If you do not know what a VPN is or what Azire VPN does, their slogan will tell you all. It reads: “when privacy matters”. It tells you that this is a service that will give you privacy; that is, online privacy.
As we well know, it’s one thing to talk, but it’s another to deliver. When privacy really matter to you, will Azire VPN give you optimal privacy? That is what this Azire VPN review will help you determine this, And also if Azire VPN is legit, safe, or if it is a scam.
There is no doubt that Azire VPN is a legit VPN service. The VPN service was established in 2012 by Netbouncer AB, which is a reputable Swedish company operating under Swedish jurisdiction.
Azire VPN says its goal is to help users fight censorship and interception on the internet. Fighting interception equals to online protection. It is important because the internet is full of dark hackers (read as internet fraudsters) who want to intercept sensitive information that you transmit over the internet. Also, fighting censorship is important in order to have a free internet where one can access contents that are available to any other user in another location.
Like every VPN service, Azire VPN gives you protection by encrypting your traffic, and it gives you privacy by routing your traffic through its servers in getting to your online destination.
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Being a 100% service, it is legal to use Azire VPN anywhere you may be except in countries like Iran where VPN use is outrightly banned.
Azire VPN operates 22 servers from 5 locations in 5 countries. This is not even comparable to the hundreds and thousands of servers operated by the industry top guns from virtually every region of the world.
So we know that Azire VPN has a small server network. The question is whether it matters. The answer is a resounding yes.
A big server network will give you many more server location which gives you many more opportunities to spoof your location. Read that as enhanced anonymity. A big server network will have servers in many locations, which makes it more effective for unblocking geo restricted contents. A big network is also best for performance because with servers everywhere, there’ll be no need to connect over long distances, and it’ll be less likely that particular severs will be overcrowded.
That said, with the small network of Azire VPN, you can expect the opposites of these advantages of a big network.
Azire VPN gives you only 5 locations for spoofing your location. Good but not great for anonymity. They also allow unlimited server switching, so you can bounce from on location to the other as often as you like. Again, that’s good for anonymity; but bouncing around in many more locations would be better.
The five locations of Azire VPN are: the US, Canada, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. This covers only parts of North America and Europe. Thus, if you’re from South America but far from home, you’ll have no luck using Azire VPN to unblock and view your favourite home channels.
Also, users in any of those five countries (and maybe surrounding countries) will find joy with Azire VPN because servers are close to them. But for everyone else, far from those locations, there’ll be no joy because they’ll have to connect over long distances to the servers of Azire VPN. Distant connections causes poor performance/ speed.
You’ll want a VPN service that supports a range of devices so that no mater your device you’ll be covered.
In this regard, Azire VPN is compatible with the popular operating systems and platforms – Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android. They also support Linux and routers that run OpenWrt. That’s about it. There’s no support for smart TVs and gaming consoles. This is a good list; but in an age where there are VPN services that works with any device running an operating system, you’ll expect Azire VPN to step up their game with support for smart TVs and game consoles.
I have more than one device. Most probably, you do also. If you have to buy a VPN account to protect every of your device, your VPN expenditure can easily sky rocket. Thus, you should look out for the service that supports multiple connections, so that you can protect your multiple devices with one account.
In this regard, Azire VPN allow up to five simultaneous connections. This is one of the most generous offers you’ll find in the industry.
Getting started with Azire VPN is easy. You can download their “client” (called azclient) from the guides page of their website. Installation is breeze. Once that’s done, you’ll get the login page.
One twist in Azire VPN is that the login page is also where you select your server location as well as VPN protocol. Once you put in your login credentials, select your server location and protocol, you can hit the connect button at the button right of the page, and you’ll be flying with VPN protection.
It also means that you’ll have to logout to change your server location. This process of changing server locations will be a deal breaker to many users. There are VPN services that give you two clicks for changing server locations; but Azire VPN will have you log out and log in again. However, the service worked just fine when connected.
Azire VPN comes with a free Socks5 proxy server. Many services exist as stand alone proxies. They offer IP masking, giving you a virtual IP and routing your traffic using it. This proxies act as VPNs; the critical difference being that they do not offer encryption.
No encryption means resources are saved allowing proxies to accept a larger number of users, to be compatible with all kind of internet traffic, and to provide faster connection speed.
Where advanced security and encryption are not top priority, but simple IP masking and fast connection are, a proxy server like Socks5 is invaluable. This would involve activity like hiding location, by-passing geo restrictions, and even P2P.
Having a free Socks5 proxy as part of the Azire VPN package is definitely a plus for such times when a proxy server is needed over a full fledged VPN.
