Today we’ve decided to focus our undivided attention and resources on Speedify, a VPN service that, as its name not-so-subtly suggests, claims to be one of the fastest VPNs out there.
However, there’s more to Speedify than just speed, but we won’t spoil the ending for you. Instead, you can join us in this exploratory journey and see what hidden gems does this VPN service really hold.
As usual, we’ll provide you with some company info, details about their views on data privacy and logging, see if it’s anything in their User Agreement that unsettles us, then test the service in various ways and bring you the results. Sounds fun? I bet it does.
Company info
Connectify, Inc., the team behind this project, came to be after a small team of networking enthusiasts attempted to solve their Internet issues, which were mainly sharing a wireless connection between all of their devices in lack of a hardware router. They came up with Connectify Hotspot, which was a virtual router and decided to take their show on the road.
The next great thing they did after the great success their first project had was launching Speedify, which, incidentally, is the product we’re going to focus on today. Their brands include Connectify Hotspot, Speedify, Pingify, and EdgeWise. The company is located in Philadelphia, PA.
Causes they support
According to their website, the team behind Speedify is all in favor of a boundary-free Internet, claiming that “access to the Internet should be considered a basic human right.” More so, given that some of the countries outside of the US are heavily-limited when it comes to censorship, Internet freedom, and privacy, they’ve decided to provide users in countries like Iran, Venezuela and Cuba with unlimited Speedify accounts.
Among the causes they support, you can find Net Neutrality, Online Privacy, and Internet Security. With their powers combined, this trio of causes they support might just stand a chance when it comes to “breaking the wheel”.
Terms of Service rundown
The Terms of Service document on their website might not be exactly user-friendly at first sight, but if you give it a read, you’ll notice that its contents are not ambiguous and it has a straight-to-the-point approach. We’ll try to highlight some of the most important clauses in the remainder of this section.
- Speedify accounts (except Speedify for Teams ones) are to be used by single, individual users, on up to 5 devices that they own;
- Failure to use the service they provide you within a reasonable manner might result in cancelling, suspending or denying your renewal of their service;
- Using their service doesn’t give you any kind of intellectual property ownership over it, or to the contents that you might access while using their service;
- You must maintain your credentials strictly confidential since you’ll be held responsible for anything that goes wrong if you decide to share your credentials with others;
- Breaking the law or any regulations while using their service is prohibited;
- You may not impersonate any person or entity other than yourself and/or perform misleading actions and/or engage in fraudulent activities while using the Speedify service;
- You may not use torrenting on servers that are not specifically marked to be P2P-friendly;
- Hacking in any of its forms is forbidden;
- Spamming or any other form of unsolicited communication is prohibited;
- Hateful speech, bullying, abusing, threatening, harassing or other harmful behavior is prohibited;
- Harming minors in any way while using the Speedify service is forbidden;
- You may not infringe the copyrights of third parties or any other rights such as the right to privacy;
- Starting to use or continuing to use the Speedify services will be considered as an accept to the agreement terms;
- Speedify reserves their right to terminate, suspend or refuse their service to anyone, at any time;
To put it briefly, you might want to stick to the good side of the law (at all times, not just when using Speedify, mind you) and keep good care of your account and its whereabouts. Otherwise, Speedify might take some action against you, included but not limited to suspending, terminating your account or refusing to renew it.
Privacy Policy analysis
Right from the top of the page Speedify’s privacy policy gives you the TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) version of the terms within it, which says that they don’t log what you do or what websites you visit while connected to their service. In the following sections, they elaborate on this statement.
- The IP addresses of websites you visit or the contents that you receive while connected to the Speedify service are not logged;
- TOR and torrents may be blocked on some or all of their servers;
- Backend servers and database communications are SSL-encrypted and firewalled in order to restrict access to only authorized servers;
- Access to customer data is limited only for Speedify employees who require access in order to deliver the service;
However, the fact that they don’t log IP addresses or activity-related information doesn’t mean that they don’t log anything at all.
Data they collect
The whole “we don’t collect anything from our users” claim got kinda old, so you might as well understand and accept the fact that almost all VPN service providers will collect at least a minimum of details regarding their users since they need it for various reasons. And Speedify makes no exception.
