Encrypt.me VPN is a VPN service that has been in operation since 2011; but at the time they were known as Cloak VPN. The VPN service was bought by StackPath LLC in 2016 and branded Encrypt.me VPN in 2017. StackPath is a robust security outfit managing everything from threat prevention, identification and resolution. Thus, it was not surprising that since they acquired Encrypt.me (Cloak VPN), the service has expanded into a global VPN service.
Yes, Encrypt.me is a legitimate VPN. It is owned and operated by J2 Global, a publicly traded company with a long history of providing secure online services. Encrypt.me has been in business since 2015 and is trusted by many users around the world.
Encrypt.me creates an encrypted connection between your device and their servers; thus a secure link is created over the open internet, through which your data is routed. Encrypt.me encrypts your data before it leaves your device, then routes it through their servers in going to your online destination.
The encryption ensures that you are protected because even if someone nearby intercepts your data, it cannot be deciphered; and the rerouting ensures that you are anonymous as your activity cannot be traced to you.
Their website is https://encrypt.me. Encrypt.me is a legit VPN service which you can use anywhere in the world, except in lands where VPN use are specifically banned.
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Encrypt.me VPN says that their one and only goal is to make security painless and elegant.
With the internet now a dangerous ground (with hackers lurking around) and also being restricted more than ever, a service that gives you online security is a must have. One that not only secures but that also makes the process painless is definitely the ultimate.
This Encrypt.me review will examine everything relating to Encrypt.me VPN to provide the information that will help you determine if the service does provide painless online security. And also if Encrypt.me is safe, legit, Or if it is a scam.
Encrypt.me VPN categorize their service plans into Subscription and Passes. The only difference between the two is that subscription plans are recurring (meaning you are automatically renewed and charged at the end of your billing period), while Passes are single one-off payments that are not automatically renewed.
Encrypt.me offers three Passes – a week’s pass, a month’s pass and a year’s pass. The week’s pass is priced at $3.99; the month’s pass is priced at $9.99; while the year’s pass is priced at $99.99.
The pricing is such that you are better off with The longer term deals. However, it comes out as expensive. What it cost you for a week’s Encrypt.me pass, will give you VPN protection for a full month with some other services.
The subscription plan itself is divided into different categories. There’s a limited subscription plan and an an unlimited subscription plan. The unlimited subscription plan has single account account, a family account and a team account.
The single account plan is billed monthly and yearly; and it is priced as the one month and one year pass which is $9.99 and $99.99 respectively. As said, it’s expensively priced. Services with single month plans that are double figures are considered expensive. Encrypt.me’s plan at $9.99 isn’t fooling anybody that it isn’t in the double figure club. The annual deal is discounted by about 17%, and breaks down to a monthly cost of $8.33, which is still more than double the best value deals of some other very good VPN services.
If you’ll have to protect more than one device at the same time, there’s the unlimited family subscription plan for you. The plan supports up to five simultaneous connections; thus, it’s a nice plan for a small family seeking to secure their multiple devices with one VPN account.
The family subscription plan is billed monthly for $12.99 and yearly for $149.99. The yearly deal breaks down to $12.50 per month, as it is discounted by only 4%. The small discount didn’t do much for making the family plan more pocket friendly in the long term.
The unlimited service plan include a team plan. It can be billed only on a monthly basis, and is available for at least two members. The pricing depends on the number of accounts that will be created, and is as follows. It cost $7.99 per member for a team of 2 to 24 members; it is $6.99 per member for a team of 25 to 99 members; it is $5.99 per member for a team of 100 to 249 members; and for a team of over 250 members, you’ll have to contact Encrypt.me for a price.
The limited subscription plan gives you only 5GB of data a month, and it will set you back by $2.99. This is the only pocket friendly offering that Encrypt.me VPN has; but the data cap means that you can only really find joy with this limited plan if you’ll be doing only light browsing.
