Cactus was stood alone as the green succulent plant found mostly in arid regions, but from the later part of 2011, it started to mean more – it started to be associated with online security. This happened when three friends in Moldova came together and created a VPN service that they called Cactus VPN.
The VPN service has managed to grow beyond the family business that the creators envisioned; today it is a full VPN service offering customers all over the globe internet privacy and freedom.
This CactusVPN review will x-ray Cactus VPN, looking at its security features, server network, policies, pricing and anything else there is to examine, whether CactusVPN is safe, legit or scam, in order to provide the information that will help you determine if the CactusVPN service is worth trying.
The size of a VPN server network is an important consideration when deciding on a VPN service. Important things to look out for is the number of servers, the number of countries covered, and the global spread of the network.
In this regard, Cactus VPN operates 23 servers in 14 countries. This definitely does not measure up to the hundreds and thousands of servers in 50+ countries operated by the VPN industry top players.
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A small VPN server network might be a deal breaker to many users; this is because a robust network is best for unblocking and location spoofing purposes, as well as for performance. The more server locations in a network, the more opportunities you have to spoof your location; the more locations a VPN network covers, the more location-specific contents it will unblock; and lastly, with a robust network, you’re more likely to find a close server to connect to for faster performance.
However, the small network of Cactus VPN should not be read as doom and gloom. If you buy the package that gives you all server locations, 24 servers is more than enough for you to spoof your location and be anonymous. Also, the servers are strategically located in countries that streaming chasers targets, so you’ll have no problem unblocking popular titles and sites.
Now that we’ve mentioned where the servers are located; the network covers four continents. North America is represented by the US and Canada; Asia is represented by South Korea, Japan and Singapore, Oceania is represented by Australia; while Europe is represented by the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain, Poland, Switzerland, and Romania. There is only one server in each country, except the US, the UK and the Netherlands that has four apiece. There are no servers in the whole of Africa and South America, as well as the Middle East. If you happen to be in any of these regions, you will have to connect over great distances to a Cactus VPN server; and with such distant connections comes poor performance.
When I opened the pricing page of the service, a support window popped up with the message “We know that making a choice here can be difficult. I’m here to answer any questions you have“. Well, it was good to know that customer support is not far away; but it was also an admission that their service plan can be complicated at first. And sure they were.
This is because Cactus VPN does not have one simple service plan that differentiate packages by billing periods, instead they have different service plans which depends on the country you want to access.
Cactus VPN offers four service plans – US VPN, UK VPN, VPN + SmartDNS, and SmartDNS.
As the names make clear, the US VPN plan gives you access to only servers (4) in the US, while the UK VPN plan gives you access to only servers in the UK. The SmartDNS is not a VPN as it does not offer encryption. It is primarily for unblocking purposes; as such, it is excellent for streaming. Lastly, the “VPN + SmartDNS” is the premium plan; it gives access to all server locations in the Cactus VPN server network, and also adds a SmartDNS service.
All four service plans of Cactus VPN has three billing periods – monthly, quarterly, and annually.
The US VPN, UK VPN and SmartDNS are similarly priced. The monthly package will cost you $4.99; the quarterly package will cost you $12.99, which breaks down to $4.33 per month; while the annual package will cost you $38.99, which breaks down to $3.25 per month.
As expected, the SmartDNS cost more than the other service plans. Surprisingly, it is only slightly higher. Since it gives all server locations and throws in the SmartDNS, I had expected it to be significantly higher than the others. The monthly package of “VPN + SmartDNS will cost you $6.99; the quarterly package will cost you $17.99, which breaks down to $6.00 per month; while the annual package will cost you $54.99, which breaks down to $4.58 per month.
Just as it it with many VPN services, you save more if you opt for the longer subscription packages because they are discounted. The discount policy of Cactus VPN is simple, as they use regular rates across the board. On every Cactus VPN service plan, you save 14% by going for the quarterly plan, and you save 35% by going for the annual plan.
Comparing the prices of Cactus VPN with the competition, you’ll find that Cactus VPN is inexpensive. Especially on a month to month basis, our protective succulent flora has pocket friendly prices. Where many services have single month packages that are in double figures, Cactus gives you theirs at $6.99. Their annual deal is also pocket friendly as it falls below $5.00. However, you’ll find other services that have lower prices in the long term. These services achieve this through massive discounts (some time up to 70%).
Conclusively, Cactus VPN is an ideal choice if you want an inexpensive service especially for a single month subscription.
Our protective succulent flora supports a wide range of payment methods, so you’ll have no problem paying for a subscription plan no matter where you reside.
You can use any of the following credit/ debit cards – Master card, Visa card and American Express. They also support platforms like PayPal, Qiwi, Webmoney, Boleto Bancario, Yandex Money, and Alipay. If you’re a fan of crypto currencies, you should find joy in knowing that Cactus VPN also supports Bitcoin & Altcoins.