Contact info (from customers who buy a subscription plan from Fastspring):
- Your name;
- Your phone number;
- Your email address;
- Your personal address;
- Your company name (if it applies);
Logs from accessing the homepage:
- Your IP address;
- The page you’ve accessed;
- Your browser type;
- Your operating system;
Information regarding your device:
- Your IP address;
- Your unique device identifier;
- A token might be generated to identify the session with the server in lack of an email address;
Location information:
- Your approximate location (from your device and third parties);
Support inquiries:
- Your name;
- Your email address;
Server access logs:
- The time and network location from which a connection was established;
- The amount of data that was transferred;
- Your approximate location;
- The duration of your Speedify connection;
The data that they admit to being collecting will be reportedly used for authentication, communication, service improvement, troubleshooting and responding to support inquiries. They do admit that they might disclose some or all of the collected information to third-parties, law enforcement agencies, or new entities in case they merge, reorganize or if they sell some or all of their assets.
However, you should keep in mind that, since they state that they won’t log your activities while connected to their servers (websites you visit or applications you use), they don’t have such information, to begin with, so providing law enforcement or Government agencies with it would be impossible.
Third party and opting out
Speedify relies on third-parties to collect certain pieces of data that might help them further improve their services. The thing is, if you’re uncomfortable with certain services, there’s a chance that you can opt out of them.
The third-parties Speedify works with are Google Analytics, Raygun and Fabric (also owned by Google). If you want to opt out of Google Analytics, you’ll have to install an extension on your web browser. Raygun also lets you opt out of its tracking by opening the “Settings” menu from the Speedify app, navigating to the “Privacy” section and turning the “Crash Reports” setting off.
Unfortunately, we were unable to find a way of opting out of Fabric’s data tracking (which mainly consists of crash report details).
14 Eyes Alliance country
We’ve mentioned that Connectify Inc.’s headquarters are in Philadelphia, PA, which is part of the U.S.A., which, in turn, not only is a member of the 14 Eyes Alliance but was a part of the initial agreement, called the UKUSA or the BRUSA Agreement.
The 14 Eyes Alliance is nothing short of an international surveillance alliance that encompasses several countries, which work together to collect and share mass surveillance data.
The fact that Speedify is located in a 14 Eyes Alliance country doesn’t implicitly mean that your data is compromised from the beginning, but the possibility that your details can be shared with another member country or various law agencies on its territory is higher than for a country that’s not a part of this Alliance. You should just be aware of this.
A quick intro to Speedify
I told you earlier that Speedify is not the same as other VPN services and that it holds some hidden gems. Well, it’s time to discover exactly what hides under the hood of this product.
Right from the start, upon visiting their page, you’ll be prompted with a message that says that “Two connections are better than one.” Speedify uses a channel-bonding technology, which helps you combine two different connections in order to create and benefit from a more stable, faster, secure VPN connection.
Creating an account
Unlike other similar services, Speedify doesn’t provide you with the possibility of logging into your account on their website, accessing a dashboard, and so on, and so forth. Not even creating an account works the same as for other VPN service providers.
If you want to purchase a plan, all you have to do is navigate to the “Store” page on their website, choose between the “Individual,” “Family” and “Team” types of service, select the most convenient billing method for you (monthly or yearly), then hit the “Continue” button.
You’ll be asked for your email address and after inputting it in the designated field, you’ll be redirected to a page where you’ll have to provide your payment information. After configuring the payment details, you’ll receive your account details on your email, after which you’ll be able to log into the application.
Downloading the application on your device
The good news: you don’t need an account to download or use this application on your devices.
– Navigate to the product’s landing page;
– Hit the “Download” button;
– Click the “Windows” button in the “Choose your operating system:” section;
– Navigate to the product’s landing page;
– Hit the “Download” button;
– Click the “Get it on Google Play” button in the “Choose your operating system:” section;
– Navigate to the product’s landing page;
– Hit the “Download” button;
– Click the “Mac” button in the “Choose your operating system:” section;
– Navigate to the product’s landing page;
– Hit the “Download” button;
– Click the “Get it on Google Play” button in the “Choose your operating system:” section;
Scanning the file for malware
It should be a habit for you (if it isn’t already) to perform checks on the files you download from the Internet, even for those that you retrieve from apparently trusted sources. Under no circumstances, we’re implying that those sources are not to be trusted, but nowadays there’s a wide range of attacks that might make you end up with a malware-infested document that looks and acts the same as the one you were initially attempting to download.
In order to decide whether a downloaded file is clean or not, we rely on VirusTotal. While it might not be 100% accurate, since every day new exploits enter the market and it takes some time to properly identify them, it’s still better than nothing. Uploading a file on VirusTotal tests it against several antivirus engines, compared to performing a local scan on your computer, with a single antivirus, so it should be more effective.
Here are our results. The Speedify installer appears to be clean as a whistle.