You’ll want a VPN service that supports a wide range of payment options, so that anywhere you may be, there’ll be one that you can use to conveniently pay for your subscription.
You can pay for any of the Encrypt.me VPN service package using Visa card, Master card, American Express, Discover, Diners, and JCB credit or debit cards. You can also pay using in-app organs like i-Tunes; and that’s about it.
If alternative payment methods is a concern of yours; you’ll not find joy in Encrypt.me VPN. They do not support the popular e-wallets or even PayPal.
What is more, the payment methods available with Encrypt.me will entail submission of personal information in the billing process. Many privacy conscious users will understandably feel unease about sharing personal information (e.g. credit card details) that will be stored by third party payment processors. Usually, VPN services respond by supporting anonymous payment methods such as crypto currencies (Bitcoin and co) and even cash payments. However, Encrypt.me VPN does not support any of those anonymous payment method. It means that by paying for the service, you’ll have your information on file – information that can effectively be used to identify and trace you.
If you will not want the experience of parting with your money for a service that turns out to be a disappointment, then you should always go for services that do refunds.
Yes, many VPN services have refunds policies; and they’ll refund the payment of any users if the user request it. However, they give a refund window within which such refund request must be made.
Encrypt.me VPN refund is powered by a 30 days money back guarantee. This is impressive as it gives you a full month to use the service and still get a refund; all refund request made within 30 days of making payment are honoured.
It is not uncommon to find that included in refund policies with long refund windows are clauses that makes it impossible to use the service for the full length of the refund window and still be eligible for a refund. Interestingly, the refund policy of Encrypt.me VPN is free of such clauses.
If you want a VPN service that gives you an extended period of unlimited use while still standing to get back your money, then Encrypt.me VPN may be an ideal choice.
Free trials are very important as they allow you to test a service to know if it’s right for you before committing your resources to a paid plan. Many VPN services offer free trials and so does Encrypt.me VPN.
They offer a 14 days free trial for you to test run the service. This is very generous, as many service have free trials that last only a few hours or at most a week.
It’s impressive that Encrypt.me VPN offers a free trial at all since they offer an unrestricted 30 days money back guarantee. It’s becoming rare to find services that offer both a free trial and a money back guarantee, talk less of a long and unrestricted refund period plus a long and unrestricted free trial.
Another impressive thing about Encrypt.me VPN free trial is that you do not have to submit your banking information to activate the free trial account. In the least, this means that you’ll not be automatically upgraded to a paid plan at the end of the free trial period.
Encrypt.me VPN is the service for you, if you want a good run with a VPN service without being charged for it.
The ideal VPN should have a robust server network with a lot of server locations in a lot of countries widely spread around the world. Why, you may ask. Numerous server locations enhances anonymity, as it gives you more opportunity for spoofing your location; if a lot of countries are covered, you’ll be able to access more restricted locations; and the spread of the server network affects performance, as it determines whether servers will be closeby or far from you.
That said, Encrypt.me VPN operates servers in 47 locations in 23 countries across the world. The number of servers and countries covered are both small when you consider that the top players in the VPN industry operates hundreds and thousands of servers in 50+ countries.
In terms of geographic distribution, the server network reaches six continents. Africa is represented by South Africa; Asia is represented by Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan; Oceania is represented by Australia and New Zealand; South America is represented by Brazil; North America is represented by the US, Mexico, and Canada; and Europe is represented by Austria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
The server network manage to have a wide global distribution, to ensure that anywhere you are on the planet you’ll find a close Encrypt.me server to connect to for optimal performance.
You should want your VPN service to support a lot of devices so that you’ll be covered no matter the device you use.
Encrypt.me VPN supports all the popular operating systems and platforms – Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android. They have made the effort to develop apps for all those platforms; but the apps are still in beta phase.
Thus, you can grab the Encrypt.me VPN service and protect you desktop devices as well as your mobile device and tablets. However, there’s no support for routers. This is a big minus for the service, as routers can be used to increase both the number and the range of devices that are supported.