Bitcoin and other crypto currencies are growing in popularity because these options allow users to make payments anonymously. While the conventional methods may be more convenient, they entail the submission of personal data (which are stored by third party payment processors); and this can turn back to compromise her privacy.
That said, if you want a VPN service that gives an extra layer of privacy by supporting anonymous payment methods, you should look at the Cactus VPN service.
Many VPN services offer a refund policy powered by a money back guarantee that allows you to get back your payment even after using the service for a while.
Cactus VPN joins the bandwagon and offers a 30 days money back guarantee. The 30 days window means that if your refund request reach them within 30 days of making payment and using the service, they will give you back your money. 30 days is a pretty long time for a refund window, and is one of the longest you’ll find in the industry.
However, looking at just the refund window can be misleading. Many VPN services will give a long window, but insert clauses that makes the long window meaningless. For example, some VPN will give the long 30 days, but put a data limit that if exceeded will make the user ineligible for a refund. The problem is that the data allowed cannot reasonably last beyond a few days. Thus, while the 30 days refund window will look generous on surface, the data cap means that you cannot use the service for that long and still be eligible for a refund.
Thankfully, there was no such data cap inserted in the refund policy of Cactus VPN; but that didn’t prevent the refund policy from being a turn off (at least to me who likes a free ‘no questions asked’ refund policy).
Many services have ‘no questions asked’ policies and will not ask you to explain yourself when requesting a refund; but that is not the case with Cactus VPN. Our protective succulent flora will only refund you “if the services included in your subscription doesn’t work as advertised“. That effectively rules out using the refund policy for an extended free use of the service.
That’s not to mean that Cactus VPN does not offer free use of its service. They give a 24 hours free trial so that you will know what you’ll be paying for.
Thankfully there are no annoying limits in the free account. You’ll have access to the full offering of the premium service plan (VPN + SmartDNS). You also do not have to submit your payment detail before getting the free trial account. It tells you that there is no forced subscription at the end of the free trial. You and you alone get to make the decision of whether to move (and when to move) to a paid plan.
Our protective succulent flora also give bundle discounts. If you have an active Cactus VPN subscription, and buy a second, you’ll get a 50% discount on the second; and as long as the first subscription is active, the discount applies every time the second subscription is renewed.
You don’t want to be without VPN protection when you need one simply because your device is not supported. Therefore, you should seek a service that is compatible with a wide range of devices.
Cactus VPN fits the bill. The service works with all the popular operating systems – Windows, MacOS, Android, and iOS. You can also use the VPN on Chromebook and Ubuntu Linux, as well as on Smart TVs, and routers (DR WRT an Asus). The support for routers means you can use the VPN to secure pretty much every device; just get the VPN on the router, and connect the device to the router.
Most likely, you have more than one device. Therefore you should go for a VPN service that allow you secure your multiple devices at the same time with one VPN account. If not, you’ll have to buy multiple VPN accounts for your multiple devices, and that will drive up your VPN expenditure.
Cactus VPN allow you connect up to five devices at the same time with your one VPN account. This is on par with the industry average for simultaneous connections; and only a very few VPN services can give you more connections.
This makes Cactus VPN an ideal choice for the small family or small business seeking to protect the multiple devices of the unit without spending on multiple VPN accounts.
Cactus VPN is virtually a “plug and play” VPN service; thanks to the dedicated VPN apps they provide. Downloading and installing the VPN are in easy steps that shouldn’t be a problem. When the client appears, you’ll find that there are two logins tabs – for the VPN and the SmartDNS.
Login with your details, and you’ll be greeted by an interface that is intuitive. You’ll get through everything without needing to be tech savvy. Selecting a server is fairly easy. Cactus VPN makes sure of this by sorting the server by cities. However, you can choose to sort the servers by speed. There’s a small draw though, you’ll have to disconnect from a current server before connecting to another.
In the settings you can choose that the app: runs at start up, reconnect if VPN connection drops, stop internet traffic of VPN connection drops (kill switch), prevent DNS leaks, etc. You can also go to switch between VPN protocols. On the whole, Cactus VPN scores a lot of points for usability.
Torrenting is basically connecting to peers to download large files over the internet. It’s one of the most effective ways to get large files. However, it can easily become dangerous, as the peers you’re connecting to can use the file sharing activity to invade your device. That’s just of of the reasons users seek VPN services for torrenting.
However, not many VPN supports torrenting. As such, the few that does are highly regarded. Cactus VPN is one of those fews. However, you’ll have to buy the premium plan (VPN + SmartDNS), as it is the only plan that supports the activity.
