CactusVPN review: Solid privacy and good US/UK speeds - vancelawas1993

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

• Good pricing
• Good speeds in the U.S. and UK

Cons

• Windows app could be more consultive
• Host choices are limited compared to competitors

Our Verdict

CactusVPN has the right privacy promises you need, and fairly good pricing. The company also offers Automatic DNS services if you need to get around location restrictions with a set-top box. The Windows app is nothing fancy, but in that location's still any tweaking available for users World Health Organization like to experience a choice about VPN protocol and app conduct.

CactusVPN in abbreviated:

• P2P allowed: Only connected VPN + Smart DNS plan
• Business emplacemen: Canada
• Number of servers: 25
• Number of country locations: 15
• Cost: $40-$55 per annum
• VPN Protocol: SSTP
• Data encryption: AES128-SHA
• Information certification: SSL/TLS
• Handshaking encryption: SSL/TLS

CactusVPN was started in 2011 aside three friends WHO wanted a VPN help that had that "pocketable business" finger. Seven age later the company is still going, offering both a VPN service and Sharp DNS that helps swing territorial restrictions on everything from PCs to living room jell-clear boxes.

Note: This brush up is part of our best VPNs roundup. Go there for details active competitive products and how we tested them.

Features and services

When you first start dormy CactusVPN on Windows, you'ray greeted with a tabbed interface. After you sign in, you land on the Connection tab. This is where you connect to the waiter of your choice.

It's a very simple interface. There's a drop-down menu listing all the locations, and a small button allowing you to sort the list by speed founded on your placement. Then below that is a big green Touch base button.

IDG

CactusVPN running with an active agent connection.

Once you'Re connected there's not much else to see. Since it has all that space it mightiness be prissy for the app to provide some information about how practically bandwidth you'ray victimization over the VPN, simply starboard now it's a mostly unloaded space.

If there's one thing I don't like about CactusVPN on Windows 10 it's that there's no icon on the taskbar when the window is agaze. That is same galling for the way I work. If you get distracted by something else happening your screen background before conjunctive you have to alt-tab to pose back to the VPN operating room click connected it from the organization tray. I asked the party about this and Chief operating officer Sergiu Candja said, "Our app is not something that people interact with along a diarrhetic base…we see our app [as one] that works continuously (like the firewall does for case) but it doesn't bear to be permanently in sight along taskbar and distract your attending." For those who, like me, want it on the taskbar, you can drag the icon to baby-sit on the system tray incoming to the system time, but that's not quite the same as a full taskbar icon.

CactusVPN's next tab is Settings with a variety of options you can tweak. The only options that are set by default are the VPN Protocol (without which you couldn't link) and the option to reconnect automatically if the VPN connection drops. On Windows, CactusVPN uses SSTP American Samoa the default communications protocol but also offers OpenVPN, IKEv2, L2TP, and PPTP.

IDG

CactusVPN's Settings tab.

Beyond those first settings, you hindquarters choose whether you want CactusVPN to run for at startup, whether you want CactusVPN to mechanically sign in when the app starts, start the app reduced, unite as soon Eastern Samoa you communicative in, enable the Net kill switch, enable DNS leak protection, and mechanically group servers in the knock off-down past speed.

On the third tab there's also an app-killer feature. This lets you block specific applications when the VPN connection drops. This tail be anything you want such as a torrent program, a limited web browser, an netmail political platform, anything you want really. This is something of an unveiling-level power exploiter feature as you'll have to root around in your program files to nail down the EXE you want killed when the connection drops.

The final tablet is the Support section where you can submit a pain ticket, get golf links to your online score splasher, and save your logs for troubleshooting.

CactusVPN has a variety of pricing tiers.

The Best choice is the VPN + Smart DNS tier that costs $55 per year for full access to all 23 VPN servers with unlimited bandwidth, the ability to use P2P file sharing, and the Smart DNS service.

If all you penury is a VPN, CactusVPN offers U.S. Beaver State UK plans. Some cost $39 per annum and give you access to four VPN servers in the country of your superior with untrammelled bandwidth. These lower-tier plans cause non tolerate you to use P2P.

Performance

IDG

CactusVPN's location menu.

CactusVPN's sexual conquest comparing the speeds in five different locations around the world was brought down by poor scores in Nippon and Germany. Overall, Cactus VPN kept about 21 per centum of the base speed. The speeds in the UK and U.S,, all the same, were particularly standout, some around 33Mbps compared to a base speed up of 90.55Mbps connected the day of testing.

If all you're fascinated in is a UK operating room U.S. connection, then CactusVPN will serve you comfortably.

Privacy, anonymity, and trust

CactusVPN's CEO is Sergiu Candja, and the CTO is Pavel Bodeanu. The company lists its headstone staff members on its site. The company doesn't list its business addreess happening the website, but the accompany's official headquarters are in Montreal, Quebec, Canada; however, the burden technical team up is based in Moldavia.

When you sign on for CactusVPN it asks for your body politic location and your electronic mail. For payments, you can use PayPal, credit card game, Alipay, and another international services via PayPro, OR you can use CoinGate to salary via a variety of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum.

CactusVPN's terms of table service specify what sort of information the company collects based happening your payment method. With PayPal, PayPro, and Coingate payments, for object lesson, CactusVPN collects your netmail address, country, and your responsibility—if you're in Canada.

American Samoa far as the privacy policy goes, CactusVPN says it doesn't log your online activity, including real IP addresses, traffic logs, connection timestamps, bandwidth usage, and session duration.

Conclusion

CactusVPN is a fresh service. It has great speeds in the U.S. and UK, qualification its turn down-tiered plans an first-class buy if each you need is one of those countries. The keep company also has a solid privacy insurance policy, and a good desktop program. CactusVPN offers enough country locations for the money, though over metre I'd like to construe with the company expand its number of servers.

Editor's note: Because online services are often iterative, gaining new features and carrying out improvements over time, this review is discipline to change in order to accurately reflect the current state of the service. Any changes to text or our final review finding of fact will be noted at the top of this clause.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/402331/cactusvpn-review.html

Posted by: vancelawas1993.blogspot.com

Share this post