Typically, users have more than one device that may be in use at the same time. As a result, they’ll go for services that allow them to secure their multiple devices at the same time with one VPN account, so that their VPN expenditure will not sky rocket as they add more devices.
Encrypt.me VPN provides plans fro every need; as such, they have single accounts, family accounts that support up to five simultaneous connections, and team account that can support over 250 simultaneous connections.
The categories tells you that you’ll have to pay higher to get more connections. Thus, while the service is ideal for securing your multiple devices, you’ll find that your wallet will be lighter than it should be afterward.
Encrypt.me VPN advertises as one of the simplest service to use. There’s no doubt about that. They have beta apps which can easily be downloaded from their website (or in-app organs such as i-Tunes) and installed.
The settings menu holds tabs such as accounts, networks, transporter and update. In accounts you can change your password; Networks is where you can trust certain networks, create a list of trusted networks, and automatically enable Encrypt.me on untrusted network; transporter is where you can select a server location to connect to; and updates is a page where you can set times for the app to automatically look for updates.
Automatically enabling Encrypt.me when an untrusted network is met is a good feature for travellers who would meet and use different Wi-Fi in a day. The feature will ensure that they are protected by the Encrypt.me service anytime an unprotected Wi-Fi is encountered.
Switching servers in the transporter tab is very easy. Also, you do not have to disconnect from one server location before connecting to another; all you need do is select the new location, and you’ll be automatically connected.
That said, the app scores points for usability, as you’ll have no problem finding your way around it.
Torrenting is one of the most used ways of obtaining large in the internet. It involves connecting to a group of peers; and as a result it can be dangerous when insidious peers try to use the file sharing activity to attack your device. Thus, people seek VPN to help them download torrents safely and anonymously.
However, not every VPN allow torrenting on their network, because most often than not people use the VPN cover to download materials that are protected by copyrights. With VPN support for torrenting waning, the few services that fully support the activity are highly regarded by many users.
The position of Encrypt.me VPN on torrenting can best be described as “on the fence”.
On one hand, Encrypt.me VPN supports torrenting. On the other hand, their policies are against the activity. For example, new users have Bittorrent and similar peer-to-peer file sharing protocols blocked by default.
They state clearly that “Encrypt.me is not, and has never been, an appropriate service to use for downloading copyrighted material“. What should we make of that? Yes you can download torrents with Encrypt.me VPN, but be careful not to download torrents that will pitch you at the other side of the law.
Many streaming services make their contents location specific. VPN services give access to these streaming media content by masking your location and virtually placing you in the location with the targeted content.
However, many streaming services got wiser, and simply masking your location using a VPN can no longer give access to their restricted contents. Netflix is chief amongst such streaming services; thus, any VPN that still gives Netflix is regarded in many circles as an excellent service for streaming.
Encrypt.me VPN says in an FAQ article that they may be unable to give you Netflix because the service is only about privacy on untrusted networks. However, the service worked very fine in our test in unblocking Netflix.
They open up the vast titles of Netflix for your streaming pleasure; and this is in addition to unblocking other streaming giants such as Hulu, HBO, and BBC iPlayer. Thus, Encrypt.me VPN comes out as an excellent service for streaming.
Encrypt.me VPN supports a range of VPN protocols which includes OpenVPN, IPSec, and strongswan.
They use the OpenVPN for their MacOS and Android. For iOS, they use IPSec; and for Windows they use strongswan which is IPSec based.
These are strong VPN protocols with secure unhackable encryption that ensure that your data in the systems of Encrypt.me VPN cannot be intercepted and deciphered by third parties.
VPN offer protection by encrypting data and masking real IP; but what happens when the VPN suddenly loses connection when you are online? Your data (now unencrypted) and real location will be exposed.
Therefore, it’s a no brainer that a VPN should have a feature that prevents this from happening. That is what the kill switch does. It cuts off internet connection when the VPN suddenly loses connection, ensuring that you do not continue online without the VPN protection and risk exposing your data and real IP.
