In this VPN.AC review, we will highlight what VPN.AC excels at and what it could improve. While smaller than a lot of VPN providers, VPN.AC surprised us in this review–and if you’re looking for a new stable VPN to try out, it could surprise you too.

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Pricing 8/10

VPN.AC is slightly cheaper than a standard $10 price per month. However, it’s 6-month plan, and yearly plan are quite affordable. VPN.AC also offers an extremely cheap trial-like option for around two bucks. VPN.AC offers a 7-day refund policy as well as Bitcoin and standard payment options on checkout. Checkout is also relatively easily, although do note that you receive a separate login for your email that you must use for your client (I only noticed this once I couldn’t log in, when the client provided me with a link to a support page explaining the issue).

Check out this list if you want to know the cheapest VPNs.

Software 8/10

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VPN.AC’s setup is very basic. It’s not as intuitive as some VPN installations since it does require you to extract and install it manually. From here, you still have to create a shortcut on your computer–or else you will have to go digging through your files to launch it.

However, once you get through the installation, everything else works well.

VPN.AC has a simple software with only two interfaces. You have your primary connection tab, and then a long list of settings. In a way, this is quite helpful as you don’t have to fiddle around with unnecessary drop down menus or tabs–everything is just laid out for you. There isn’t much design styling here, but the application works functionally.

Your login information is stored, and it’s easy to switch locations in a lost list of servers–as well as your chosen protocol (we recommend OpenVPN 256-bit). You can see your IP address change at the bottom, and it changes when you connect.

As far as the settings go, we liked seeing a kill switch, auto-connect, the ability to block IPv6, as well as DNS leak protection. There’s also a lot of standard customization with how the client handles, like closing on minimization, starting minimized, or starting on Windows launch.

Overall, VPN.AC’s client is quite good. I went expecting to see only a barebones client but came away impressed with the security features and usability.

Read more: Top Rated VPN Software Provider of 2016

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Mobile Software 6/10

We were disappointed to see that VPN.AC doesn’t have an iPhone client yet, but they do support Android. We tested out their Android client and found it very useable without any issues.

Extra Services 5/10

VPN.AC doesn’t offer too many extra services, but we loved to see that they did include some proxy browser extensions. This is handy if you just want to proxy your browser, or if you’re on something like a Chromebook. They do have six simultaneous connections–which is more than we’ve seen from even our top VPN providers.

Website 7/10

VPN.AC has a simple but effective website, similar to their client. Besides having a well-designed blue header image, the rest of the site is fairly ordinary. For some reason, the features page has a bunch of planets as the background. But besides the visuals, we liked how elements were laid out clearly in bullet-like points as seen here:

The FAQ tab is very helpful and transparent when you’re trying to find out information about VPN.AC. Their client area is decent as well, and we didn’t encounter any difficulty navigating the website. If VPN.AC wanted to impress us even more; they could make a forum, and spruce up their blog a bit as it’s quite ugly.

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Servers 6/10

VPN.AC makes it easy to pick servers in the client, and we were impressed by the locations available in the United States. While VPN.AC might be a smaller VPN; they have an extremely good foundation so far. We even found success testing out some of the servers with Netflix!

Privacy 8/10

VPN.AC seems very dedicated to user privacy–which is as it should be. They don’t maintain any activity logs or use third party tracking services. They also have OpenVPN 256-bit available on the client, multiple protocol options, and browser proxy extensions.

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Speeds 8/10

VPN.AC gave us some incredible speeds in our speed test with a really low ping and a quick download speed of 150.96 Mbps and an upload speed of 11.00 Mbps. This is very close to use without a VPN. When we tested our torrent file with VPN.AC we got speeds around 15 Mbps–which isn’t the fastest we’ve gotten–but close, still VERY good speeds for a VPN.

Support 5/10

VPN.AC doesn’t have live chat, but they do have good support articles and a standard ticket system. We tested out their support with a ticket asking if their VPN works with Netflix and the support agent had no clue what I was talking about saying “not sure what exactly are you referring to by “work with Netflix”. Can you please be more specific?”.

Verdict

VPN.AC has very impressive speeds as well as a great windows client. We would have liked to see an iPhone app, but we did like the extra proxy extensions as well as VPN.AC’s website. Overall, with standard pricing and impressive app performance, as well as a good no logging policy with good encryption, VPN.AC is a worth VPN pick for anyone.

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