Also, the activity is limited to only 8 servers. While it is good that torrenting is allowed in the first place, limiting it to only 8 servers will mean that, most often than not, the P2P friendly servers will be overcrowded and the performance will be poor.
On a positive note, Cactus VPN allows unlimited bandwidth, so when you are downloading torrents you don’t have to worry about exceeding data transfer limits.
The top streaming services make their contents location specific. You’ll have to physically be in a location to watch the locaiton-specific content; alternatively a VPN service can place you there virtually and give you the restricted content no matter where you are in the world.
However, led by Netflix, top streaming services started blocking VPNs from accessing their restricted contents. As a result many VPN can no longer unblock the top streaming services such as Netflix and BBC iPlayer.
However, Cactus VPN stands as a very good VPN service for streaming. They open up many of the streaming giants and give you access to numerous titles; and with unlimited bandwidth, you can go grab your popcorn.
However, if you’re not using the premium VPN plan, you’ll be unable to unblock Netflix. The premium plan includes SmartDNS which is primarily for streaming. The SmartDNS unblocks over 280 website, which covers the whole entertainment spectrum – movies, music and sport.
The primary function of a VPN is to give you online security and Privacy. We’ll see how well Cactus VPN does this by examining some features/ policies that a security focused VPN should provide, among which are – protocols and encryption, kill switch, leaks protection, logging policy.
Cactus VPN supports six VPN protocols. The most popular VPN protocols that VPN services support are OpenVPN, L2TP/ IPSec, and PPTP. Cactus VPN supports all three. The other protocols that our protective succulent flora supports is IKEv2, SSTP, and SoftEther.
Not many VPN services will offer you such a wide range of VPN connection protocols. However, alternative protocols does matter to many users for many reasons, and should to you.
The OpenVPN protocol is the industry gold-standard VPN Protocol because it is highly secure, it gives optimal speed for the level of security it offers, and it is highly configurable. It’s the protocol you should be using if security is your concern; therefore, Cactus VPN scores points for offering the OpenVPN protocol.
However, the OpenVPN protocol can easily be blocked. At those times, or one of the other times it will not work, you’ll need an alternative protocol, which is also secure, to use for establishing connection. You can use the L2TP/ IPSec as an alternative protocol when OpenVPN does not work. The SSTP can get you pass firewalls that will block the OpenVPN. The IKEv2 is best for certain devices like the iOS.
In terms of encryption, Cactus VPN uses 128 bit MPPE for the PPTP VPN protocol, and AES 128 bit for OpenVPN, SSTP, L2TP/ IPSec and SoftEther VPN protocols.
The MPPE encryption is weak; and that’s why you’d shouldn’t be using the PPTP protocol when security is a concern. The AES 128 encryption standard is unhackable at the moment; so there should be no worries that your traffic will be captured and deciphered by hackers. However, many users will ask why Cactus VPN has not gone with the longer key 256 bit AES encryption which is widely regarded as most secure encryption algorithm, and which all the top VPN services are using. Cactus VPN answers that the difference in the level of security is small, and is not worth the amount of resources that AES 256 uses. The argument is that AES 128 gives you a better security/ resources (speed) ratio.
The kill switch is a security feature that any security focused VPN should not be without. This is because there are times when a VPN will lose connection; and when that happens, you’ll have your traffic and real IP exposed. The kill switch prevents such sudden exposure by stopping internet traffic when the VPN connection drops.
A VPN connection drop is not a far fetched occurrence. It can happen even when moving from one server to another (remember that Cactus VPN will have you disconnect from a server before you can connect to another). Thankfully, the service comes with a Kill Switch.
Security leaks can undermine the work of a VPN. Imagine after selecting a secure protocol with tight encryption standard and spoofing your location only to find out that your DNS requests were handled by your ISP’s DNS servers. That’s the nature of DNS leaks. The whole of the VPN will be defeated, because your ISP and any watching eye will have captured your browsing history and real IP. Thy any serious VPN should prevent DNS leaks.
Thankfully, Cactus VPN effectively plugs all DNS leaks. Other security leaks include WebRTC leaks and IPv6 leaks. While their nature differ from the DNS leaks, the result is the same, which is exposing your real IP to the world. Our protective succulent flora also prevented these leaks.
With Cactus VPN, you are rest assured that while you have VPN encryption putting protective barriers between you and third parties, your IP and activity will not be leaking to them from the backdoor.
You must have heard that it is good to keep records. That is one thing you won’t want your VPN provider to do, especially not the records of your use of the VPN service. Records are kept so that things are traceable; and you use a VPN for the very opposite of that, to be untraceable.
Cactus VPN says one reason you should use the service is because they keep no logs. We would have simply given them the points here and moved on, except that many VPN services lie about their logging policy. Because users seek no-logging services, some VPN will advertise as such, but will pack lines in their policy that shows that they log a lot.