This is where you’ll agree that all VPN services serious about giving users optimal protection should feature a kill switch; but not all does.
Thankfully, Encrypt.me VPN comes with a kill switch. Thus, with this service, you’re protected even in the VPN downtime, and you don’t have to worry about the privacy concerns of a VPN connection drop.
A VPN serious about privacy should plug all security leaks. This is because security leaks can undermine the VPN’s operation at keeping you protected and anonymous.
For example, a VPN gives protection by encrypting data packet and funneling it through the secure VPN tunnel; but when the data leaks out of the tunnel, it is unprotected and can be captured, deciphered and used by third parties. This is the nature of DNS leaks – where DNS requests leave the VPN tunnel to the DNS servers of the default connection, thereby exposing your real IP and browsing history to any looking third party. Other security leaks include WebRTC leak and IPv6 leaks; and they all result in exposing identifying information, and compromising privacy.
Thankfully, Encrypt.me VPN plugged all this security leaks. This is one of the simplest test to do; and you can run them yourself (using sites like https://ipleak.net, https://www.perfect-privacy.com/check-ip, https://www.perfect-privacy.com/dns-leaktest, http://dnsleak.com, and https://browserleaks.com/webrtc). In our test, there were no DNS leaks, IP leaks, or WebRTC leaks.
Many VPN users go for VPN services that do not keep users’ logs. If the reasons for record keeping are to be summed up in a few words, it will be “to help keep track of things”.
The reason for using a VPN is the very opposite of that – you don’t want to be tracked. Therefore, you don’t want your VPN service to keep logs.
As a result, many VPN services advertise to be no-log services to attract customers. However, it has been found that some of the no-logs singing VPNs keep some form of logs. Encrypt.me VPN does not fall into this group of VPN that lie about their logging, because they are upfront that they keep minimal logs.
If you will award points for honesty and transparency, Encrypt.me VPN is surely deserving of them. The only other good thing is that they do not keep data of users’ activity. Thus, the sites you visited, the contents you downloaded or uploaded, and the communication you sent or received, all remain private.
The data that they log when you make use of the Encrypt.me VPN service include: the number of bytes sent and received, the length of time connected, the IP address connected from and the (virtual) IP they assign, and the source port of the outgoing connection with start and end times.
Can the information kept be used to successfully track you? Yes, to your very door. In case you were wondering why Encrypt.me would log data that can potentially give away a user, they answer that it is because they are not one of those services that’s trying to help their users hide illicit activity, so they keep enough information to resolve reports of abuse.
On the plus side, the information is kept for at most sixteen (16) days, after which it is permanently deleted from their systems. While it’s good that the data is deleted at some point, the over two weeks window before it is deleted is more than enough time for anyone who’ll come knocking with valid warrants for such data.
Lastly, Encrypt.me pledge that they will neither share your personally identifiable information nor sell your anonymous session data to any third party, except it is to respond to a legal request. You have to admire their crime fighting ginger; as that’s prioritized over optimal privacy that zero log keeping provides.
That said, this VPN is definitely not for you, if you’ll want your VPN service to make you completely untraceable.
Encrypt.me VPN is owned and operated by StackPath LLC, a legal entity which is headquartered in Dallas, USA. On the one hand, it means that Encrypt.me VPN is 100% legal; on the other hand, it means that Encrypt.me VPN might not be the ideal service for privacy.
Encrypt.me says “We are subject to federal, state, and local laws and we will absolutely uphold them“. The problem is that some of those laws are anti privacy laws; some makes data retention compulsory, while some even permit ISPs to sell users’ data to third parties.
Also, the US is home to the FBI and NSA, which are intelligence agencies that are not shy about knocking doors for users’ data. The over reaching nature of the US combines with the anti privacy laws to make it very likely that the government will get their hand on users’ data. Because Encrypt.me keeps what data that can positively identify a user; when the government comes looking for you, they’ll definitely get you.