Torrenting remains one of the most effective ways of downloading files over the Internet, especially large files. The activity which entail connecting with different persons will allow you download large files in bits from the different persons. Even some of the A-list companies and government agencies use it. That’ll include companies like Blizzard Entertainment, Facebook and Twitter, and agencies like NASA.
However many VPN services do not allow torrenting on their servers because many users can easily cross the line and download torrents that are protected by copyrights.
However, having your system exposed to peers while torrenting is not very pleasant, and users still seek VPN services that will help them download torrents safely and anonymously.
Thankfully, Azire VPN supports Peer-to-Peer traffic and torrenting, even allowing the activity on all their servers. They also offer unlimited bandwidth, so you don’t have to be worrying about bandwidth usage when doing you downloading.
Many users seek VPN services for entertainment purposes. Many streaming services make their media content location specific; and you’ll have to be in a location to stream and watch the particular location specific contents. VPNs give you virtual IPs that put you in any location that they have servers, and you’ll be able to watch contents from any of the locations.
We have alluded to the fact that the small network of Azire VPN means that you can only use the service to unblock contents from only a few countries. What we have not mentioned is that the countries that Azire VPN unblocks are the go-to locations for streaming.
This means that Azire VPN should still be able to give access to many of the streaming giants that streaming enthusiast targets. We tested with Netflix.
VPNs that unblocks Netflix are generally regarded as good for streaming. This is because, Netflix holds vast titles, and since 2016 they have been able to block VPNs from helping users beat their geo restrictions. Only a few VPN services remain that can still unblock Netflix and give access to its vast titles.
Thankfully, Azire VPN is one of the few. In the tests for this review, only the Sweden server gave Netflix. In a previous check, we were able to get Netflix when connected to the UK location. However, Netflix caught up with that server location, as we couldn’t get Netflix there this time around. With Netflix very aggressive in blocking VPN, it remains to be seen how long the Sweden server will give the popcorn delight.
The VPN protocol and encryption standard is the first testament of the level of online protection that a VPN service provides, because it is what tells you if your traffic can be intercepted and deciphered.
In this regard, Azire VPN supports only the current gold standard in VPN protocols (OpenVPN protocol), and what promises to be the next gold standard (wireguard).
The open in OpenVPN may not give the impression of privacy or security, but it is what makes it secure. It is open source; meaning it is available to all, and has been picked for vulnerabilities by everybody. However, it remain without any vulnerability. Hence, it is secure and reliable. It is the VPN recommended by all security expert.
The WireGuard protocol is regarded as the next big thing for good reason. It is UDP-based and uses SSH keys for authentication. Not only is it secure, it can also by-pass firewalls, thanks to built-in stealth.
In terms of encryption, the OpenVPN data channel cipher is AES‑256‑GCM (OpenVPN 2.4), and AES-256‑CBC with HMAC‑SHA512 for authentication and data integrity (OpenVPN 2.3). While key exchange authentication is by Diffie‑Hellman method and Perfect Forward Secrecy (DHE) using a 4096 bit RSA key, with a re‑keying every 120 minutes. To one word word that’ll best summarize all I that is unhackable.
WireGuard uses ChaCha20 for encryption, Poly1305 for authentication and integrity, and Curve25519 for the Elliptic-curve Diffie–Hellman key agreement protocol. Also, in ‘no techie speak’ that’s unhackable.
With the strong VPN protocols and unhackable encryption standards used by Azire VPN, you can browse with free of mind, knowing that your data is secure.
The whole point of using a VPN is to have your real IP hidden. If a VPN mask your IP, only to leak it to the world, then it’s really useless. Security Leaks could be any of DNS leaks, WebRTC leak or IPv6 leaks.
DNS leaks cause the VPN tunnel to be by-passed, and will have DNS requests handled by the default connection. The end result is that your IP and browsing history is open to your ISP and others. WebRTC leaks will have the real time communication function of your browser leaking your IP to the world. And an IPv6 leak will have your IP exposed to the world when you try communicating with an IPv6 server or peer with your VPN assigned IPv4 IP address.
Therefore, a serious VPN should plug security leaks and prevent the exposing of your IP through these backdoor holes.
Azire VPN has full IPv6 support, and even has a feature for checking if your IP is leaking through WebRTC. Most importantly, when we put Azire VPN to the test, the service came out flying by plugging all security leaks.
We ran them using sites like https://ipleak.net, https://browserleaks.com/webrtc, and https://dnsleak.com. Thankfully, there was no record of DNS leaks, IPv6 leaks or WebRTC leaks.
Every intelligence agency will agree that a target remains untraceable as long as there’s nothing on file about him/ her.