Installing Speedify on your device
Speedify can be installed fairly quickly and easily on Windows since it requires the minimum amount of assistance from you. Assuming that you’ve already downloaded the installer, all you have to do is double-click it and kick back, since the rest of the process will unfold automatically on your computer, without any other intervention on your side.
After you navigate to the product’s page on Google’s Play Store, installing the product only takes a bunch of clicks. If you’re installing it from the device itself, just hit “Install” and the product should be deployed in no time. If, on the other hand, you’re attempting to install it from your computer on your Android device, you’ll also have to choose the device you want to set it up on.
After retrieving the DMG file from the download page on your macOS device, double-click it (the DMG). A launch window should appear. Simply drag the Speedify icon to the “Applications” folder on the newly opened window. The next step is opening your applications folder and double-clicking the Speedify icon. A prompt should pop on your screen, asking you to allow Speedify to install a new helper tool. Type your computer’s username and password combination in the designated fields and click the “Install Helper” button. Once the installation has been completed, you can close the installer window.
After you navigate to the product’s page on Apple’s App Store, hit the installation button and wait. The iOS app should be deployed on your device as soon as possible. After the setup has been successfully completed, you can launch the app directly from the App Store by hitting the “Open” button.
Using Speedify on your device
After the installation has been successfully completed, Speedify should be automatically launched on your Windows computer. The first screen is just a brief presentation of the service. Hit “Continue” to proceed and, on the next screen, hit “Agree and Continue” to accept the user agreement terms and access the app.
Notice that the main window is a bit confusing, compared to any other standard VPN application. However, since Speedify comes with some aces in its sleeve, its interface was designed to reflect just that. Notice that at the top of the window, you have two connection slots. Those are reserved for the connections you want to combine in order to get that faster, more stable connection they were talking about.
For this test, we’ve used our laptop’s integrated Wi-Fi adapter and an external one, since each connection that you share must be made on separate devices (e.g. Ethernet and wireless, tethered phone and wireless, external and internal wifi adapters).
Somewhere in the middle of the screen, you have a connection status, a server selection menu and an account section that displays basic information about your account, such as its type and how much data you used in the current month.
The lower part of the screen displays a graph where data from the two connections you used is displayed, separate and combined as well. If you use the buttons to change the views, you can also access a usage breakdown (pie chart) and a connection quality graph that you can set to display values for latency or packet losses. In the same lower section of the screen, you can perform a quick speed test that checks each connection’s value then performs a test for the combined connections.
If you click each connection, you’ll be able to set its priority, making it primary, secondary or backup, set a rate limit, a monthly limit and a daily one. You can also reset the data usage from the same section.
After the installation is finished, you can either launch Speedify directly from the Google Play Store by pressing the “Open” button, look for a shortcut on your phone’s main screens or search for it in the app drawer and launch it from there. The main screen of the app, as for the Windows app, will prompt you with a brief presentation of Speedify and ask you to accept the terms of the agreement so that you may proceed.
The next step will be enabling location and phone state permissions for the app. Although the location permission seems kinda fishy, after enabling it you’ll learn that it will be used for identifying cellular networks for better connectivity.
After reaching the app’s main menu, you can either apply data caps in case you have a free/limited account or log into your account by clicking the appropriate button. After doing so, you’ll be asked to allow Speedify to set up the VPN connection.
The Android app is similar to the Windows one from an operational point of view, but also visually-wise. You still have the two connection slots at the top of the screen, which you can configure to your own liking (configure each connection’s settings), the middle of the screen is held by the connection status, server information, settings menu and account details, while the lower part encompasses real-time details about your connection. The speed test option is still available on Android, so you don’t have to worry about it.
You can launch the Speedify app from the Applications folder on your Mac. You’ll notice that the interface is similar to the Windows and the Android ones, there’s little to no difference concerning the visual aspect of the Mac version of the app.
The main window of the app displays the two connection slots on top, letting you combine them in any way you want, whether it’s a wired network that you want to join with a wireless one, or a phone tethered connection binding with an ethernet one, the choice is really yours.
You can access the settings menu from the middle of the screen (clicking the gear-shaped button) and choose a server to connect to from there, although the app is configured by default to connect you to the fastest server available by default.
As for the other versions of the app, there’s a speed test at the bottom of the window that you can use to perform a quick, in-app test of your connection. In the vicinity of the speed test, you’ll be able to monitor and analyze various connection-related parameters, including its speed, usage breakdown (pie chart) for monthly and daily usage and its quality measured in terms of latency and packet losses.
Clicking any of the connections that are available on your system lets you configure their priority (always, secondary and backup) and set daily and monthly data limits, according to your preferences.
