ZorroVPN Review 2021 - Keep This in Mind Before Buying

Before plunging any deeper, I’d like to share with you an important update regarding ZorroVPN. For those planning to purchase or with an active subscription, bear in mind that ZorroVPN is closing down soon. As published under the News section on their website, they are shutting the entire project down on September 1st:

ZorroVPN is closing soon

But let’s forget that for a moment and continue with the review of this rather peculiar VPN provider — you’ll see why.

Want to stay completely off the grid?

In case you’re on the lookout for a military-grade AES-256 bit encryption VPN that you can purchase using some fairly rare online currencies (more on that in the pricing section), providing support for all major operating systems including some very obscure routers – then ZorroVPN is a great choice.

Simply put, ZorroVPN is for advanced VPN users whose main focus is staying as anonymous as possible while surfing. Even though there is no live web chat support, they do offer remote assistance using TeamViewer in case you need help with the setup process.

Speaking of setup help, you might actually need it because ZorroVPN doesn’t have a native app. Instead, you’ll need to install an OpenVPN client for the purpose of activating ZorroVPN.

However, even though they don’t have a live chat feature, their FAQ page and ‘VPN Management Page’ contain detailed info and instructions for the step-by-step installation process.

As far as Netflix, BBC iPlayer, and Prime Video go – don’t bother. Sorry to break it to you, but you can easily forget about unblocking these streaming sites with ZorroVPN. I tested all of them (screenshots below) and was only able to unlock Spotify, Yandex Music, ivi.ru, and Pandora. Torrenting is allowed and possible, although considerably slower than with other top-tier VPNs.

All in all, ZorroVPN offers an advanced expert-level VPN service with some hefty anonymity features like VPN+Tor, VPN chains (Double, Triple, and Quadro chain), as well as port forwarding.

ZorroVPN is under Belize jurisdiction (Network Octet Ltd. #7, New Road, Belize City Belize), and once per month, they update their ‘Warrant Canary’ in the form of a “cryptographically signed message.”

As far as their customer support is concerned, they were quite responsive over the week, not so much on the weekends though. Also, ZorroVPN doesn’t offer a free trial, only a 7-day money-back guarantee.

Short on Time? Here Are My Key Findings

ZorroVPN Features — Updated in September 2021

Streaming — Not for Unblocking Streaming Sites

If you are looking for a VPN for streaming purposes solely, you could probably do much better. Netflix, Hulu, BBC iPlayer, and Amazon Prime Video are all notoriously good at banning VPNs and proxies, but still, some top-tier VPNs are powerful enough to bypass the Netflix and Hulu block. Not Zorro, though.

Unblocked: Pandora, Yandex Music, ivi.ru, and Spotify

I did, however, manage to successfully unblock Pandora, ivi.ru, Yandex Music as well as Spotify using Chicago-based and New York-based servers.

If you are looking for a VPN for streaming purposes solely, you could probably do much better. Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Videos are all notoriously good at banning VPNs and proxies.

Blocked By: Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video

Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Videos were all blocked from all US servers. This is what happened when I tried accessing Hulu from any of the US-based servers:

I wasn’t able to unblock Hulu with ZorroVPN

Simply put, none of the servers in the US allowed me to stream Hulu, Netflix, or Amazon Prime Video. This is not a surprise as all three platforms have very strong VPN blocks, and most VPNs don’t work here and result in this anonymous proxy tool error message. Only a few VPNs are able to bypass the Hulu VPN ban, such as ExpressVPN.

Speeds — Not Great, Not Terrible

As far as speed goes, it is not great, not terrible for a VPN this size and popularity, although one might expect more in comparison to other VPNs with a similar price tag.

On their FAQ page, ZorroVPN says the speed is typically decreased by 10-20%; let’s see if this holds up. I tested the speed using speedtest.net, as suggested on their website as well.

For the purpose of this review, I tested all servers, the baseline connection from my location in Vienna being 152 Mbps.

As far as other EU servers are concerned, I tested the one in Germany (great speed), the UK (crashed), Sweden (satisfactory, but could be better), Spain (not impressed). Honestly, I expected better speed performance, at least from the servers based in Europe.

Most of ZorroVPN’s servers are fast enough to use

The London server wasn’t working for me at all. My connection crashed whenever I tried connecting to the London server; as soon as I disconnected, it was re-established.

On average, speed decreased much more than 10-20%, and even some servers in Europe were practically 80% slower than my baseline. The London-based server was not working at all for me at the time. I tried multiple times, and it crashed every time, even though this was not indicated on the real-time server network status.

Are ZorroVPN’s Speeds Fast Enough For Gaming? Yes

I successfully played an entire match of Overwatch (and even won both) while connected to two different servers using ZorroVPN and Viscosity on my Windows computer.

Manchester, UK server, latency 95 MS (acceptable for Overwatch, circa 50-70 MS is my usual latency)

New York, US server, latency was consistent circa 230 MS, which is significantly slower but still playable and not bad considering the server distance. The most important thing is I didn’t lag, and even though the ping was about four times the usual, the connection was stable throughout the game.

We even managed to defend the point even though the latency was around 250 MS (quick Play though).

Server Network — Impressed by the Number of Servers and the Amount of Info Available Real-Time On Each

ZorroVPN boasts 80 servers located in what seems like 40 countries (and counting) — as indicated on their orders page:

The list is as follows:

ZorroVPN also features the real-time network status of all of its servers, located in 40 countries listed on their orders page (‘and other’).

