Surfshark VPN Review 2020 – Low Price, Great Features

Before reviewing a VPN, one of the most vital concerns is the value it offers. Does the VPN offer you all that you were looking for? Or do you get less than what you pay for?

Surfshark Review: A Solid VPN Service

Surfshark has several added privacy features and it also doesn’t have any limit on the total number of devices that can be used. Even though the asking price might be high but it is an impressively valued product.

A virtual private network – What is it?

When you switch on a VPN, it makes an encrypted tunnel between your server (that is operated by the VPN company) and your computer.

As all your web traffic is piped through this channel, it seems as if the traffic is coming from the VPN server and not from your computer. This helps you hide the IP address.

Since you can hide your IP address, it makes it impossible for advertisers and spies to track your digital activities. The ISPs will now sell off your anonymized data for gaining profits. Though VPNs are extremely powerful tools, yet they can’t solve your security and privacy issues.

Pricing and Features of Surfshark VPN

Currently, Surfshark costs you $11.95 for a month, $71.88 for a year and $47.76 for 2 years. This might seem to be a steep rebate but at the same time it is not usual in the VPN market.

This is why it is recommended that you should initially go for the shortest subscription to ensure that things work for you first. Later on, you can move on to longer subscriptions.

If you think this is too exorbitant a price for you, you can certainly go with the other cheap VPNs and even the free VPNs. ProtonVPN fits in all categories and is also a noteworthy one as it is one among the free VPNs that don’t pose any limit on data.

Surfshark allows BitTorrent through VPN and P2P on few servers and it also offers ad-blocking through the CleanWeb tool. The strengths of this VPN are the rarely seen features.

One of them is Whitelister, a split-tunneling tool that routes web traffic besides the VPN tunnel. It offers you a smart option of white listing websites as there are few sites that block access from VPN connections.

Multihop is another unusual feature that creates a VPN connection to a server and then helps bounce the traffic to another VPN server for improved security.

Although there are few competitor websites that also offer this feature but the one provided by Surfshark is best. Both Whitelister and Multihop are powerful tools which might not be used everyday but they are useful.

VPN protocols

There are several ways of creating a VPN connection and the most preferred option is OpenVPN, which has a reputation for reliability and speed.

This is an open-source option which means that its code can be obtained for examination of its vulnerabilities. Surfshark provides its users OpenVPN on iOS, Android, Windows and Linux apps.

Although OpenVPN is set as the highest priority for VPN technology yet WireGuard is said to be the future of all VPNs. This is still at the nascent stage and hasn’t received the same type of scrutiny as OpenVPN.

Servers of Surfshark and their locations

Geographic distribution is an important factor because when you have too many locations to choose from, this means you’re more likely to get one close to your location. This, at the same time, provides chances of spoofing your location too.

Surfshark covers more than 65 countries and this is above average number. If you check the market of competitors, Express VPN is leading by covering 95 countries and CyberGhost being second at covering 90 countries.

This VPN provider offers above-average coverage to countries like Africa and South America, which are regions that are mostly ignored by the other providers. Surfshark even has servers in nations with strict internet policies like China, Turkey, Russia and Vietnam.

Surfshark VPN – Is it fast enough?

The Surfshark fared well in speed tests as users were able to watch 4K video and use high-definition video conferencing while being connected with other nearby located servers.

Netflix’s different versions were tested and the quality was low initially but within a minute, it was improved. Playing online games was also possible without any issues.

Since Surfshark was introduced, it has been increasing its server rather too fast. Surfshark’s network has bolstered to more than 1700 servers spread over 60 countries.

The server locations of Surfshark were tested thrice at 3 different times of the day. The average speed was around 40 Mbps. This gives it a middle position as against the other tested VPNs.

The 3 server locations were in Asia, North America and Europe. The average speeds in these locations were:

• Asia: 19 Mbps.
• North America: 62 Mbps.
• Europe: 40 Mbps.

For servers those are located nearby, this VPN offers moderate to good speed. As you begin to connect to servers that are located further, things will gradually seem to get harder.

Surfshark – What are the devices that work?

Which are the operating systems that Surfshark works with? Apps are there for the following platforms.

• Windows 7 and the latest versions.
• iOS 9.0 till the latest one.
• MacOS 10. 12 or the latest one.
• Android 5.0 to the latest one.
• Amazon Fire TV.
• Linux Ubuntu and Debian.

Beyond VPN

In an effort to stand out in the crowd, there are many VPN companies that have added several new features that are beyond VPN protection. For instance, TunnelBear has a personal password manager named ‘Remembear’.

As soon as you sign up with Hotspot Shield VPN, you get connected to a Pando account that links you to an array of security and privacy products that charge you a subscription fee.

Both TorGuard and ProtonVPN have email services that are encrypted: Private-Mail and ProtonMail respectively.

So, if you’re looking for a VPN that gives you good value for money, you may take into account all the above mentioned features of Surfshark VPN.