ZoogVPN Review

The VPN market is huge today. ZoogVPN is a little not known provider you’ve probably never heard of. Still, to our great surprise, it offers a set of features comparable to that of the market leaders. It is fast, secure, offers a clear privacy policy. To top it off, the pricing is really attractive as well.

ZoogVPN claims to be a blazing fast and absolutely secure service. Also, they promise to unlock Netflix and other streaming platforms. But doesn’t every VPN out there make the same promises?

In our ZoogVPN review, we are going to check all these claims. Keep reading to find out how good this VPN provider is at protecting your data, and whether it will let you enjoy binge-watching on Netflix and other streaming platforms.

ZoogVPN was launched in 2013 in the United Kingdom. First, it was known as Smart DNS service to provide access to streaming platforms. Then it developed into a full-fledged VPN provider.

Currently, the company is under the jurisdiction of Greece, which is clearly stated on their official website. They have a big international team and operate from different countries, including Bulgaria, Greece, Finland, Russia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

What does it mean for an average user? Greece is a country that does not belong to 14-eyes Alliance. ZoogVPN cares about your privacy and is not obliged to share your data on government request. So, from the jurisdiction standpoint, ZoogVPN is a solid pick for privacy lovers.

The server infrastructure is the weakest point of this provider. At the moment it operates only 40 servers in 25 countries. The USA has the biggest network, while most countries have 1 to 4 servers. It is not at all impressive – many competitors provide hundreds of locations with thousands of servers. At the same time, ZoogVPN servers are quite fast and well optimized for browsing and streaming.

With the free plan, you can only use one device per account with 2 GB of bandwidth per month. With a paid subscription, you get the standard five simultaneous connections. It is absolutely enough to connect everything you need, including a computer, smartphone, tablet, and smart TV. Having configured the router, you will be able to share the VPN connection with all your home devices.

ZoogVPN offers standalone applications for Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android. Other platforms, such as Linux, Blackberry, Fire TV, Android TV, and even routers, can be configured manually. You can find clear instructions on how to do that on the ZoogVPN official website.

What Do You Get with ZoogVPN?

Privacy and Security

Like many other VPNs, ZoogVPN supports all modern encryption and security protocols. The list includes OpenVPN, L2TP/IPsec, PPTP, and IKEv2. To encrypt the traffic, they use AES-256-CBC cipher, SHA256 authentication, and an RSA-2048 handshake. ZoogVPN is one of the few services that offer Socks5 proxy and own DNS servers.

At the same time, while the range of supported protocols and encryption offered by ZoogVPN meet the industry standards, when it comes to advanced features, the VPN lags behind the top competitors. You won’t find double encryption or split tunneling features in ZoogVPN settings. Still, you can definitely do without these features.

Meanwhile, a kill switch is an absolute must. A kill switch drops your Internet connection when your VPN connection fails. This way, you may rest assured that your data is reliably protected with no leaks.

Until recently, the feature was only available on Mac, but now the Windows app also has a kill switch. At the same time, mobile apps still lack this essential tool that, we hope, will be introduced in the nearest future.

Certainly, ZoogVPN will work great even without some advanced features. However, some extras could make it even more reliable and convenient.

ZoogVPN Logging Policy

Now that we know that ZoogVPN is safe with regard to the technologies it applies let’ move on to its logging policy.

Ideally, a VPN should not store any personal data and share it with third parties, even on government request. So, is it the case with ZoogVPN?

Being under Greek jurisdiction, the company boasts a zero-logging policy. The only information they collect is your email address. You’ll have to provide one to have your account activated, and ZoogVPN may further send you some newsletters. The company promises not to share or sell your email to any third parties.

Moreover, ZoogVPN does not store any activity logs, including the Internet sessions, and visited websites. They also do not store any technical information like your real IP address, location, browser, operating system, etc.

So, even if someone requests them to share any of your data, they will have nothing to give away.

Performance

Even if you need a VPN primarily to protect your privacy, you definitely don’t want it to cut your connection speed by 90% making even Internet browsing intolerable. Users who look for a VPN for torrenting and streaming would need it to offer decent speeds not to deal with downloads that last forever and video that keeps buffering.

ZoogVPN has a very modest server infrastructure which makes you think servers should be overloaded.

In fact, it is not so. On the Servers page on the official website, you can how loaded every server is. While some US and UK servers are naturally busier than others, you should easily find a nearby location that will offer decent performance provided that you are from Europe or the US/Canada.

ZoogVPN Speed

So, what to expect from ZoogVPN in terms of speed? We’ve conducted a series of speed tests, and here are the results.

Note that our Internet channel is 50 Mbps, and we are physically located in Europe.