One reason for going for a VPN is to be untraceable; so you’ll want your VPN service to have nothing on file about your VPN use. No logs whatsoever that could be used to identify you.
Azire VPN says they not only have but enforce a 100% non-logging policy, which means that they do not keep any kind of logs that could be used to identify you.
In case that was not clear enough as to what logs are not kept, they go ahead to give an itemized list of what’s not kept. This include:
This is an impressive no-logging position. To put this in perspective, many of the other VPN services that also advertises as no-logs services keep one or more of the data on this list such as connection time stamps, number of sessions, and bandwidth usage.
Azire VPN support their strict no-logging position with a “blind operator mode”. With this on place, an ordinary systems administrator can not query content of the endpoint and allowed ips fields from WireGuard, and also cannot run live network monitoring tools such as tcpdump and similar software.
Also, Azire VPN has all their server running without any hard drives or any other type of persistent media, so there’s actually no way any data could be stored on any physical hardware.
They also keep a warrant canary page that tells you if they’ve received any warrants to disclose users data, or if any of ther asset have been forcefully ceased in pursuant of such data. Up to this time of writing, no such warrants had been served, and no such seizures of assets had happened.
In any case, with the strict zero log policy of Azire VPN, you can be sure that when whoever comes knocking with warrants and seizing servers, no information that gives away a user will be obtained.
Azire VPN has their office in central Stockholm. The VPN is owned and operated by Netbouncer AB, itself a Sweden company registered in Sweden and operating under Swedish jurisdiction.
On one hand, it means that Azire VPN is 100% legal; but on the other hand, it means that Azire VPN is within a surveillance alliance – the expanded Eyes alliance. The alliance which started with five countries have expanded to fourteen; it is an agreement between member nations to work together in intelligence.
The alliance is bad for privacy for many reasons. Take this. Many nations have laws that prevent their intelligence agencies from spying on their citizens. Sweden being in the Eyes alliance can simply call in the help of one of the other member nations, and the intelligence is shared (sometimes not just between the two nations involved, but among all 14 member nations).
The one good thing is that Azire VPN keeps no log of VPN use, so there’s nothing to share in that aspect. But know that they have your personal information used for registration (such as email address), and they’ll have no choice but to reveal that when the government stiff-hands them. In that event, it is likely that your data will fly around the world among the intelligence agencies of the intelligence network. Not good for privacy.
Kill Switch
The kill switch is security tool that many VPN services are now featuring. See it as the VPN side kick. A VPN works to protect you by encrypting your data and hidding your IP, but that only happens when the service is up and running. What of those downtimes, when the VPN is not up to speed, and your IP is at risk of being exposed the world? The kill switch saves the day by cutting off internet connection during the VPN downtimes, ensuring that you do not continue online without proper VPN protection.
VPN services, just like every piece of technology, do not have 100% uptime – they are liable to experience the occasional kinks. Thus, a kill switch is a must-have, to ensure that users’ privacy is always intact – whether VPN uptime or downtime.
Unfortunately, Azire VPN does not come with this all important security tool. With no kill switch, Azire VPN is secure only up till the next VPN downtime; and since there’s no way of telling when this would be, there’s no way of telling how long you’re protected for.
You won’t want to watch still frames as video; and if somehow you will, you definitely won’t want it to take forever when downloading or uploading files. Therefore, its important to consider speed when looking at VPN services.
This is especially so because the operation of a VPN cause a reduction in network speed. Some slow services will knock down network speed by so much that you browsing experience will be the sufferable one described above. However, there are others that reduce speed by indiscernible amounts that your browsing will not be affected.
We tested the speed of Azire VPN by noting the speed (upload and download) when we hooked up to their three server locations, and comparing the average to the speed recorded when the VPN is disconnected.
On the average, Azire VPN reduced download and upload speed by 68% and 56% respectively. To put this in perspective, any speed drop of more than 70% is not considered good. Thus, Azire VPN download speed is at the periphery of not being good. Their upload speed is much better, but not great.
On the whole, you should have uninterrupted browsing with Azire VPN, but their speed is, at best, average.
When using a VPN service, you might have to contact the service provider with questions you need answered or issues you need solved. When that happens you’ll want to meet a responsive customer support service. Therefore, it’s important to examine the support service of any VPN service you might be considering.
First, Azire VPN provides an FAQ page where some questions that users may have about the service are answered.
If you’ll rather contact a human support agent directly for assistance. Azire VPN makes provision for that through an email support service. You can send them a mail using the contact form on their website, or you can do that directly from your email account using the email address support@azirevpn.com.
If you’ve checked other VPN services, you’ll find that there are many services that provides various channels for contacting them including instant feedback channels such as live chat and telephone service.
