VPNArea Review

Video Review

Short on time? Check out our quick VPNArea video review to find out more about this excellent VPN.

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Price

As with most premium VPNs on the market, VPNArea rewards subscribers willing to commit for a longer period of time. Three subscription plans are available: a one-month plan will cost you $9.90 and comes with a 14-day money-back guarantee. This is an average price for a single-month subscription.

Purchasing a 12 month subscription reduces the price substantially to just $4.92 per month (paid in a single installment of $59). This is a reasonable cost for what you get, but not yet low enough for us to consider it a 'cheap' VPN.

The good news is that any customer who is willing to commit for three years can get the VPN at the bargain rate of $2.99 (paid in a single installment of $107.67) This puts VPNArea firmly in the 'cheap VPN' ballpark – which we only ever attach to VPNs that come in at under the $3 per month. 

Anybody who commits to the yearly or 36 month plans gets a solid 30-day money-back guarantee to change their mind, meaning that you aren't locked in as soon as you make the purchase, and you can change your mind.

Regarding payment options, VPNArea accepts Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express, UnionPay, JCB, and Maestro, are all accepted. And, users can elect to pay with Bitcoin or via e-wallets like PayPal, Payza, and Webmoney. This makes it easy to pay, and gives consumers the option to pay anonymously if they wish.

Unblock Netflix?

When it comes to unblocking streaming content, VPNArea is superb. This service is a fantastic VPN for Netflix and a great VPN for BBC iPlayer too.

It is also one of the few VPNs that unblocks rarer services like RTE Ireland with their Irish VPN servers, Italian SkyGo, and unblocks various Netflix regions.

What impresses us, is that VPNArea is willing to listen to its subscribers and will go out of its way to ensure the services are unblocked if they are requested by popular demand. 

Features

VPNArea has a full suite of privacy and security features that provide everything subscribers are likely to need including: 

• No-logs policy
• Servers in 70 countries worldwide
• Secure OpenVPN and IKEv2 encryption
• Excellent security features (DNS leak protection)
• IPv6 leak protection
• Kill-switch (Windows, Mac OSX, Android)
• P2P permitted for torrenting
• 24/7 live chat support
• 6 simultaneous connections
• Auto-connect
• Auto IP change
• Double-hop VPN connections
• Stunnel obfuscated connections for bypassing firewalls and concealing VPN use
• Dedicated IP addresses with private server add-on
• Ad-block and malware prevention
• Unblocks Netflix US and BBC iPlayer

We particularly enjoyed VPNArea’s generous six simultaneous connections allowance – which means that subscribers can protect all their devices with just one subscription. This makes VPNArea perfect for family homes where there are a number of mobiles, desktops, and tablets to protect. 

What’s more, this is one of the few VPNs that provide dedicated IPs. Subscribers can pay as little as $15 a year to add on a dedicated IP with a private server to their existing subscription. Subscribers can get a dedicated IP in a number of hotspots including the UK, the US, the Netherlands, and Australia. This is great for people that play poker and other specialized groups (anyone who wants to run mail or gaming servers, for example). 

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Speed and Performance

At ProPrivacy we test the world's leading VPNs three times a day using a scientific, server based speed test system. This permits us to provide the most accurate VPN speed test data available on the internet.

For consistency, we test all VPNs using the OpenVPN UDP protocol. And, we test UK, US, Hong Kong, and South African server locations for both download averages and burst (max) connection speeds.

As you can see, VPNArea falls in close range with other market leading competitors. Average download speeds of 30 Mbps make this a superb option for anybody who wants to do data intensive tasks such as streaming, gaming, or torrenting.

Maximum burst speeds of 125.9 Mbps also prove that this VPN has more than enough power and headroom available, which means that the VPN should always perform excellently.

Next we checked DNS lookup times, as these will have an effect on page load times – and can make or break a VPN because how it makes the user perceive its performance.

As you can see, VPNArea performs absolutely brilliantly in this particular test – meaning that it will be a VPN that feels nice and nippy when it comes to loading web pages. All in all, this makes VPNArea a quick VPN, even if it is not the very fastest service available on the market.

IP Leaks

We tested VPNArea for leaks on IPv4 and IPv6 by using the excellent leak test tool ipleak.org. We are happy to report that VPNArea suffered no IP leaks, DNS leaks, or WebRTC leaks on either type of connection. This is extremely impressive because a lot of premium VPNs suffer some leaks on IPv6: VPNArea did not.

You can use ipleak.net to check for IP leaks, DNS leaks, and WebRTC leaks for yourself. Remember to always use a private browsing window in your browser to avoid cache problems!

When you connect to VPNArea, DNS requests are handled by third-party DNS resolvers run by CloudFlare. However, VPNArea always proxies those requests first – meaning that this VPN is completely secure in terms of privacy. 

Perhaps the only downside of using CloudFlare DNS resolvers is that it does push up DNS lookup times a little, which means that page load times will increase slightly while VPNArea is connected. 

