computing, mobile and gaming devices. The OpenVPN protocol, on the other hand, guarantees very high encryption and protects your financial transactions, social accounts and shopping activities from hacking and theft. The service is even suitable for hiding your personal data from eavesdroppers and sniffing programs while using wireless facilities at shopping malls, airports, coffee shops and hotels.

The company does not spy on the online activities of its subscribers but it does record certain statistics to keep their server network in the best possible condition. The company does not disclose subscriber information to anyone unless it is served with a court order.

Supported Operating Systems

TorVPN works well with popular devices and operating systems like Windows (7, XP, Vista), Mac, Linux, Android, iPads and iPhones. The company does not have its own VPN client but it has published step by step setup instructions and videos for the benefit of its customers. The service even offers a SSH tunneling feature to help those who need privacy on a machine for which they don’t have Admin rights. It is even possible to combine SSH, VPN tunneling and TOR features to get customized level of privacy.

Customer Support

The company provides customer support through email and a ticketing system. While the lack of live support is disappointing, the support staff tries to make up for it by responding to most queries within a reasonable time.

Pricing Options

TorVPN’s privacy solution is available from 3 EUR/month for 5 GB bandwidth (5 EUR/month for 10 GB, 10 EUR/month for 30 GB and 15 EUR/month for 50 GB bandwidth). The company even offers quarterly plans with significantly higher bandwidths (20 EUR for 60 GB and 30 EUR for 100 GB) and a SSH plan with 1 GB bandwidth limit for 5 EUR/month. Although the company does not offer refunds, it does provide 1 GB free trial account to its new customers. The free account users cannot access certain sites like eBay and PayPal plus they need to enter a Captcha value on TorVPN’s website every now and then to keep their accounts active. The company may offer refunds in special cases if a customer is not able to configure or use the service for some reason.

Final Verdict

Overall, TorVPN provides a decent VPN service. While the company has severs in just one country and does not offer unlimited bandwidth plans, it offers several types of privacy solutions to its customers. We recommend subscribing to the free trial offered by the company to check if the service meets your privacy needs. For more information, please visit: www.torvpn.com.