The account section only lets you sign out of your account, change your password and seek some help since the rest of the features available there are more app-oriented (such as liking it on Facebook or sharing it with others).
After installing the application on your iOS device, you can either launch it from the Apple App Store or look around for it in your app drawer.
The first thing you’ll have to do is set up your device, which consists of installing the Speedify VPN profile, giving the app permission to use location information and enabling notifications permission. After performing these steps, you can continue accessing the app.
Not too many differences can be found between the apps visually-wise, so it’s good to know that the developers are trying to provide Speedify customers with the same experience, more or less.
Connecting to the service can be accomplished fairly quickly since the app is already configured to connect to the fastest server available by default. If, however, you want to change the server and connect to a specific one, you’ll have to take a trip to the “settings” menu.
The top of the screen is where you can find information about the connection. Clicking any of the connections there enables you to configure certain parameters about it, such as setting it to be used whenever connected or leave it as a backup or secondary choices. Here you can also set monthly and daily bandwidth limits for your account, as needed.
The main screen of the app also lets you access an account management section, where you can sign out of your account, change your password and show your appreciation towards Speedify by reviewing it, sharing info about it or liking it on Facebook.
The bottom section of Speedify’s main screen also lets you perform a speed test to see how fast your connection is and view data about your connection such as its speed, usage breakdown (both monthly and daily) and its connection quality expressed in terms of latency and packet losses.
Configuring the app on your device
The Settings menu enables you to choose between connecting automatically to the fastest server or a torrent-friendly one, or, if you’d rather prefer being in control, you can choose your country, city, and server manually. We find it a bit weird that you can’t choose the server you want directly from the main window.
The session settings you can configure allow you to toggle Speedify to connect at startup, enable the redundant mode (which sends all traffic to each connection to improve reliability), choose your favorite protocol, enable or disable Jumbo MTU and set the app to disconnect on exit. The Jumbo MTU setting is set to “On” by default, and it allows the app to accept larger packets than the standard MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) of 1500 bytes, which in turn should make the app run faster and use less CPU. Currently, only Windows users can configure this option. If you have trouble seeing some webpages, you might want to turn this option off and try again.
The Privacy section of the Settings window lets you enable the DNS leak protection feature and the Internet kill switch, toggle encrypted traffic on or off and enable or disable the crash reports. You can also choose from Google, CloudFlare, OpenDNS, AdGuard or default DNS servers, or even input your own, custom one.
If you want to tinker with the app’s options, you can do so by clicking the gear-shaped button in the middle of the screen. However, know that choosing the server you want to connect to is done in the same counter-intuitive manner as for the Windows app: you have to open the “Settings” section first and make your choice from there. As expected, you can still set the app to choose a suitable server automatically, either the “fastest” one or a “torrent-friendly server” or you can choose a country, region, and server all by yourself.
As opposed to the Windows version of the app, the Session section lacks the “Jumbo MTU” option, but it was a known fact that only Windows users can benefit from it. The Android Speedify app comes with a “Notifications” section in the “Settings” menu, where you can enable or disable hotspot security alerts and daily reminders (that prompt you to connect to the VPN).
Last, but not least, in the Privacy section you’ll notice that there is no DNS leak protection feature, nor an Internet kill switch. So the only thing you can configure, privacy-wise, is to toggle traffic encryption, enable or disable crash reports and configure your DNS server.
Modifying the Mac app’s parameters can be done, as usual, by clicking the gear-shaped button somewhere in the middle of the app’s main screen.
Notice that you can access several categories, depending on the nature of the setting you’re looking to tamper with. Therefore, you can access options related to servers, session, notifications, and privacy.
The servers section is, as you’d expect, the place where you can set whether the app should connect to the fastest server available or a torrent-friendly server automatically, or choose your favorite server manually.
The session section enables you to set the application to connect at startup, enable or disable redundant mode and choose your favorite protocol from the list (Auto, TCP, and UDP). The redundant mode sends all the traffic across each connection to improve its overall reliability.
The notification category only lets you set whether or not the app should notify you whenever the app connects or disconnects. Last, but not least, the privacy section is the place where you can toggle encrypted traffic on and off, disable or enable crash reports and choose your favorite DNS server from a list or configure your own one.
As you’d expect, if you want to modify the settings for the iOS app, you need to access them by clicking the gear-shaped button in the middle of the screen.
You’ll notice that the configuration menu doesn’t differ much than the ones on the other editions of the app. In order to select which server the app should connect to, you still have to take a trip to the Settings menu and configure this parameter from the Servers section. You can set whether the app should connect automatically to the fastest server available or allow you to select a server manually that it can connect to. As you can see, the iOS app lacks torrent-friendly servers in this category.