Privacy

VPNArea is great for privacy purposes because of its base in Bulgaria and Swiss central servers. This keeps its subscribers' data well out of reach of invasive jurisdictions such as the UK and the US. Add to this, the fact that it is a zero-logs VPN. This means that it keeps no data on their customers so they have nothing to pass to the authorities if requested.

What’s more, VPNArea has a kill-switch on Mac OS X, Windows, and Android meaning that this VPN is perfect for people who want to download torrents safely. In addition, VPNArea uses bare-metal servers that it has full control over – even when it provides virtual locations. 

All in all, we have no doubts that VPNArea is extremely good for privacy purposes and being able to pay with Bitcoins and without giving a name creates the possibility for relative anonymity.

Encryption

VPNArea is a VPN that prides itself on providing strong up to date encryption implementation. It provides access to OpenVPN and IKEv2 protocols; both which are considered military grade encryption.

Where OpenVPN is concerned, We awarded VPNArea a five out of five for its implementation of the protocol at the VPN awards in Las Vegas.

Here is how VPNArea implements OpenVPN on the control channel:

• 256-bit AES CBC cipher

• HMAC SHA 256 authentication 

• RSA 4096 handshake

• Perfect Forward Secrecy with RSA + DH-4096

The data channel is protected with similarly high standards…

• AES-256-CBC cipher

• HMAC SHA 256 authentication 

This is extremely robust OpenVPN implementation, which means that the VPN can be trusted to provide strong security.

What’s more, VPNArea even has a bug bounty on its website inviting white hat hackers to earn money for finding vulnerabilities in its clients. This is excellent and shows that the firm is open about wanting to ensure security on its platform.

Customer Service

When it comes to customer services there are few VPNs that we have ever tested that are in the same league as VPNArea. Subscribers and non-subscribers alike have access to 24/7 live chat support, and their agents are friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful. 

In addition, subscribers get access to a ticket system for asking questions via email, a useful FAQ section, and setup guides for all Operating Systems and for DD-WRT and Tomato routers. 

I tested their live chat thoroughly and found it to be faultless. When I had an extremely techy question regarding encryption implementation I was told I would receive the answer via the email ticket system. The answer was courteous and gave a direct answer to my question, with some additional information regarding both the dedicated IP addresses and their service’s security features. 

Finally, VPNArea also has well managed social media accounts on both Twitter (@vpnareacom) and Facebook (VPN Area – Offshore Security EOOD). Consumers can also ask questions on those platforms.

User Experience

The VPNArea website is a well laid out and useful addition to the service. Plenty of information is available in the FAQ section, and once subscribers log in to the member's area they get access to useful setup guides and resources.

In fact, this is one of the most informative VPN websites we have ever encountered, with 100% transparency over the encryption implementation available on its features page; attention to detail that you just don't get elsewhere.

Signing up to VPNArea is extremely easy, and users do not need to hand over any invasive data such as names. An email address is needed for correspondence, however, you can elect to join using a burner email for added security if you wish.

The Windows app

As with all of VPNArea’s apps, the Windows VPN client is simply laid out and easy to use. The settings menu is easy to navigate and users can quickly alter any settings that they wish to enable the kill-switch or obfuscation, for example. 

Speeds on the Windows client are superb, and we were able to stream for hours without interruptions. We never experienced any crashes or other interruptions. 

A kill-switch is available to stop the VPN leaking data if the connection drops out, which means that this VPN is perfect for torrenting with privacy. DNS leak protection is also available in the client, which is great.

The Auto-IP Changer allows users to set a length of time before the IP is changed. Finally, users can set the VPN to run as soon as Windows starts, auto-connect to the last server they used, check for updates, and also to enable IPv6 leak protection.

Other platforms

VPNArea offers an excellent apps Mac OSX, iOS, Android, and a Linux VPN GUI on several distros. All of the clients provide a full suite of features. It is worth noting that their iOS VPN implements IKEv2 encryption by default and does not have a kill switch. However, OpenVPN can be used by connecting via the OpenVPN connect app.

Other than this, all the platforms are extremely similar and all provide equal efficiency in terms of speed and stability. Routers such as DD-WRT, Merlin Firmware, and Tomato are also compatible, and setup guides for configuring each platform can be found in VPNArea’s members-only area. We tested the iOS and Android VPN apps with an IPv4 connection and found them to be easy to use; neither suffered IP leaks. We also checked the Mac VPN client on both IPv4 and IPv6, again no leaks were discovered, which is excellent.

Final thoughts

VPNArea is a highly secure VPN provider based in Bulgaria. It is a well-rounded service with excellent apps for all platforms. Considering the low cost of a subscription, the no-logs policy, 256-bit AES encryption, DNS leak protection, kill-switch, obfuscation, double hop encryption – and other additional features – are truly outstanding. 

Customer service could not be better with this provider, and it is always eager to help consumers to unblock content. What’s more, this is one of the few services that still watch iPlayer out of the UK and Netflix US in 2024. 

The availability of dedicated IP addresses with a private server is excellent and will be a selling point for some people. To conclude, this VPN is a great all-rounder that is definitely worth testing thanks to its 30-day money back guarantee. If you like the service, a three-year subscription is well worth the money. 

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