Astrill VPN Review
Is Astrill VPN Scam or legit? Astrill VPN review tells you whether Astrill VPN is legit. And also if Astrill VPN scam or safe, real or fake. Astrill VPN complaints, rating, customers reviews and feedback also reviewed. So, if you are looking for the best and unbiased Astrill VPN reviews, you have come to the right place.
I’ve learnt a few things reviewing VPNs. Astrill VPN’s slogan (Shining star on VPN sky) got me thinking if I’ll be learning that there’s a star up there named Astrill. I checked; and there isn’t. It’s purely metaphorical. In that sense, it would mean that Astrill VPN stands out among VPNs by providing excellent VPN services.
As a VPN service, they say they’ll help you browse the web securely, surf anonymously unblock favorite websites, and bypass censorship. This review will provide the information to help you determine if Astrill VPN is really conspicuously excellent in providing these VPN services.
Astrill offers a VPN (Virtual Private Network) service which protects and hides your online activity from hackers, governments and every uninvited eavesdropper. It also helps you be anonymous online and bypass geographic restrictions by using IPs from countries from all over the world.
Is Astrill VPN a legitimate service? Astrill was launched in 2009 by Astrill Systems Corp and is based in Seychelles which makes the service 100% legal. The company can be reached at https://www.astrill.com, or https://astrill-china.com.
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Note: Since you have nothing to loss, it will be a very good idea to register from this post so we can be able to assist you by getting in touch with them if you have any problem in the future. We have the power to force them into rectifying their faults. However, we cannot do anything if you try to trick the system. Just make sure you comply with their rules and regulations to make it easier for us.
The server network of Astrill VPN consist of 333 VPN servers operated in 62 countries. In terms of numbers, the server count is not the highest you’ll see in the industry, but its definitely one of the highest. There’s also no doubt that the number of countries covered is one of the highest; some of the big names in the industry cover only half as many countries.
A big server network with high server count and countries covered is important for enhanced anonymity, better performance, and unblocking geo restricted. This is because you’ll have many locations for spoofing your real location, you’re less likely to find many users overcrowding a few servers, and you’re more likely to find servers in a particular location you want to unblock to access the location-specific contents.
Therefore, the big network of Astrill VPN makes the service an excellent choice for surfing anonymously as well as for unblocking purposes. Astrill VPN also allows unlimited server switches; this gives you optimal anonymity as allows you to bounce from one virtual location to another as many times as you like.
When looking at a VPN server network, another important consideration is the geographical distribution of the network. A network that covers the whole world is best, as it guarantees that anywhere you might be in the world, there’ll be a nearby server to connect to for optimal performance. In this regard, Astrill VPN says: “We cover the entire world“. That’s not an advert-speak either. Their server network covers every region of the world (except Antarctica, for obvious reasons). Over a third (136) of their servers are in the U.S. alone, but you still have servers in the other North American countries, as well as in popular locations in Europe and Asia. South America is represented by Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Panama; while Africa is represented by Egypt and South Africa. Astrill VPN operates servers in regions where many VPN services do not go to such as Africa and the Middle East (many of the Asian servers are in Middle Eastern countries – United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Israel, and Iran). They even host servers in regions with very restricyive regimes that stifle VPN services such as Russia and Vietnam. Overall, the coverage of the server network of Astrill VPN is exemplary.
Generally, nearby servers gives better performance than distant servers; with Astrill VPN servers everywhere in the world, you’re guaranteed to always have one nearby to connect to for optimal performance. So far, Astrill VPN has looked like that shining star in the VPN sky. Will this shining performance be sustained over the course of the review.
You’ll need a VPN service that is compatible with a wide range of devices so that nomatter the device you use, you will be covered.
Astrill VPN checks the box. The service is not only compatible with the popular operating systems but have dedicated VPN applications for them. This include Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS.
You don’t see this often. Many services have no custom apps; and some, at best, have only Windows app. Investing in developing apps for all the popular platforms is really exemplary. Having dedicated apps makes the Astrill VPN service very easy to set up and use.
You can secure your mobile devices with Astrill VPN. However, if you have a Windows phone, you’ll have to manually configure the VPN on your device, because there’s currently no custom application for Windows phone.
Astrill VPN also sells routers preconfigured with the VPN. It doesn’t matter where you ate; they ship routers to all countries worldwide.
For some other devices like Smart TVs and game consoles, you can also secure them with Astrill, but you’ll go through a router. That is, you configure a router with the Astrill VPN, and connect the devices to the router.