So naturally we went through the privacy policy of Cactus VPN to find out if their no-logging claim is just another advert speak.
It made for good reading. Our protective succulent flora does not store any data relating to your activities while using their service. The websites you visit, the contents you download or upload and any such activity is not monitored or logged. Actually, not logging activity data is standard.
Where they impresses is in the area of connection logs. Cactus VPN does not store any IP addresses, connection timestamps (time of connect and disconnect), used bandwidth or session duration information. This is particularly impressive because many of the so-called no logging VPN services keep connection logs, and might even try to sell you that such connection logs are harmless. Well, such logs are not totally harmless; this, it is good that when Cactus VPN says they do not keep logs, it includes both traffic and connection logs.
You should know that you’ll need an email address to register, and this will be stored. Also, when you pay for the service, a form of payment info will get to Cactus VPN from the payment processor. However, this is almost standard procedure in the VPN world; and as long as you use a burner email and pay anonymously, you’ll be fine.
Cactus VPN also guarantee that they’ll not pass any of your information to a third party. However, they might be powerless when a valid court document is waved at them; that is why the next segment is important.
Cactus VPN is located in Moldova. The country which is bordered by Romania and Ukraine has been pushing to join the European Union. It should give you joy that Moldova has not succeeded in that push, because it means that the country is not subject to the data retention laws of the EU.
Moldova also does not have one of those over reaching governments that will come knocking and requesting user’ data from the VPN service. Lastly, Moldova is outside any intelligence sharing arrangement such as the expanded Eyes alliance. The alliance is an agreement between nations (now fourteen) to work together in gathering intelligence. What it means is that any information collected in any member country is shared with half the developed world.
All of these make Moldova a privacy friendly jurisdiction, and it means that it is less likely that the government will come knocking for data from the VPN service. But even if the do, the strict no-logs policy of Cactus VPN ensures that there’ll be no records obtained that should be worrying.
VPN services reduce network speed. That’s because you can’t eat your cake and have it. For the encryption that gives you online security, you’ll have to make do with a chop of speed. But the problem is that the chop off is always not little. Some services will take a huge chunk of your network speed, and your browsing will be badly affected.
In testing Cactus VPN speed, we connected to several server locations and measured download and upload speed; then we averaged the result, and compared this to speed recorded when the VPN is disconnected.
On the average, Cactus VPN reduced download and upload speed by 53% and 61% respectively. These are good results (but not great), especially on the download front. Circa 50% reduction of speed is still considered fast speed, as it will enable you play high-paced games and stream high quality contents without any disruption.
However, given that Cactus VPN went for a lower bit AES encryption (128 bit) in order to sacrifice “a little security” for speed; I had expected that their speed will be, at least, one of the fastest. So I was a little disappointed to find that, at best, the speed of our protective succulent flora put them in the middle of the pack.
Cactus VPN provide a lot of channels for getting assistance. First there is the self help channels which is an FAQ section neatly categorized into four – General, VPN, Smart DNS, Account Settings, Troubleshooting, and Setup.
You’ll find answers to most of the questions you’ll have about the Cactus VPN service; and the answers adequately answer the questions addressed. The troubleshooting is a very good resource for some technical questions. The setup guides are extensive and detailed; so you’ll easily be walked through configuring the VPN on your device.
If you’ll rather talk to a customer agent, you can directly reach the service using an online ticket service, an email service or a live chat service. The support ticket and email support channels break a lot of VPN services; you’ll send in a support ticket or mail, and you’ll have to wait endlessly to get a response.
Thankfully, that is not the case with Cactus VPN. All the time, it took our protective succulent flora just over ten minutes to send us a mail responding to our inquiries. That is easily one of the most effective support service (in terms of response timeliness) that we’ve seen. It is even faster than the supposed “live chat” of some services that will simply put your live-chat submissions in a queue and keep you waiting. It is also worth noting that fast responses did not come at the expense of quality response. Each time, the response was specific, well thought, and satisfactorily answered our question. However, if you don’t have the circa 10 minutes patience for the mail response, you can use the live chat; which is actually live (gives instant feedback).
Cactus VPN is a legit VPN service that gives you the complete security package: a wide range of secure protocols, unhackable AES 128 encryption, internet kill switch, security leaks protection, completely no logging, and a privacy friendly jurisdiction. On top of this, you can pay anonymously and use the VPN with the tor network for optimal anonymity.
On the connectivity level: there’s support for every device, and they allow 5 simultaneous connections. The service is good for streaming, and they throw in a SmartDNS to make it even more so. Torrenting is allowed, though on a few servers; and if you have any issues, Cactus VPN has one of the most effective customer support service to help.
Also, speed is fine, but it should be far better since they use lower encryption; and the server network is one area where Cactus can really use some improvement.
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