Romanian based in Bucharest, VPN.ac is a relatively new kid on the block as a VPN service provider since it was founded in 2012. Its credentials are boosted though as it has been in the information security industry for over 15 years. Can it stand up to a premium VPN like NordVPN that’s four years its senior? Not yet, the fledgling service doesn’t have the ability to unblock Netflix and it’s missing many of the premium vendors advanced features.
VPN.ac pride themselves on experience in security features with their roots in the company, Netsec Interactive Solution. They have gone the extra mile for ISO27001 and ISO9001 certifications. These security certificates provide VPN.ac with an additional edge over the competition by ensuring that they are aware of the vulnerable areas in VPN infrastructure.
Though a company registered in the EU, Data Retention was declared illegal by the Romanian Constitutional Court in July 2014. Not that it ever applied to VPN services only to telecom and ISP operators. However, VPN.ac will log your real IP address, your connection start/end time, and the data over the total traffic transferred during the session (e.g. 100MB, 2GB, etc.). The good news is that this information is kept only for one day to enable them to improve on performance. They don’t actually store any of the sensitive data you may transfer on your connection.
As for encryption; it’s pretty top notch: up to AES 256-bit encryption with Elliptic Curve and 4096-bit RSA authentication, SHA512 HMAC, as well as PFS. Reclaim your privacy and browsing anonymity and protect your data. It’s compatible with all operating systems and devices according to the site. It also provides step-by-step guides including screen shots and videos to make connecting a doddle.
VPN.ac allows torrenting without limitations, but it can’t unblock Netflix and other popular streaming sites. If you need the power to unblock Netflix, we recommend using a premium vendor instead.
They provide 70 premium Gigabit servers in 22 countries around the world. For just $2 you can try out their services for a week and should you choose one of their packages; “7 days Money Back Guarantee. Full refund, risk-free!” Following that; prices are per month, 3 months, 6 months or for 1 year. Very reasonable.
They have a variety of payment methods including PayPal, CashU, Perfect Money, Bitcoin and also Credit Cards, Union Pay, Alipay, over 100 types of US Gift Cards, WebMoney, ideal, Giropay and mobile/SMS depending on your location in the world.
VPN.ac also pleasantly surprised us with its great customer support. There are four ways to reach the support; live chat, email, Skype, and ticket submission. They state as well that when you talk to their customer service, they promise you will be speaking to “those who implemented the entire VPN infrastructure, and who have the required technical skills to assist you in any problem.” No copied or pasted responses here.
All in all, VPN.ac comes out the end as a very attractive provider. Military-grade encryption, good speeds, and an excellent support system dedicated to keeping users happy, all at great prices. Attractive to say the least.
VPN.ac has a long way to go before it’s in the same class as a premium vendor like NordVPN. We recommend NordVPN to our readers because it offers total anonymity, and the advanced features to bypass geo-blocking for streaming services like Netflix and Hulu.
| Features | Details |
|---|---|
| Number of countries with servers | 21 |
| Number of servers | 40 |
| Number of IP addresses | 40 |
| Does VPN keep logs? | Yes |
| Does VPN include a kill switch? | Yes |
| Number of devices per license | 12 |
I signed up for VPN.ac back in 2016 and I have been pretty happy with them. They are very security conscious, customer service is great, and they have continued to renew my service at the promo I signed up with so many years ago which is like an $18 annual savings. Their VPN client software is pretty good and I like that they have iOS and Linux support and they even make a client for Fire TV that works perfectly on my Shield. The desktop kill switch removes the gateway so there’s zero chance of anything leaking through which gives me peace of mind when I’m torrenting and the dedicated servers for torrenting are still plenty fast. I have a gigabit connection and I regularly see 200-300Mbps downloads on my phone and my desktop can spike to 450-500 at times. I had my first ever server issue last night where my connection dropped out and the server wouldn’t reconnect. I switched to another server and haven’t had a problem since. Considering how frequently Comcast has service outages, it’s impressive that I haven’t had reliability issues with this VPN service at all. I leave it connected 24/7 on my Shield for streaming purposes since the app has the option to pick which apps go over the VPN which lets me send Kodi over the VPN and still have access to Netflix and everything else directly. The Wireguard servers are a welcome addition. I emailed them about adding Wireguard support a few years back and they were concerned about the inability to integrate their own security features but they have a Wireguard beta now on a number of their servers and it just requires making a key on their website. I test for DNS leaks occasionally and have yet to have a leak there either. They are a small provider but that works in favor of those of us who use them. I have thought of trying other providers after seeing people post faster speed tests and also so I can get port forwarding as an option (they told me they don’t do this because it weakens anonymity and introduces more security risk to their servers) so I can use SoulSeek and other direct connect services but even if I pick up service on an as-needed basis for certain activities, I’ll continue to keep VPN.ac as my primary. It just works very well. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.