Astrill VPN supports many devices; but how many devices can you connect at the same time using the service? This is important if you have multiple devices that may be in use at the same time, and will want to secure all of them with one VPN account. For example, you shouldn’t have to buy two VPN accounts to secure your phone and laptop.
Some services will not allow you multiple connections; with those, you have to buy multiple accounts to secure your multiple devices. Some devices will give you three simultaneous connections. Astrill Personal VPN gives you five simultaneous connections. That’s a generous offer that’s on par with the industry average; only a few service will give you more.
Astrill VPN is pretty easy to download and install. This is made possible by their “plug and play” custom apps. The service advertises being up and running with VPN protection in three minutes.
Once you log in, the interface you meet is not the glossy interface you’ll find with some services, but it doesn’t get simpler. You can easily choose your VPN connection (protocol), use a drop down menu to open up the server location list to choose a location, and click on a prominent on/ off button to establish connection. You can also easily navigate to settings to find leaks protection, kill switch etc. Astrill VPN definitely shines brightly for usability.
Torrenting is one of the fastest ways of downloading files in the internet; but many VPN services do not allow the activity mainly because they cannot deal with copyright infringement trolls.
Astrill VPN supports P2P activity and torrenting. The P2P friendly servers are clearly marked with a star in the Astrill app, and these will allow you download torrents safely and anonymously.
Many streaming services use geo location to restrict their contents. You’ll need a VPN to give you a virtual IP that places you in a location so you can access the location-specific contents. That way VPNs unblock restricted channels for your streaming pleasure.
However, many streaming services have gotten wiser, and are effectively blocking VPNs from opening up their restricted content to users. That is why many services cannot give access to Netflix. Only a few VPN service can unblock Netflix and give access to the vast library of the streaming giant; as such any service that is compatible with Netflix is regarded as being excellent for streaming. Astrill VPN gives Netflix as well as other streaming giants like BBC iPlayer, Pandora and HBO GO.
The virtual IP you get when you connect to a VPN server is a shared IP, which means that other users will have the same IP. This is good for anonymity, but could pose some problems with certain apps.
For example, banking and payment processing apps will almost always block you when you try to access them with adifferent IP. They’ll think its not you, and to protect your account from unauthorized access, you’re blocked. Many other apps (gaming apps, social media apps etc) will require frequent re-authentication if you try accessing the with a different IP.
A dedicated VPN IP helps you avoid the frustrations of frequent re-authentications and being blocked from your online accounts. Therefore, its always a plus if VPNs offer dedicated IPs. Astrill VPN comes with dedicated IPs. The IP will be used by only you, and you’ll have an uninterrupted browsing experience.
The only downside is that, it does not come free. They offer the Private IP as an add-on, which will cost you $5.00/ IP per month.
Astrill VPN offers another add-on called the VIP plan which gives you access to additional VPN servers with optimized speed and reduced latency. Since latency is a major consideration of gamers, this feature is excellent for gaming. This plan should excite you if you’re Asian or residing in the continent, because the VIP servers are located in Hong Kong, Taiwan, USA, Japan, Singapore, Korea, and China.
The VIP feature also gives you multi hop VPN (also called double VPN) which routes your traffic through two different VPN servers to make it super secure, and to make you impossible to detect.
However, being an add-on the VIP plan will cost you a token on top of your basic plan which is $10.00 per month.
Using a VPN will slow down your network speed. You can’t eat your cake and have it. The very operation of a VPN (encryption and rerouting data packet) take their toll on speed. However, you wouldn’t want speed grounded to a halt. With the very fast VPN services, the speed knock-off is so small that you wouldn’t even notice, except you were actually looking.
Astrill VPN shows excellent speeds; the connection speed were really exemplary, and so also were the download and upload speed. On the average, download speed dropped by 32%, and upload speed dropped by 27%. These are very good speed because services that drop speed by about 50% are still regarded as fast.
Also, in my speed tests, I used distant servers which brought down the final result after averaging. Since, the network of Astrill VPN guarantees you a nearby server, you might not have to connect to distant servers, and youll have even better speed performance.
In terms of speed, Astrill VPN is actually a shining star. If the basic VPN gives this great speed, then the VIP add-on which optimizes speed will be super-sonic.
VPN users look out for services that give them options for establishing connection. In this regard, Astrill VPN offers more VPN protocols than almost every other VPN service out there. The VPN protocols available are: OpenWeb, StealthVPN, OpenVPN, L2TP/ IPSec, Cisco IPSec, IKEv2, PPTP and SSTP protocols.
