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

Is Keenow VPN Fast? Yes, it Offers Exceptional Speeds!

My speeds remained fast using Keenow servers closest to my location. However, connecting to the servers far away from my location resulted in a significant drop in speed. That said, the nearby servers were fast enough for streaming in HD and downloading torrents in minutes.

Speed Test Results

Before connecting with Keenow VPN servers, my base internet speed was around 31Mbps. During my tests, I connected to nearby servers and those far away from my location. Generally, I didn’t experience a speed drop of more than 50% with most of the servers that I tested. The US Dallas server gave me the fastest download speeds of 22.29Mbps — an impressive 28% drop in speed. Other servers in Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands saw an average speed of 15Mbps, which is still fast enough for HD streaming or P2P file-sharing. That said, when I tested the server in Japan, I got a download speed of 6.38Mbps — an 80% drop in speed.

Despite the fast speeds on the servers closer to me, the latency was high across all the servers. Ideally, lower latencies are excellent for gaming or algorithm trading activities where split-second decisions matter. If you’re accessing such services, you shouldn’t have to compromise for anything other than a low-latency VPN. I prefer to use ExpressVPN when I play multiplayer games or set my crypto trading bot on autopilot. ExpressVPN provides a latency of less than 150ms even with servers far away from your home region.

Server Network — 300+ Servers in 50+ Countries

Keenow VPN has a small server network spread across 50 countries. The service has over 300 servers on 6 continents, with the largest coverage in Europe and North America. There are servers in North American countries such as Canada, Mexico, and the US.

European countries: the UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Austria, Portugal, Belgium, and more.

And other countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa also represented are Saudi Arabia, U.A.E, Israel, China, India, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan.

Keenow has a network map on its website showing all the countries covered in the service. There are also specialized streaming and P2P servers. These specialized servers provide unlimited bandwidth (with fair usage) for these services. That said, there isn’t any information about the latency of each server on its website or app.

Security — Top-Grade Security Features

Keenow VPN makes use of strong security features. The security protocol uses OpenVPN (UDP/TCP) and IKEv2 across all the apps. The cipher uses AES 256-bit encryption, which is powerful enough to keep your data safe from hackers. Keenow VPN backs up its encryption protocols with its smart DNS service, which allows this service to unblock streaming platforms by routing your DNS traffic through a secure tunnel. This feature also helps to optimize for faster connections while accessing censored websites.

The VPN has a kill switch that keeps your data protected if your internet connection becomes unstable. This is coupled with IPv6, WebRTC, DNS leak protection, and Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) support. PFS is an encryption method that allows a new private key to be created whenever you start a new connection. This adds an extra layer of security so that even if somehow a hacker gets hold of your connection, they won’t be able to access previous data.

Keenow uses SHA512 with 4096 bit RSA keys for authentication. With these measures, you don’t have to worry about your communication being hijacked by hackers. Although Keenow VPN has all these top-grade security features, you will have to activate each feature in the “Advanced Settings” menu within the app. For instance, the kill switch is called “Drop all network connections if the VPN disconnects” and isn’t turned on by default. Similarly, the default cipher is AES 128-GCM encryption, which is less secure than the AES 256-CBC encryption that you’ll have to select from the drop-down list under settings to start using.

Privacy — Logs Too Much Data

Keenow VPN isn’t ideal for users seeking top-notch privacy simply because it logs too much data. The VPN is owned by Keen Internet Technologies LTD (a subsidiary of Keen Media Group) based in Israel. This means its headquarters doesn’t fall among the 5/9/14 Eyes countries that compel VPN providers to share data with governments as part of surveillance. Unfortunately, Keenow still collects a huge chunk of data.

The information it collects includes:

• Source IP address during VPN connection
• Connection timestamps
• Usage log of data transferred
• Access log to Smart DNS API
• Access logs to your dashboard login activity

Keenow claims this data is collected for troubleshooting purposes and preventing abuse. It also states that all VPN usage data collected are only stored for 7 days. However, I found this too intrusive for a service that’s supposed to keep me safe online.

That said, Keenow VPN successfully masked my IP address while connected to its network. During my tests, I was pleased to find out that there weren’t any DNS leaks on all the servers that I connected with.

Torrenting — P2P Supported

Keenow VPN supports P2P and torrenting. The VPN provides specialized P2P servers in the Netherlands and the US. These servers offer unlimited bandwidth. However, fair usage still applies. Popular torrenting clients like BitTorrent are fully supported, and the download speeds were fast enough to download a large file within minutes.

P2P servers are marked “P2P” in the server list. I downloaded a 700MB torrent file within a few minutes using the Keenow VPN Android app. That said, my team and I don’t support downloading copyrighted files as it is illegal in many countries. If you are ever unsure of the legality of torrenting a file, be sure to check and make sure whatever you are downloading is available in the public domain.

Does Keenow VPN Work in China? No!

To my disappointment, Keenow VPN doesn’t work in China. I reached out to support to find out if the VPN works there. Unfortunately, I was informed that Keenow’s domain is blocked in China. Although Keenow VPN has a server in China that uses stealth mode obfuscation technology to bypass censorship, you can’t even log in to the Keenow client to use the service since the domain is blocked.

Despite its promises of unblocking sites in 100+ countries, including censorship countries, Keenow VPN falls short in this regard. If you’re traveling to China then you need a VPN that works there. I recommend ExpressVPN as it has been proven to unblock sites for users located in China. You can try ExpressVPN to access the internet from China safely. Note that using a non-government-approved VPN is illegal in China. However, there have been no cases of tourists being penalized by the Chinese government. The common practice is that China is fighting VPNs by technologically blocking them, and not by chasing after the people who use them.

Editors' Note: ExpressVPN and this site are in the same ownership group.

Keenow offers email, ticket, and social media but the response time was slow on all three. It took 7 hours before I got a response via email. Worse still, there’s no live chat. This makes Keenow VPN a bad choice for urgent assistance.

While response time was slow, Keenow support did offer helpful feedback. The support agents were professional and gave direct answers to my questions. Secondly, the setup guide on its website and the FAQ page were rich in information that helped to quickly set up the app and troubleshoot issues on my devices. Keenow has a network (server) status page on its website that allows you to track server uptime or downtime in percentages over time. There’s also a “Troubleshooting Wizard” to help you submit a ticket if you face any issues.