Surfshark is consistently ranked among the best available VPN services. The VPN provides a wide variety of advanced functionality as well as the best affordable service. It operates in almost any country. It is among the cheapest VPNs with good amount of server locations.
We’ll go over the main features in this review that make the VPN so successful with both new and experienced users. You will find out if any compromises have been made to hold costs down or if you really get the best VPN for a couple of dollars a month.
Pros & Cons of Surfshark VPN
Pros
- Speedy WireGuard connections available on all apps
- Unblocks Netflix, iPlayer, Amazon Prime, Disney+
- Very cheap introductory deal
- Speedy and helpful live chat support
Cons
- Kill switch issues
- Very limited security audit
- Below average OpenVPN speeds
Overview of Surfshark VPN
Surfshark offers powerful features, including AES-256-GCM encryption, WireGuard, IKEv2, and OpenVPN, Shadowsocks to prevent your VPN block, a no-log policy, and a kill switch from protecting you if your link drops. And there is no cap on how many devices you can run the VPN simultaneously – better than most industry leaders can claim.
There are Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and Linux applications, Chrome and Firefox extensions, and Smart DNS for game consoles, TVs, and more.
How Cheap is Surfshark VPN?
The service’s monthly package is more costly than others, at $12.95, and opting for six months up-front only reduces the rate to $6.49. But the 12 months +12 months free sounds like a real deal at $2.49, one of the lowest rates we’ve seen for a full-featured VPN.
You should not be worried about signing up for longer plans when the price is so low. Look at the figures: Register for what’s basically two years on Surfshark, and you are spending 59.76 dollars in advance; pick only one year on NordVPN and spend 83.88 dollars. Even if you hardly use Surfshark a year later, the cost to us still looks reasonable. You can also have a trial of 7 days for Android, IOS, and Mac.
Surfshark supports a wide range of payment methods including, PayPal, cryptocurrencies, credit cards, Amazon Pay, AliPay, and Google Play. This VPN service also protects you with a 30 days money-back guarantee if it does not suit you.
What Additional Features Surfshark VPN Offer?
SurfShark supports P2P and BitTorrent on some servers via VPN, and ad-blocking comes with the CleanWeb tool as well. Another amazing feature is Whitelister – a split tunneling tool that routes app traffic or websites outside the VPN tunnel. Allowing you to enter whitelist websites that usually restrict VPNs. This can vary from video streams to banks. You can also use the Whitelist feature for selected apps. This could be helpful if you only use Surfshark for one or two things.
Another amazing feature offered by Surfshark is Multihop, which establishes a VPN connection with the server and then rebounds the traffic to a second VPN server, making it even more secure.
A MultiHop tab transfers your traffic on two VPN servers, making sure the attacker doesn’t get your true IP even though the escape server is hacked. The first server has 15 routes (USA, UK, Singapore, Germany, France, India, Netherlands, and Australia), and the second route shows you in other countries (France, Germany, Hong Kong, Holland, Portugal, Singapore, Sweden, United Kingdom, USA). The concept is that even though the escape server is hacked, the attacker will still only get an anonymous IP.
Other common features include the option to change the protocol between OpenVPN UDP and TCP, IKEv2, WireGuard, or Shadowsoks (another means of routing traffic into an encrypted tunnel, widely used in bypassing internet censorship in China.)
Is Surfshark VPN Windows App Any Good?
It was convenient to get started with Surfshark. We downloaded and activated the Windows app, picked a signup option, and could pick a plan and hand overpayment from the installer.
The interface was more versatile than predicted and modified in terms of flexibility as we played with the sizes. The app shows a connection icon, current server status information, and a menu containing server locations before resizing. As the interface extends, multiple options and selectable panels are shown.
Although the locations’ list does not display latency directly, icons are present that flag the best options. At the same time, the Favorites tab is a convenient way to store the most selected locations.
The Surfshark Static IP list helps you connect to servers in Singapore, UK, Japan, the United States, and Germany, so each connection is possible for you to have a fixed IP address from a country you choose.
As stated earlier, the MultiHop feature, Whitelister, and kill switch are part of the Windows client. The same features are also included in the Mac version.
Is Surfshark VPN Mobile Apps Any Good?
Mobile VPN applications are always much more simplistic than desktop versions, but the Android offering of Surfshark is remarkably similar. More or the same interface, the same list of locations, multi-hop access, CleanWeb’s ad, and malware blocking, and split tunneling for apps and websites with the Whitelist. The same support for WireGuard, OpenVPN/ IVEv2, Shadowsocks, and a kill switch.