I also wanted to check if they used fictitious locations and tested some of their servers using ping.pe, and every single location proved to be legit. For example, while connected to the German server in Frankfurt, my location was displayed as the following:

I detected no fake locations

Security — Anonymity Explained

ZorroVPN.com offers serious security and anonymity features, living up to their motto, “Anonymity on the internet.” With their Quadro Chain VPN, this provider truly excels in this field, making sure you truly remain undetectable.

What sets ZorroVPN apart from its competition is its military-grade encryption (AES-256 strong encryption) as well as DoubleVPN, TripleVPN, and QuadroVPN.

This essentially means they use a MultiHop VPN chain to encrypt your connection across two or more servers (in Zorro’s case, up to 4 in a chain – hence Quadro) before allowing your connection to the regular internet.

Other hefty features include transparent access to .onion & .bit resources, VPN + Tor, and 4096-bit RSA authentication keys.

ZorroVPN also allows for port forwarding, owning DNS, and full access to the Internet, P2P, VoIP, and Torrent.

Needless to say, using a VPN with Tor gives you an added layer of security by encrypting your entire traffic and hiding it even from your ISP.

There are no speed or traffic limits. As far as DNS leak goes, on their VPN Management Page, they go into details on how to prevent DNS leaks for each OS separately.

Viscosity (which I used) users can simply enjoy the built-in solution:

By opting for the “Full DNS” mode on the Networking tab, you can prevent the DNS leak

Privacy — Using ZorroVPN You’re as Private As One Can Be

ZorroVPN does not keep logs, as briefly indicated on the website, although they did not go into details regarding this. Since these claims haven’t been exactly verified – we simply have to trust them on this one.

Their entire ‘Privacy Policy’ is actually contained in their Terms of Use page which is rather concise, namely:

TERMS OF USE

SERVICE’S RESPONSIBILITY

ZorroVPN is a service provided professional solutions in the area of anonymity, privacy and security.

We make all efforts to provide a best uptime for VPN servers.
We guarantee a privacy of user’s information and it’s protection from third parties.
We guarantee no logging any user’s activity.
We guarantee to provide a courteous, helpful and professional support.

As of 2017, the service is operated under the jurisdiction of Belize. As a rule, companies registered in Belize enjoy a favorable policy both in terms of taxation and information protection, which allows for higher levels of privacy and customer confidentiality.

Once per month, ZorroVPN publishes a ‘Warrant Canary’ in the form of a “cryptographically signed message.”

Quoting the current canary:
“Once per month ZorroVPN will publish a ‘warrant canary’ in the form of a cryptographically signed message containing the following:
– A declaration that, up to that point, ZorroVPN has no direct or indirect knowledge of any backdoors, or potential backdoors.
– Headlines from a major news source demonstrating that the update could not have been created before that date.

Torrenting — Allowed, Slow but Steady

Even though it was slow, torrenting was possible even from the US servers.

Torrenting and P2P sharing are allowed. Using BitTorrent, I managed to download some files while connected to the NY server. Download was rather slow, but considering the location of the server, I wasn’t that surprised.

Does ZorroVPN Work in China? No, Most Likely Not

Since there was no way for me to check whether ZorroVPN would work in China or not, I reached out to their customer support (and got a reply in just 2 hours), telling me that ZorroVPN most likely “would not work in China.”

ZorroVPN does not work in China

Simultaneous Device Connections — Limited to 5 Devices at a Time

Just like ExpressVPN, with a single subscription, ZorroVPN allows you to connect up to 5 devices at once regardless of platform (including virtual machines). Honestly, it worked quite well for me. I tested it using my Macbook Pro, Windows laptop, and my iPad. The connections were a little bit slower though, and I suspect if I had a slower baseline connection it might have perhaps even crashed.

Device Compatibility — All Major Operating Systems (and Much More)

It supports Windows, iOS, Linux, Android, and even FOSS router firmware, which is quite rare.

ZorroVPN does not have a native app, which means you need to download and install one of the open VPN clients (third-party apps) to be able to use it.

As far as Windows goes, you can use either OpenVPN GUI (an open-source client that is built-in to the official distribution of OpenVPN for Windows) or Viscosity.

In their detailed instructions, they also explain how to enable VPN-only access to the Net with Windows Firewall and how to activate the kill switch to prevent a DNS leak, both for OpenVPN GUI and Viscosity. For Viscosity, this was wonderfully straightforward.

I set ZorroVPN up using Viscosity

You simply need to mark ‘Full DNS mode’ on the Networking card.

As for OS X, you can choose between Tunnelblick, Viscosity as well as built-in firewall managers.

Similarly, as with Windows, network connections in OS X will be safe only when the VPN is up (kill switch). This can also be done with the PF firewall (available since OS X Lion), and once again, they also give you detailed instructions on how to prevent a DNS leak.

Regarding the GNU/Linux system, you can connect to ZorroVPN using Network Manager, the command line, and enabling VPN-only access to the net with NetBlocker.

Android users, on the other hand, can use OpenVPN for Android using OpenVPN Connect.

As for iOS users on iPad or iPhone, you can also use OpenVPN Connect, which worked quite well for me.

They also provide you with some extra information on how to prevent real IP address leakage over WebRTC.

ZorroVPN also provides a detailed installation process on how to connect using routers with Tomato firmware, routers with DD-WRT firmware, and even routers with AsusWRT firmware, which is quite rare.

I used mostly Viscosity (and highly recommend it) as it proved to be super simple to install and use, both for my Macbook Pro and Windows laptop.