Of course, the OpenVPN is the “poster protocol” of the VPN world. It’s widely regarded as very secure for establishing connections, and it is recommended by all security experts. It is open source, has been picked all over for vulnerabilities, but none has been found. Any VPN service that doesn’t offer it will get some odd looks. Thankfully, it’s in the list of protocols supported by Astrill VPN.
You might not have heard of the OpenWeb and StealthVPN protocols; that’s because they are proprietary protocols designed in-house by Astrill VPN. The OpenWeb protocol is based on TCP and is encrypted in multiple security encryption and authentication layers; in addition it makes traffic look like regular website browsing making it very hard to be detected by deep packet inspection (DPI). The StealthVPN has a dual layer of encryption which makes it match the OpenVPN in being very secure and stable; in addition it performs obfuscation of traffic which makes it undetectable for automated firewall systems.
Personally, I like services that invest in proprietary technology. It is one thing to grab available technology and use it to serve your customers; but it’s another thing to go beyond the available, and seek to improve available technology to better serve your customers. Very few services do the latter. In that regard, Astrill VPN really shines forth.
Cisco IPSec is a secure and fast protocol that works very well on iOS devices and Linux; while the IKEv2/ IPSec protocol is the only official way for BlackBerry to be connected to VPN. The L2TP/ IPSec is an improvement over PPTP, and is considered a secure alternative of OpenVPN. SSTP is a very safe protocol; its also hard to block by firewall because it uses SSL (Secure Sockets Layer over a fixed TCP port 443 which makes it appear as general HTTPS traffic. Lastly, the PPTP is an old-school protocol that is insecure. If security is your concern, you wouldn’t want to use it; but where you prioritize speedy connections, it might come in handy.
In terms of encryption, Astrill VPN is secured with 256 -bit SSL encryption. Their features page rightfully describes this as military-grade encryption, as it’s the same encryption standard use by the military to secure government top secrets.
With a long list of secure VPN protocols provided (including secure proprietary protocols that won’t fall to firewall filtering), and the use of strong industry standard encryption; Astrill is really shining in security.
The kill switch is a security tool that really should come with every VPN promising optimal protection. This is because VPN services do not have 100% uptime, and will lose connection at some point. When that happens, your data becomes unencrypted and will be exposed together with your real IP address. A kill switch prevents this by cutting off internet connection the moment the VPN loses connection. That way, you won’t be online without VPN protection.
The Astrill VPN service has a kill switch in most of its apps. This ensures that you are protected at all times, be it when the VPN is up and running, or in one of those downtimes when it’ll suddenly lose connection.
Security leaks which occur as DNS/ IP leaks or WebRTC leaks can undermine the work of a VPN. A VPN could effectively encrypt your traffic and mask your location, but a leak would reveal your location as well as your online activity to your ISP. A DNS leak would cause your DNS request to leak out of the VPN tunnel to your ISP. The WebRTC function that allows real time communication could also leak your IP and shatter your privacy.
Any security focused VPN should plug these leaks; and Astrill is no exception. The app features leaks protection, and unlike most VPN apps, they are enabled by default. Also, they worked; in our test no DNS leaks, IPv6 leaks or WebRTC leaks were detected.
On their landing page, Astrill VPN says that one reason they’re the best choice is “No logs kept”.
We see this almost all the time. Users know that records kept threaten their privacy, and will go for services that do not keep logs. So VPNs come out saying they do not keep logs. The only problem is that the privacy policy of some of those no-log shouting VPNs will reveal that they actually monitor and store a lot of users’ data. What will the privacy policy of Astrill VPN reveal about their no-log claim?
On the whole, the privacy policy is very clear about what is collected and why. However, two statements are revealing.
The first is that Astrill VPN keeps track of active sessions (connection time, IP address, device type and Astrill VPN application version) during the duration of your VPN session. However, once you disconnect from the VPN this information is removed permanently from their system. That it is deleted immediately upon disconnection means there really should be no worries that the information would compromise privacy.
However, what follows will raise some worries. Astrill VPN keep last 20 connection records which include: connection time, connection duration, country, device type and Astrill client application version number. As you add more, the oldest ones are deleted, and only the last 20 are kept.
They say the information is only used by their customer support to identify potential issues with VPN connection and provide adequate support; and they add that the information does not contain personally identifiable information such as IP addresses or physical location.
