Windscribe VPN – How Good Is It?

Windscribe – VPN Overview

Pros

• Versatile Payment Options.
• Strong encryptions.
• Apps for all popular platforms.
• Reliable extension for Chrome.
• Stealth mode and port forwarding options.
• Adblocker
• P2P support

Cons

• Based in Canada.
• No live chat support.

Pricing and Accounts

As I mentioned above, Windscribe has two distinct offers: A free VPN service and a premium paid-for service. In general, I suggest staying away from free VPNs. So, unless you just want to test out Windscribe before you subscribe to it, I don’t suggest the free version.  However, when it comes to the premium version, you have 2 plans you can choose from:

• $9 a month – monthly plan.
• $49 every year – yearly plan ($4.08 a month)

These rates aren’t the cheapest VPN rates available, however, they do still beat out a lot of the more expensive VPN providers.

Payment Options

Windscribe offers versatile payment options for its users. For non-anonymous transactions, you can pay with:

• MasterCard
• Visa
• PayPal
• American Express

If you want to go for the more anonymous transaction, Windscribe also excepts bitcoins.

Servers and Locations

Windcribe might not have the highest number of servers out there, but they do a great job with the quality of server connections they offer.

They 52 server locations covering an impressive bit of the world’s inhabited continents. They even have servers in the Middle East, which isn’t that common. Their website states that all of their servers are physically present in the countries they’re said to be located in. Sadly, this is also not that common of a feature.

As you can see, the higher server count is limited to the premium plan. With the free version of Windscribe, you do get equal access to 10 of the 52 server locations on offer.

Another great feature they offer is something called Windflix. Not all of Windscribe’s servers offer access to different Netflix libraries. However, they do offer special “Windflix” servers for premium users. Windflix servers are servers that can bypass Netflix’s regional restrictions, including US and UK Netflix.

Privacy and Security

Windscribe – Privacy

Windscribe’s potential privacy is a little confusing for the average user. On one hand, the VPN is located in Canada. On the other, they have a pretty solid zero-logs policy.

Let me explain why this is both a good and bad thing.

Canada is part of the Five Eyes surveillance agreement. It also has laws that force ISPs to keep logs on their users. Even worse, the CSIS has been caught monitoring their citizen’s data. In other words, it’s not the ideal country to base a VPN in.

However, Windscribe’s no-logs policy does lessen the danger. Windscribe is very clear in stating that they only allow one connection on one device at a time. That means that at some point, they do monitor your account and what you do with it. That’s not so awesome, right? Well…Windscribe is also very clear on what it does with those logs.

Their pricy policy clearly states that session logs are automatically deleted 3 minutes after your session ends. The monitoring happens during the VPN connection. In order for the Canadian government to get any data from Windscribe, they’d have to hit them with a warrant. Warrants take time, so yes they do keep session logs, but not long enough for them to be used against you.

Windscribe – Security

Windscribe uses an AES-256 cipher with SHA512 authorization and a 4095-bit RSA key. They also use DHE to support Perfect Forward Secrecy.

You guys, that’s a really good encryption.

They also support OpenVPN protocols, which is the industry standard protocol.  They also have:

• DNS Leak protection.
• P2P supporting servers.
• IPv6 protocols.
• A kill switch.
• A Double Hop feature for added security on Chrome (an extension).

VPN Apps

You can set up this VPN client on a variety of platforms. In fact, most popular platforms are directly supported:

• Windows, MacOS, Linux Ubuntu.
• Chrome, Firefox, Opera.
• Android, iOS, and Windows devices.
• DD-WRT, Tomato, and Asus.
• Synology and QNAP
• uTorrent, Deluge, qBitorrent, VUZE.

They also have a detailed set-up guide section for devices with no native VPN apps, including Amazon Fire TV, Kodi, Nvidia Sheild, Smart TVs, other Routers. You can even find Windscribe pre-flashed routers for extra convenience.

Speed and Performance

Windscribe showed some pretty stable connections across the board. While the VPN did slow down our internet speeds on servers with high user counts (mostly the US servers), it was still good enough to perform most streaming and downloads.

Customer Support

Windscribe offers customer support via both live chat and email. The thing is, a lot of users have complained about the live chat feature. Apparently, not a lot of people are convinced of the “live” part. or the “human” aspect, for that matter.

Others report that the customer support team usually replies with vague and generic answers. Not to mention that the reply comes back a little late.

Refund Policy

Their refund policy isn’t the greatest, to be frank.

They do offer a refund policy, however:

• The window is open for only 3 days.
• It only applies if you’ve purchased the service through Windscribe themselves.
• You should only have used up to 10 GB of data on the account.

So…this a fail from me. It isn’t unheard of in the VPN community to offer 30 day window periods for no-questions-asked refunds. Although, in Windscribe’s defense, they do have a free version you can test out as long as you want before upgrading.

Windscribe – The Verdict

All in all, Windscribe isn’t a bad VPN if you want to go for something with a user-friendly interface and straightforward features. However, for the more experienced VPN user, this provider simply won’t cut it. In that case, I suggest you go through our best selected Windscribe alternatives.

Windscribe Review

• Speed
• Security & Privacy
• Refund Policy
• Access to Geoblocked Sites
• Support