The Android app also provides additional features: a range of encryption techniques (AES-256-GGM or Chacha20Poly1305), an alternative “use small packets” to boost the efficiency of the mobile networks, and the ability to link to VPN automatically while accessing mobile, secured, or unsecured networks.
And if this doesn’t work well, you can submit bug reports, create or navigate tickets from the app.
This situation is almost the same with the Surfshark iOS application: the look and feel are alike, and the kill switch, protocol range (OpenVPN, IKEv2, WireGuard), and more are all available. Particularly for iOS, this is an amazing setting that is often short-changed for features than other platforms.
How Many Server Locations Does Surfshark VPN Offer?
The geographical spread is important since there are many different locations around the world to pick from, and it offers a lot of choices for spoofing your location. Surfshark offers 1,700 servers in 64 countries, which are spread across 160 locations.
South America and Africa, which are often overlooked by other companies, are covered in Surfshark. In countries with repressive internet laws, Surfshark also provides servers, including China, Russia, Turkey, and Vietnam.
How Good Is Surfshark VPN Performance?
Surfshark, under certain conditions, is an efficient VPN. In our experiments, we had no connection problems, and the connection rates were actually higher than normal.
OpenVPN performance disappointed us when we checked the application at a UK data center. The speed limit was low, 70-90 Mbps. We did the same test from the same location in the US, with speeds of 100–105Mbps averaging somewhat improved.
After OpenVPN, we tried Wireguard, which is a standard protocol in Surfshark. Results were significantly improved and impressed us.
Our UK data center speeds nearly doubled to an average of 150 Mbps and reached over 200 Mbps from a few US servers. Though NordVPN has accomplished more than 300 Mbps with its advanced NordLynx protocol, it is still commendable to achieve more than 200 Mpbs, which should be more than enough for most users.
After trying the best, we went for the worst. We picked the most distant servers with the most daunting loads to do this. Again, the outcome impressed us. Averaged speeds between 30-35Mbps achieved by the UK and Argentina—even with an amazingly overloaded server.
Surfshark is a reliable VPN in its entirety, and only where this performance is missing are the odd instances. That being said, pace depends on the position and servers you are using, so we’d recommend that you do this within the first 30 days, so you won’t get stuck after committing.
Does Surfshark VPN Offer Streaming Supported Service?
Surfshark is a great choice to bypass streaming platforms. We found no trouble in streaming Netflix with US servers. However, Netflix is actively blocking VPN services. Services that are successful in bypassing Netflix today may not work tomorrow.
What About The Privacy Policy of Surfshark VPN?
Surfshark is located in the British Virgin Islands, which does not have any data retention laws. Surfshark’s FAQ page gives you a complete overview of the logging policy. In a nutshell, the service does not gather IP addresses, Internet activity history, VPN server location history, bandwidth usage, session information, or timestamps.
All the reported information is an email and anonymous statistical information for billing. Crash reports, statistical and performance info, and other related stats may be included in this.
Surfshark was audited by Cure53, the leading technology firm, concerning security auditing. However, the investigation included only browser plugins from the provider and not anything else. Moreover, this was completed in November 2018, and no privacy policy in effect to verify the provider’s claims.
Even we were glad that only two small anomalies were noticed in the Cure 53 audit. In general, we are satisfied with the protection offered by the VPN’s browser extensions, a feature that can also be vulnerable to infringement of privacy and anonymity.
How Good Is Customer Support Service?
Surfshark has a dedicated support forum where a range of questions is addressed. It comprises FAQs, tips, and tutorials that can cover many good queries but are not fully definitive.
While there is a concentration on basic running problems, much of the material is linked to configuration issues. In other words, most things do not have the information you might need.
When it comes to finding the information you need, there can be many improvements in how the articles are organized. For instance, you will receive a list of items on iOS issues when you type “iOS” into a search bar, like (how to install Surfshark on an iOS device).
In less than a minute, we got a response. It’s less a personal service but more a written conversation, but hopefully, this diagnostic mechanism works nine out of 10 times.
Nevertheless, the dialogue continued, the agent distracted from the script and gave us a good solution in half an hour for the connection problem we reported.
Do We Recommend Surfshark VPN?
Surfshark offers you a really nice VPN at an incredibly low price filled with functionality. It has its problems — a site that needs to be revamped and a more recent audit required — but lately, it has seen some big changes, including WireGuard integration with iOS and Android applications.
