Windscribe VPN Review & Test (2019) - Too "Cheap" To Be Secure?

Windscribe offers good value for your money. This Canada-based VPN allows practically everything you want in a VPN: torrenting, Netflix, and anonymous web surfacing.

Compared to other VPNs that have servers in more countries, Windscribe doesn’t have the largest network, but it does the job, providing anonymity and bypassing geo-restrictions in most countries, including the great firewall of China.

And with affordable packages and a free version, it won’t break the bank.

The Basics

Windscribe offers apps for all major platforms, along with router installation guides. They also sell pre-configured routers if you don’t want to go through the entire installation process.

For both the free and paid versions, you can connect multiple devices simultaneously, making Windscribe a great value.

Windscribe uses IKEv2 as the default protocol, because it offers higher speeds, but when that fails, it switches to OpenVPN automatically. Windscribe also offers IPv6 connectivity and AES-256-bit cipher firewalled at the client side; plus all DNS requests go through the tunnel, giving you complete leak protection.

Apart from the VPN features, Windscribe also has several add-ons.

For example, they offer an ad-blocker, which removes trackers from social media sites; Cruise Control, which automatically picks the best location for you; and Split Personality tool, which changes the user agent of your browser to bypass browser fingerprinting.

In addition, the Windscribe desktop app also lets you create a secure hotspot and proxy gateway. These are features that are not necessary for the majority of VPN users, but they're still fun to have.

You can watch the video below for a quick review. Or jump to 01:50 to see a quick tutorial of Windscribe.

Is Windscribe Safe?

Windscribe is very transparent about what information they store about the customers. While they promise not to store any logs that can identify users (no identifying logs), they do store when you last used VPN as well as the total amount of bandwidth used in a 30 day period to enforce free tier limitations and prevent abuse. They also use the strongest encryption available, AES-256 cipher with SHA512 auth and a 4096-bit RSA key to ensure full-on security.

However, due to the fact that they are located in Canada, which is one of the 5-Eyes Countries, they may be subject to stricter governmental and data retention laws. With this in mind we can conclude that Windscribe is a safe VPN service to use but only until a point. If you are deeply concerned about your online privacy and would like to opt for a zero-logs policy, then Windscribe is a little lacking in this field.

It used to be that the only way to contact Windscribe was through their ticketing system (which took anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days to get a reply). Now, however, you can talk to their chatbot, Garry, that can answer most support requests. If the user has a more technical question, the query is transferred to a live chat team.  

The live chat team isn't available 24/7, but there is certainly an improvement from what Windscribe's customer support used to be.

Windscribe is a solid free VPN

One of the biggest perks about Windscribe is that it has a free version.

Although you can't get all of the features on the free version (US Netflix is only available to those with the Pro version), there is still a lot you can do. 

The free package allows 10GB of data per month and offers unlimited connections. While 10GB  is the equivalent of streaming a movie or two, you can tweet about Windscribe or use their cryptominer to earn more free data.

However, servers are limited to only 11 countries. With too many users on the same servers, your connection could potentially be slowed, so if you want high speeds, try the paid version.

The Pro version will get you all of the extras

Windscribe offers three types of paid packages – monthly, yearly, and biennial (two years). 

With the Pro version, you get over 55 countries to connect to. You also get access to US Netflix (on their Windflix server), and speeds are generally faster.

When you buy the service, you only have three days to request a refund (which you'll get within 30-days of the request). It's not a lot of time, but considering you can test it out on the free version, this is somewhat reasonable. 

You can also try the Pro version by asking Garry the Chatbot to upgrade you for 24 hours.

In a nutshell, Windscribe offers users most of what they want in a VPN – tight security and, with the paid version, lightning speeds. You’ll be able to stream Netflix and surf the web anonymously on as many devices as you like.

For a paid VPN, Windscribe offers a lot, but it still doesn't offer the type of customer support and number of servers as ExpressVPN or NordVPN.

As for a free VPN, you're getting a lot with Windscribe, especially since it comes with 10GB of data per month. But, like with any free VPN, there are pluses and minuses to each one. You can compare it to other free alternatives and see what others have to offer.