It might come out as a minus to some that Azire VPN supports only email contact. However, it should be noted that giving timely and helpful support is the goal of any support service. I’ll take a VPN service with one support channel that effectively does that over a VPN with different support channels that do not.
That said, Azire VPN’s one support channel tick both boxes of response timeliness and helpfulness. We got a response to our inquiry in just over four hours. We looked up other reviews to check if our experience was just a one-off; and we saw that Azire VPN do respond to all support submissions in a few hours. This is very impressive as there are services that will keep you waiting for up to 48 hours.
Also, the timeliness of the response was not at the expense of helpfulness. We noted that Azire VPN actually answered inquiries, providing specific responses that are indeed helpful, as against sending you links which are largely unhelpful.
One dent on the support service is that it is active only between 8:00am and 9:00pm (UTC). You’ll find that if your submission is within that time, you’ll have a little more waiting to do before getting a response.
Azire VPN has a simple pricing largely because they have only one service plan. When you subscribe to the service, you have access to the same features as another subscriber; the only difference may be the duration of access.
There are four billing periods that you can subscribe for – monthly, quarterly (3 months), annually (12 months), and biennially (24 months).
The monthly package cost €5.00; the 3 months package cost €12.00, which breaks down to €4.00 per month; the 12 months package cost €42.00, which breaks down to €3.50 per month; and the 24 months package cost €72.00, which breaks down to €3.00 per month.
As with most VPN services in the market, the longer your subscription, the more your cost savings. The three months deal is discounted by 20%, while the 12 months deal and 24 months deal will give you a cost saving of 30% and 40% respectively.
Comparatively, it is not uncommon to see VPN services with single month deals costing double figures; which means that Azire VPN is in the pocket friendly range. But if you were wondering, they are not the cheapest. There are some highly rated VPNs that are cheaper (albeit, with the long term subscriptions).
You should want a VPN service that supports different payment methods so that you can easily grab one for making your payment.
In this regard, Azire VPN ticks the box. You can pay for the service using the popular credit/ debit cards (Visa card, Mastercard, and American Express). You can also use Swish and PayPal.
And if you’ll rather pay anonymously, you’ll find joy in Azire VPN. They allow cash payment, as well as eight different crypto currencies that includes Bitcoin, Bitcoin cash, Litecoin, Monero, Ethereum, Verge, Doge, and Dash.
Azire VPN also offers a free trial so that you’ll have a run of the service and know what you will get before committing to a paid plan.
However, the free trial period of Azire VPN is only 24 hours long. When you consider that some VPN services offer up to 7 days of free trial (with some even going higher), you’ll find that the 24 hours offered by Azire VPN is short.
One good thing about the free trial is that it is unrestricted. In the 24 hours of trial, you get access to the full service as any paid subscriber. You get unlimited bandwidth, unlimited speed, and access to all server locations.
There are many VPN services that will refund your payment if you find that their service does not meet certain expectations that you had of it. Azire VPN is no exception.
They have a refund policy powered by a 7 days money back guarantee. The 7 days window means that you can use the service for up to 7 days and still get a refund of your payment.
Once again, Azire VPN shows that they are not generous. Many VPN services in the industry offer refund windows of up to 30 days. In comparison with many of these services, Azire VPN’s refund window is short.
Also, it is good that there are no caveats that will make one ineligible for a refund such as data limits. Most often than not, services with long refund windows include data limits that make the long windows all but useless. Thankfully, Azire VPN has no such clauses, and you will get a full refund as long as you submit your request within 7 days of making payment.
However, refunds are not available to users who subscribe to the one month plan. This might be a deal breaker to some. Also, if you make payment with bitcoin, you cannot get a refund.
That said, it is safe to say that if you want an extended period to test-run a service, Azire VPN might not be ideal for you.
I didn’t like:
When privacy matters, should it be Azire VPN that you grab? The VPN service actually gives you many reasons why you should. They support only secure protocols with top notch unhackable encryption; and they prevent all security leaks. Also, they have a strict no-log policy; and to enforce it they operate servers with no hard drives, and run a blind operator mode which restrict access to the core of the servers, making live traffic monitoring impossible. Very good privacy provision except that there’s no kill switch, which throws a spanner in the works.
There are other things to like such as full torrenting support, Netflix streaming, five simultaneous connections, and free socks5 proxy; but there are also some heavy cons such as poor speed, and a very small server network.
This Azire VPN review answers questions like is Azire VPN safe, legit, real? Or is Azire VPN scam, fake or not worth it or good enough. Azire VPN complaints & feedback also reviewed.
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