However that IPs are not included does not take the sting out of the information collected; information like connection times, device types and country can be effectively used to narrow in a user. This isn’t just theoretical, there’s even a record of a VPN user whose identification was facilitated by only connection logs obtained from the VPN service. These connection logs that are kept might not look as harmless as VPNs who keep them will have us believe.
There are many services that do not keep any form of logs be it usage log or connection logs; therefore Astrill VPN is not the brighest star in the sky in this regard (that is, when it comes to log keeping).
Being that Astrill VPN keeps some connection logs, its even more important to consider where the service is based. With some jurisdictions the company would be subject to anti-privacy laws that could mandate more storage, as well as make it easy for the government to get their hands on users’ data. Some other jurisdiction have very friendly privacy laws that do not require data retention, and that protect users’ privacy. Astrill VPN is located in Seychelles; and the East African island nation falls in the latter category.
Also, Seychelles is outside any data sharing alliance such as the expanded Eyes network. So there should be no worrying that your data will be passed around the world in a spy network.
If you have question or need any other assistance, you can always start with the self help channels that Astrill VPN provides. This include FAQ, video tutorials, and set up guides. The guides are very extensive, and covers a host of devices including Kindle fire, Apple TV, Boxee, routers and the popular operating systems. The FAQ section holds answers to many of the questions you’ll have about the VPN.
If you still need to reach out to a support agent, Astrill VPN provides the usual channels – live chat, and an online ticket service. The ticket allows you send the service an email. This means that you’ll have to do some waiting to get feedback. Thankfully, unlike many services that’ll keep you waiting for upward of 24 hours, Astrill VPN will get back to you in a couple of hours. When the feedback does come, it is well thought and very helpful is solving the specific enquiries. The timeliness and quality of the support is very much better than the support service of many other VPNs.
If you don’t have the patience to wait for the few hours that the ticket service will take to get back to you, you can use the live chat for instant feedback. However, sometimes you’re no agents online; but when one does come on (which usually is a few minutes), you’ll get professionally served.
Astrill VPN has two service plans – the personal VPN and the Business VPN.
The personal VPN is for personal use. Individuals buy the plan, and route their traffic through the VPN tunnel to browse anonymously, unblock geo restrictions and stay protected from external monitoring (it’s on this plan that the review has been based).
The business VPN is for company use. Companies can use it to protect work related emails, avoid industrial espionage.
The amount you pay for the business plan depends on how many employee accounts will be created. Each VPN account can be used by 10 to 200 employees.
For the personal VPN, there are three packages which are identical in term of features; the only difference is how long you’ll have access to the service. The packages are: one month, six months and one year.
The 1 month package cost $15.90; the 6 months package cost $69.90, which breaks down to $11.65 per month; and the 1 year package cost $99.90, which breaks down to $8.33 per month.
The pricing model is such that you save more by opting for the longer term subscriptions. The 6 months subscription gives a 26.7% cost saving, while the annual subscription gives a 45.7% cost saving. However, despite the big discount on the annual package, it still stands at a high $8.33, meaning that the base monthly package is high.
Comparatively, services whose monthly deals exceed $10.00 are regarded as expensive; and Astrill VPN’s monthly deal stand at $15.90. Expensive! The best value deal of our shining VPN is as high as the monthly deal of most other services.
On the whole, Astrill VPN will break the wallet of many VPN users. If an inexpensive VPN service is what you want, you’ll definitely not see the light of Astrill VPN.
You wan to make sure that a service provides banking options that are easily available to you, and that would be convenient for use. Astrill checks the box.
You can pay for the service with Credit Cards (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, UnionPay, JCB, Diners), Debit Cards, Bank Wire Transfer, PayPal, Perfect Money, Wechat Pay, anr AliPay; and if you’re a fan of crypto currencies, you can also use Bitcoin.
Bitcoin payment is having more and more fans because of the anonymity that it affords. Unlike the other payment options, it does not require you to submit personal information (such as card info, contact address, full names etc) as part of the billing process.
Nomatter what your banking needs are, whether its the conveneince of the regular methods or the anonymity of crypto currencies, you’ll be adequately served by Astrill VPN.
How about the opportunity to test a service free of charge for a couple of days so that you’ll know how it works before committing your hard earned money to a paid plan? Many services gives such free trial periods, and Astrill VPN I no exception.