It does not stop there. The US is part of an intelligence sharing network – the expanded Eyes alliance. This is an agreement between 14 countries to work together in intelligence; by the agreement, any data collected in any member country is shared with all other countries in the alliance. With this, when the US gets your data from Encrypt.me which is very likely, it will be shared with up to fourteen countries across the world. I’ll bet that having your data go that far is not your idea of “privacy” when subscribing for a VPN service.
When you decide to use a VPN, you should be ready to surrender some of your network speed, as the operation of a VPN takes its toll on network speed.
However, if you want an exciting browsing experience, you won’t want a slow service that reduce network speed to a screeching halt. Therefore, it’s important to consider the speed of a VPN (that is, how much the VPN reduces network speed).
In testing the speed of Encrypt.me VPN, we connected to a few server locations, noted download and upload speed, and averaged them; then we compared the speed result to the upload an download speed taken when the VPN is not connected.
On the average, Encrypt.me reduce download speed and upload speed by 43% and 49% respectively. To put this in perspective, services that reduce speed by 50% are considered fast, and there are many such services. This will mean that Encrypt.me is fast. Yes, fast but not great. They will not be on the podium for any awards based on their speed; but the speed allows you to do virtually anything online seamlessly.
You cannot do without having to contact customer support when using a VPN service. There are many questions that users would have when using a VPN service. Also, users would run into issues, and will need assistance from a support rep.
For example, with Encrypt.me VPN, their somewhat complicated packages and pricing can have you reaching out for clarification. Therefore, its important to consider the channels that a service provides for getting help, as well as the effectiveness of the channels.
Encrypt.me VPN provides self help resources. This DIY support center is divided into five categories to aid navigation. This includes: general question, app specific support, billing issues, advanced VPN users, and technology. You’ll find answers to both basic questions and more technical troubleshooting issues.
If the self help resources do not help, you’ll need to directly contact a support rep of the company. For this the company provides only an email service. If you’ve read other VPN reviews, you’ll have determined that providing only an email service for contact support is a con. It’s good to have a variety of means for contacting a service; and there are many VPN services that gives this variety by providing support via email, online support ticket, telephone, live chat, and even Skype. If alternative direct contact support channels is big on your agenda, you will not find joy with Encrypt.me VPN.
However, you’ll agree that it’s not enough to support a long list of methods if none of them works.Thus, it might be okay if a VPN supports only a few channels, even one, if the supported channel(s) is super effective.
The efficiency of the support service, from the users’ position, is how long it takes for their submissions to be responded to, and how helpful the responses are in addressing their questions/ issues.
Encrypt.me scored much on the former but not so much on the latter. Their responses to any email submission take only a few hours; which is very impressive as some other VPN services can keep you waiting for very long. However, their support reps have a habit of sending you a link; directing you to where you’ll find the answer to your question, instead of answering the question.
This can be frustrating when you’ve previously looked up the support article (they’re referring you to) but still saw the need to contact them. Where you need specific answers, a link to a generic page might not cut it for you.
That said, the customer support service of Encrypt.me VPN is an area that could use some improvement. Adding channels for instant feedback such as a live chat will be like adding flesh to what is bare bones at the moment; and taking time and effort to actually “answer” support submissions, will improve the functionality of the support service.
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They started as Cloak VPN in 2011, but since being acquired by StackPath LLC in 2016 one thing that has changed is being branded Encrypt.me VPN.
They have expanded their server network to a global scale, and they have accounts fit for individual, family and business use.
They offer security with secure VPN protocols and strong encryption, have a kill switch and plug security leaks. However, the service drops the ball in too many areas; speed can be improved, the server network can be increased, their logging policy is not the best for optimal privacy, and customer support is poor.
Do you have an experience with Encrypt.me? Good or bad, kindly use the comment section below to give us your brief Encrypt.me review.
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