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FrootVPN Review: Antivirus software secures your device; however, it doesn’t do much to protect your website traffic from scammers, spies, or advertisers. For such threats, you need a virtual private network (or VPN), such as FrootVPN. This service offers advantageous pricing and allows BitTorrent traffic, but it’s hard enough to use that it’s best left to Windows experts. Moreover, it doesn’t provide many features or servers.
FrootVPN review: Privacy
On the website of FrootVPN, it says in advance that there is “no logging of your activity.” Sounds promising, although we wouldn’t expect them to say otherwise. A ‘Legal’ page lists all the details not logged: Connection duration, the timestamp of the connection, IP addresses, DNS requests, locations, and servers the user is connected to. The only information FrootVPN collects at the network level is the amount of data you have transferred and the current number of simultaneous connections (needed to maintain the limit of 5).
Since FrootVPN has not reported any form of public monitoring of its systems (unlike ExpressVPN, TunnelBear, NordVPN, and others), there is no way for potential customers to know if it keeps its promises, and potential customers should take what it says about trust.
If you look at who owns a VPN provider, you can sometimes give clues. In this case, FrootVPN appears to be one of several VPN brands from Edelino Commerce and Anonine VPN, VPNTunnel, BoxPN, and more. It sounds like Edelino might be some techie who automatically earns extra trust, right?
Well, maybe not. When we visited the Edelino Commerce website, we found a single page effort with minimal information and so badly set up that the Google Maps integration is broken. The site doesn’t even have a working HTTPS connection. The certificate is for affiliate.vpnpartner.com, rather than edelinocommerce.com, which perhaps reflects its main goal: to make money by encouraging others to market the VPNs.
We wondered if checking the Whois records on vpnpartner.com might tell us more about what was going on here, but no, it is registered using a privacy service, and there is no way to see who is behind it.
While all of this doesn’t even come close to proving that Edelino is doing something dubious, it’s not precisely transparent either. When competitors with big names now hold public security and privacy audits, it’s no longer enough for the rest of the industry to say ‘we’re not logging anything, no, really’ and hope that users will believe them.
FrootVPN Review: Performance
The FrootVPN website claims that it can help you unblock web content, and the Windows client even has specialized Netflix and BBC iPlayer related locations to make your life easier.
Unfortunately, the service could not unblock iPlayer for us. We tried the official iPlayer option and the two regular UK selections but couldn’t stream the content. It also failed with Amazon Prime Video and Disney+. There was better news with US Netflix. FrootVPN provides specialist Netflix US servers on the east and west coasts, and they both gave us access to Netflix content for the US only.
Performance testing began with necessary testing at several FrootVPN locations. Most of them connected quickly, and geolocation checks suggested they were at their advertised locations, but the Costa Rican server proved unusable, and we were never able to connect. Usually, we would assume this was a temporary network problem, but we couldn’t access it in our last FrootVPN review.
When we did get online, FrootVPN performed reasonably well. Our nearest UK location gave us an average of 66-68Mbps on our test 75Mbps line. Most European locations were comparable at 50-60Mbps. We ran a second group of tests from a data center in Europe and averaged around 100Mbps, which will not break any records, but it is sufficient for most devices, connections, and tasks.
FrootVPN Review: Pricing and plans
Monthly pricing is exceptionally low at only $4.99. Many providers charge at least twice as much.
Pay quarterly, and the cost drops to $3.99, while the annual plan is a significant $2.99. There are cheaper offers, but usually only if you sign up for two years or more. FrootVPN scores support a wide range of payment types, including card, PayPal, Perfect Money, Bitcoin, and multiple other cryptocurrencies.
Unfortunately, there is no trial period, but you are protected by a 30-day money-back guarantee, at least in theory. The fine print says that the company only gives refunds “if the user had reasonable expectations of the service that Frootvpn.com could not deliver,” suggesting that this is far from unconditional. You have to have some problem with the service and convince FrootVPN that your problem is ‘reasonable’ before you get your money back.
So we are not entirely satisfied with the refund policy, but we can also understand that FrootVPN wants to protect its margins from profiteers who abuse the system. This isn’t a company that’s trying to trick anyone; look at the prices – spending only $4.99 a month to view service isn’t a bad deal.
Final words
This FrootVPN review is secure, private, and it makes it possible to torpedo. It has excellent encryption, no-logging policies, and it is very affordable. Decent performance and remarkably cheap, but the unblocking performance was below average, and the lack of mobile apps is a significant annoyance. It could work for specific situations, such as a short European trip where you need to unblock Netflix, but otherwise, you’ll get better service elsewhere.