• US, Miami 05/14.10 Mbps
• Switzerland, Zurich 98/37.54 Mbps
• UK, London 40/16.78 Mbps
• Australia, Sydney             33/8.42 Mbps
• Singapore             81/4.74 Mbps

The connection speeds slightly dropped. But in most cases, they are still usable. Frankly speaking, we expected that Australia and Singapore results would be worse.

You may use the ZoogVPN app in UAE, Qatar, Turkey, Iran, China and other heavily censored countries with Manual API resolution bypassing DNS blocks.

Overall, you should have no problems both with browsing and streaming if you are located in Europe/North America.

No Leaks Detected/Leaks Detected

While ZoogVPN lacks some advanced features, it still offers protection against WebRTC, IP, and DNS leaks. In case of leaks, you turn potentially vulnerable to online attacks and other threats. Therefore, ZoogVPN built-in protection is a great advantage. The only question is: do they work the way they are supposed to?

We used whoer.net and ipleak.net websites to conduct a few tests. We checked 10 servers around, and none of them leaked neither WebRTC, not IP and DNS. The connection is really reliably protected.

Torrenting and Streaming

With speeds being ok, the next question is whether ZoogVPN is suitable for torrenting. The VPN allows P2P filesharing, but not on every server. Still, with 23 torrenting-friendly server locations out of 40, you should have no problems finding the one that works for you.

We used several locations to download Linux Mint distributive. The connection speed was stable, and the download was complete in several minutes.

Many people use a VPN to access the geo-restricted content on popular streaming platforms. On its official website, ZoogVPN promises to get you into Netflix, BBC iPlayer, and HBO and many of their servers are specifically designed for streaming purposes.

We checked several locations and tried to access Netflix, BBC iPlayer, and HBO. How did it work? There were no problems with HBO. As for BBC and Netflix, we had to connect several times to make it work.

With Netflix working hard to restrict access for users who use VPNs to circumvent its blocks, less and fewer VPN services manage to outsmart the streaming giant’s algorithms. Currently, ZoogVPN is among the few VPN providers that still unblock Netflix, but it may change at any moment.

Do We Recommend ZoogVPN?

We were very much pleased to find out that the little known ZoogVPN offers decent protection without compromising on speed. It passed all our security and performance tests with flying colors. While some top VPN providers won’t let you access Netflix anymore, ZoogVPN still manages to bypass all the blocks.

Definitely, it is not perfect. It lacks some advanced features, its servers network is really small, and it is not the fastest service in the market. ZoogVPN offers no free trial, and you will find it hard to get a refund. Still, as the VPN gives you what it promises at truly unbeatable pricing, we really doubt you would ever want to cancel the subscription.

How Much Does ZoogVPN Cost?

First of all, we should mention their free plan. It gives 2 GB of traffic per month and allows to connect to 3 locations in the UK, the US and the Netherlands. Naturally, you can only use one device per account. Besides, you’ll get limited support of protocols, and only 128-bit encryption.

Torrenting is allowed, but only the Amsterdam server supports P2P connections. Limited content access means you won’t be able to unblock popular streaming platforms. Still, with only 2 GB of traffic, you won’t be able to use the VPN for torrenting and streaming anyway. ZoogVPN’s free plan may work for you if you rarely need a VPN and don’t mind sacrificing some advanced options.

As for the paid subscriptions, there are 3 plans available: 1 month, 6 months, and 2 years.

The 1-month plan will cost you $8.89 per month (with 33% off), 12 months plan is $2.77 per month (79% off), and with the 2 years plan the price will drop to the staggering $1.95 per month. The price definitely cannot get better than that, especially with the decent protection and performance ZoogVPN offers.

With any of the paid subscriptions, you get access to all the pull of features, unlimited bandwidth, and priority support. As we’ve already mentioned in our ZoogVPN review, you can connect up to 5 devices under one subscription.

To get a subscription, you can use a variety of payment methods: in addition to Visa and Mastercard, they accept JCB and American Express. You can also pay via PayPal, UnionPay, Paymentwall, and even pay with Bitcoins.

Both free and paid users can be sure that their activities are not collected and stored. Besides, if you get a free plan, you won’t have to tolerate annoying ads.

At the same time, ZoogVPN offers no free trial, which means you won’t be able to test the service at its full capacity. If for any reason you do not like the service, you have 7 days to request a refund. While the industry standard is 30 days, one-week money-back guarantee is rather greedy. In addition, there are a number of limitations:

• You should use less than 2GB of traffic.
• You should give the technical support a chance to fix the issue – there must be a real technical problem to get your money back.
• You have not requested a refund before.
• You got a subscription directly from the ZoogVPN website.

To tell the truth, it seems a bit complicated. Most ZoogVPN competitors give users the right to request a refund with no questions asked. With ZoogVPN, you should have a real technical problem. At the same time, after testing the free version, you can always get a one-month plan at the price of a snack.