DotVPN Review 2024: Before You Buy, Is It Worth It?

Decent Enough to Handle Most Tasks

I was impressed with the speeds on DotVPN’s premium servers. As with most VPNs, you’ll want to connect to a local server to enjoy the most favorable speeds. I found the connection speeds to be decent enough to let me stream, facetime, and do most tasks comfortably.

Speed Test Results

Before turning on DotVPN, the benchmark test showed 35.17 Mbps download speed, 21.0 Mbps upload speed, and 31ms ping time. I was able to achieve some impressive results after enabling DotVPN.

In the absence of quick-connect functionality, I had to manually initiate connections with servers in the United States, England, France, and Italy. The speed test results obtained when connecting to a server in New York show 22.38 Mbps for downloads, a decrease of 27% from my benchmark speed.

The France server performed slightly better than the US server in download speeds and even improved my base upload speed. For this test, I measured 26.92 Mbps for downloads and 18.44 Mbps for uploads. As you can see, these results are not too different from those obtained without the use of a VPN.

Even servers further from my location held up fairly well. The UK and Italy servers only reduced my speed by 32% and 33%, respectively. Even with its limited server network, DotVPN offers good speeds – especially when you connect to a server nearby. Streaming, downloading, and browsing on distant servers was mostly fast and free of delay or interruption.

Server Network — 28 Countries on Browser Extensions and 12 Countries on Android and iOS App

DotVPN has quite an extensive server base when you use its browser extensions. If you don’t install the extensions firsthand, you might be misled to believe it offers servers in only 12 countries. This is because their website is outdated and still showcases content last updated in 2017.

I was impressed with the geographical spread of DotVPN’s proxy servers. It offers servers in Europe, North America, Asia, Oceania, and Africa. Europe has the largest server base. The Americas only consists of servers in the US and Canada while Asia has servers in India, Turkey, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan. You will not find all these servers in the Android or iOS apps as those options contain only 12 countries.

I was also happy to discover that DotVPN owns its servers which make for one less security concern. This means that your information is shared with fewer — ideally 0 — parties. A vast server network and an extensive number of server locations make CyberGhost VPN your best bet for finding a nearby server no matter where you are.

Security — Robust Layers of Encryptions

Considering DotVPN’s main selling point is that it keeps you anonymous and secure online, it’s only natural that it offers strong security features.

• Robust Encryption – Several layers are administered by this service to achieve premium security, including the concrete AES-128 encryption level, which DotVPN attests to be less vulnerable than AES-256. Though this claim is rather questionable, as AES-256 encryption is trusted and used by government agencies, banks, and the vast majority of top VPNs.
• Strong Protocols – The browser extensions convey your data through the Secure Socket Layer (SSL-proxy) which is stabilized with a 4096-bit kit. For Android and iOS devices, OpenVPN(TCP/UDP) and IPsec are employed respectively as DotVPN’s native protocols.
• Firewall – This feature protects a VPN connection from being intercepted or abused by unauthorized or malicious users.
• Ad and Malware Blocking – This feature helps you stay protected against malware and prevents you from seeing annoying advertisements. Activating requires a little digging, as it can be found under the Settings section.

In addition, I tested the VPN for leaks, which is of particular importance when torrenting. The presence of leaks may impede the full protection of your anonymity, leaving you vulnerable to torrent site dangers. Fortunately, the results were positive. After establishing the connection, I performed IP and DNS leak tests and found no leak of my true IP address.

Privacy — Some Personal Data Collected

Despite its claims of a strict no-logs policy, DotVPN doesn’t entirely keep a clean slate in this area. For instance, it stores basic user information, IP addresses, and emails temporarily encrypted in SHA256 during registrations. Payment details are only in the hands of the third-party processors you might have used while signing up.

It is apparent that they retain some amount of personal information about you. All of it has nothing to do with what you access or download, but you must decide how much information is too much for you.

DotVPN is a subsidiary of Smart Security Limited, a Hong Kong-based company. Thus, they are out of the jurisdiction of the Five, Nine, and Fourteen Eyes. The company’s privacy policy states that your details are stored on servers in Hong Kong and that only authorized staff can access them. I wasn’t entirely pleased with the knowledge that they could share your details if new owners acquired its service. Also, DotVPN promises to only safeguard your details in instances when the government would not demand it.

Torrenting — Does Not Officially Support Torrenting

DotVPN says it does not offer peer-to-peer file sharing support. According to the details on their website, the service is set to add this option soon. However, I did make attempts to torrent using the Utorrent platform and I was amazed that I could download torrent files with it.

This experience brought me to the conclusion that their website is outdated as it was last updated in 2017. Given that this VPN doesn’t formally support torrenting, it is worth noting that there is a chance that this activity could be logged or reported.

My team and I do not support copyright infringement by sharing P2P files illegally. We advise that you check with local laws in your location about torrenting and file sharing and only download files freely available in the public domain.

Does DotVPN Work in China? No!

I couldn’t test out this VPN in China myself since I do not live there but customer support told me that DotVPN will not work in China.

Despite some of its impressive features, DotVPN lacks the sophistication to break through government-established internet firewalls in China, which explains why it does not advertise its services as an advanced unblocking VPN.

I recommend ExpressVPN if you’re after consistent service no matter where you are, since it uses advanced obfuscation across its 3,000+ servers.

DotVPN’s support is too limited. I was never able to receive a response early enough. You can only reach DotVPN by submitting a ticket on its website with your email address. There are no social platforms or telephone numbers to call, nor is there a 24/7 live chat.

I had to figure out any questions I had myself or stick to the FAQ or solution sections to get answers to some common inquiries. The response time took nearly 4 days each time. Considering that only one staff member responded to my and my colleague’s questions, I presume DotVPN is short of support staff.