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

Connecting to VPNTunnel Imposed Significant Drops in Speed

VPNTunnel’s servers bogged down my connection speeds by quite a bit. My home network has a download speed that clocks in at 570Mbps while my speeds with VPNTunnel were, at best, 20% of that.

I noticed even worse drops with servers located further from my home location. My download speed came to a crawling 25Mbps when connected to a server in New Zealand. While drops are expected when using faraway servers, these are vast dips that will impact everything from web browsing to content streaming.

Speed Test Results

I tested local and distant servers and found that my download speeds were the most impacted. My upload speed on my home network is right around 10Mbps, which only dropped by 1-2Mbps when connected to the VPN’s network.

Is VPNTunnel Fast Enough for Gaming? No

With high latency on all servers and slow connection speeds, VPNTunnel is not ideal for online gaming. I jumped into a game of Rocket League and experienced frequent stuttering, frame drops, and lag all throughout the match. The lag was even apparent when connecting to a server in the same region as my home location.

If you want to connect to a VPN while gaming then you might want to take a look at ExpressVPN. This VPN offers a ton of native apps for consoles and boasts low ping that will be comparable to not being connected to a VPN at all.

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Server Network — A Very Small Network with Limited Options

VPNTunnel claims to have a modest network of 150+ servers spread across 32 countries. However, I only counted a total of 50 servers on the site’s server list. That is quite a large discrepancy in information. Even if the VPN had all of the servers that it claimed to, it still wouldn’t be a very large network. I double-checked the server list in the application and found that it still capped out at 50 servers in total.

Most regions will only have one or two servers to choose from. The only major exception to this is the United States, which has 9 city-level servers to choose from as well as East and West coast servers optimized for streaming Netflix.

VPNTunnel has a handy server page on its website that allows you to keep track of how full a server is, how high the latency is on the server, and if the server is online or offline. There’s also a tracker that tells you how reliable the server is by giving the percentage of stable uptime.

There were a handful of specialized servers for streaming Netflix and BBC iPlayer. The servers optimized for streaming Netflix didn’t offer any noticeable changes in speed compared to the regular server options. Additionally, I found that I could access Netflix with every server that I tested. BBC iPlayer was a different story. I couldn’t access the service even on the specialized server.

I also found that some of the labels for server regions were incorrect. I connected to what I thought was a US-based server and found that my region was being routed over to Frankfurt, Germany. This only happened a couple of times, and I could not replicate the issue consistently. However, this can be frustrating if you’re trying to access region-based content using a server as this rerouting isn’t obvious unless you perform IP location tests.

Security —Multiple VPN Protocols & AES-256 Bit Encryption

I was frustrated by the fact that VPNTunnel doesn’t list its encryption protocols anywhere on the site for non-registered users. I had to contact support to find out that the VPN uses industry-standard AES-256 bit encryption. While that is good news, I shouldn’t have had to reach out to the support team to get that information. It should be plainly displayed on the site for prospective users.

I do like that this VPN has a kill switch in the application that you can toggle on to ensure that your data remains secure and protected. This will cut your connection to the internet in the event that you lose connection to the VPN’s network.

If you have an account, you can go to the “servers” section under your account page to view the different encryption protocols that VPNTunnel uses. You can find servers that make use of OpenVPN, PPTP, IPsec IKev2, Stunnel, and WireGuard. The vast majority of options use OpenVPN, which is a standard protocol used by many VPNs.

Privacy — A Questionable No-Logs Policy

VPNTunnel states that it doesn’t keep any user logs, but that unraveled a bit when I went digging around in the VPN’s privacy policy. VPNTunnel isn’t located in the jurisdiction of any of the information sharing alliances, and it clearly states that it won’t log any of your browsing or data usage habits. However, the privacy policy reveals that VPNTunnel doesn’t own its servers and that all of your user information goes to a third-party. VPNTunnel also mentions that it will comply with any authorities should the need arise.

If you’re looking for an air-tight no-logs policy without any loopholes then you may want to steer clear of this VPN, as this policy allows for authorities or governmental figures to acquire data. There was also no mention of any independent audits, which are a great way to show that a VPN is verified to be secure outside of internal claims.

Digging further into the VPN’s privacy policy, I found that the company keeps data regarding payments, email addresses, and Google Analytics. This sort of data keeping isn’t a major cause for concern, but there are other VPNs on the market that don’t keep such information, which can lead to more peace of mind if you want to stay anonymous throughout usage. If you’re looking for a more iron-clad no-logs policy, I recommend going with ExpressVPN because of its proven track record of uncompromising user privacy.

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Torrenting — Not Recommended Due to Dubious Privacy Policy and Slow Connection Speeds

Torrenting is allowed on most of VPNTunnel’s servers, though you will have to go and check the server list on your account page to see which ones those are. The app does not have any sort of tags for which servers do and do not allow torrenting. Having to go back and forth from the site and the app was frustrating. The same was true for the Android version of the application.

While torrenting is possible, the lackluster connection speeds as well as the questionable privacy policy mean that this VPN won’t be ideal for P2P connections. I went ahead and torrented a file in the public domain and found that even smaller, well-seeded files took a long time. The 2GB file I chose took around 8 minutes whereas I was able to download that same file in under 1 minute without being connected to the VPN.

Does VPNTunnel Work in China? I’m Not Sure

I reached out to the support team to ask if this VPN worked for those located in China, and the response I received was unclear.

While it is true that all VPNs must be tested in China, most will have done this testing already. The response from the support team tells me that this VPN has not been extensively tested in China and that it should be avoided. I would be wary of using it there if only because of the concerning no-logs policy.

Alternatively, you can use ExpressVPN if you want a VPN that is guaranteed to work consistently in China without being detected by governmental firewalls.

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

I was frustrated by the lack of accessible support from VPNTunnel. I reached out to the live chat and submitted help tickets over multiple days and never heard back. I kept getting a notification that the support team was offline and that they would send a response to my email, but no response ever came.

The only time that I heard back was through sending an email directly to the support team instead of using the ticket submission tool on the website. Even then, getting a response took a little over a full day. Having a more immediate support option that was live 24/7 would be helpful.

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