Astrill provides a free 7-days trial for all new customers. The good news is that the free trial allows you to fully experience the service because there are no data transfer restrictions, speed restrictions, or server location restrictions. Astrill VPN strongly encourage all new customers to, first, go for the free trial before buying a subscription, saying: “that way a customer will be sure if our software works correctly on his/her computer“. However, there’s another reason, as we’ll see in the next session.
Many services provides a money back guarantee that allows you to request a refund of your payment of the service is not to your satisfaction.
Astrill VPN says: “We are pretty much confident you will be satisfied with our service”. As a result, though they have a 7 days money back guarantee, its not what you’ll like to see. They state clearly that they do not offer unconditional (also known as “No questions asked” or “Don’t ask why”) refund.
If you had used the free trial before purchasing the paid service, you are not eligible for any future refunds. Even if you had gone straight up to the paid plan, you still will not be eligible for a refund except: the VPN does not work on your device at all due to technical issues only (not networking issue with your ISP), and you have reached out to Astrill’s customer support, but their technicians were unable to fix the problem within the 7 days the problem was reported.
As you’ll definitely find if you’ve done VPN shopping, there are better deals. Many services will give you an extended period to test run their service in addition to a “no questions asked” money back guarantee. In this regard, if Astrill VPN is a shining star in the VPN sky, their light is definitely not reaching us here on earth.
To end the section on a happy note; Astrill gives you the opportunity to get free use of its VPN service with an “Invite Friend” promotion.
Whenever you invite someone, and the person joins Astrill through your invitation link and pays for a subscription, you’ll get a free month access of the Astrill VPN service. However, you need to be holding a paid account yourself to benefit from the opportunity, as free trial account holders are not eligible. If you have a long list of friends, you can refer one every month, and get free perpetual access.
Astrill VPN says the service is a shining star in the VPN sky; and in many regards, the service did shine brightly.
On the security front: you are provided a long list of secure VPN protocols (including two proprietary protocols that also escape firewall filtering); Astrill VPN use strong AES 256 encryption; there’s a kill switch on most apps; and all security leaks are adequately plugged.
The service provides a robust server network (big and finely spread) that optimizes your anonymity, and they allow you pay with bitcoin to be even more anonymous. The only thing that would cause worry is that the logging policy of Astrill VPN is not very strict, and some connection logs are kept. However, Astrill VPN is based in privacy friendly Seychelles so there shouldn’t be worries of a government or the elements of a surveillance network pushing to get your data.
Astrill VPN provides excellent speeds, allows P2P and torrenting, and is excellent for streaming. The service works on virtually all devices, allows you to secure five devices at the same time, and with dedicated apps, it is also very easy to set up and use.
However, the service is priced high and will break the wallet of many users; and with their refund policy, you’ll most likely not get your money back if you’re simply unsatisfied with the service.
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Why Astrill is Probably Chinese Government Licensed
I have reached the conclusion that Astrill is probably approved, licensed and surveilled by the Chinese government. There are several clues.
Their website is accessible in China.
Astrill has two websites. One is blocked in China, and the other is never blocked. You can buy VPN service and even pay with Alipay. Why is every other VPN’s website blocked, but not Astrill’s?
Their service bypasses China’s internet throttling
In September, 2019, China began throttling overseas Internet traffic so badly that it was almost impossible to reach overseas websites during the afternoons and evenings (the throttling has eased up recently). ExpressVPN was also very slow as a result. Astrill, however, remained speedy; it seemed to be bypassing the throttling. At the time I was using my company’s VPN at work. It was a government licensed VPN, and it was speedy too; Licensed VPN’s appear to bypass the throttling. Why can Astrill bypass the throttling when other VPN’s cannot?
Astrill seldom updates its app
Astrill released an update to its desktop app in September, 2020. The most recent update before that was in November, 2019. Other VPN’s release frequent updates to stay ahead of the blockers. Why does Astrill not need to work hard to stay ahead of the blockers?
Overseas websites know you’re in China
When I access Bing and some other websites with ExpressVPN through a US server, I always get the American version of their website. When using Astrill, I always get the Chinese version. This happens in private mode where cookies are hidden, with regional settings set to US settings, and the system locale set to the USA. This is the case for OpenVPN, Stealth and Wireguard modes. Somehow the location is being transmitted, even though the IP address is American. This is consistent with the Chinese government’s desire for Chinese citizens to only have access to the Chinese versions of websites of foreign companies that operate in China.
They require your phone number
I have never encountered a VPN provider that requires a phone number. This permits a government to easily identify a user.