The Session section lets you enable or disable the redundant mode, which sends all the traffic to each available connection so that the reliability of the connection is increased. More so, you can choose between the Auto, TCP and UDP protocols in the same section. The “Connect at startup” option is not available in the Session section.
The Notifications category lets you set the app to notify you on various events, such as when you’re connected to unsecured wireless hotspots or when Speedify saves you from a dead hotspot. More so, you can set the app to send you daily reminders to connect to the VPN.
The Privacy section allows you to enable an internet kill switch, which automatically interrupts all traffic whenever you’re not connected to the VPN, toggle encrypted traffic, enable crash reports and change the default DNS server or configure your own one. It’s strange how MacOS and Android apps lack the kill switch feature, but the iOS app has it.
Last, but not least, you can enable Siri popups and configure them from the Siri Shortcuts section in the Settings menu.
List of servers locations
Although there is no exact count of the number of servers Speedify can provide you with, they claim that they offer you more than 200 servers in more than 50 locations.
The locations list is as follows (53):
As you can see, their server network isn’t exactly impressive, but we appreciate the fact that they covered a wide range of locations. On their website, they claim that more locations are added all the time and we have no reason not to believe them.
Services that they can(t) unlock
On the Speedify website, you can notice that they mention unlocking region-locked content and we can all agree that nowadays the most trending services that are unfortunately not available for everyone include Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video Prime, and BBC iPlayer.
However, when we attempted to bypass the geo-restriction imposed on these services, we failed, several times on several servers. However, it’s a known fact that these services have waged war against VPN users and are making serious efforts to stop them from accessing contents that they didn’t make available in the first place.
So for now at least, Speedify can’t unlock Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video Prime, and BBC iPlayer.
Torrenting and TOR support
We’ve mentioned torrenting earlier in this review, and how you’re not supposed to use torrenting on servers that are not specifically marked as being P2P-friendly. We’ve decided to put this to a test. So what we did was we set the app to connect to a torrent-friendly server (which pointed to a server in Amsterdam, Netherlands), fired up our torrent client and attempted to download a file. While it had a slow start (we assumed it was the torrent’s fault and not the VPN’s), the test yielded great download speeds and we must say that the seeding speed wasn’t low, either. Torrenting works great, as long as you’re connected to the appropriate server.
Now for TOR. As you may already know, TOR is a service that was designed to keep you private when browsing the Internet, while also providing you with access to some secret services (.onion sites). Due to the fact that it has a history of being used for shady stuff, illegal trading and other such activities, many VPN services don’t provide their customers with TOR support. However, we were glad to notice that Speedify did work with TOR. However, you might want to know that using TOR on top of a VPN might put you at risk, since malicious TOR exit nodes usually pass unencrypted traffic and are, therefore, the perfect target for monitoring.
Preparing our operating table
As usual, we’re going to put the VPN service we’re currently reviewing (Speedify) against a series of tests, to determine whether or not it can provide you with a secure, airtight connection and, after getting that out of the way, see exactly how fast it can go.
For our tests, we’re going to use the free, widely-available IPX, ipleak and BrowserLeaks services, so that you can reproduce the tests if you feel like it and even share or compare your results with ours or with others’ if you feel like it. The speed test will be performed by using Netflix’s fast.com website.
Security tests results are back
We’ve manually selected a server in Frankfurt, Germany for this test and we’re going to remain connected to the same server throughout our whole test suite, since we want to compare whether there is any inconsistency with certain location data.
Using the IPX tool: The IP address was successfully changed to match the address of the server we have connected to. We checked the PTR, country, city, latitude and longitude, ASN, ISP, domain type and IP type, and they were all spoofed and matching the parameters for the VPN server we’ve connected to. More so, IPv6 geolocation data was not available, so we can say that, according to IPX, Speedify doesn’t leak IP-related information. Moving on.
The DNS leak test returned several DNS servers, but not to worry, since none of them pointed into our general direction or had even remote connections with our ISP. Most of the servers were pointing to Belgium, while a couple was detected in the Netherlands, and all of their ASN was pointing to AS15169 Google LLC. Speedify doesn’t leak DNS requests, either.
Last, but not least, we used IPX to check for WebRTC requests and whether they leak or not. The WebRTC test returned a local and a public IP address (both IPv4), none of which was even close to our real ones. So we can safely say that Speedify doesn’t leak WebRTC requests. As a bonus, it doesn’t leak Flash IP data, either.
IPX results summary: Speedify doesn’t leak IP, IPv6, DNS, WebRTC or Flash IP data.
You can access our results here.
Using the ipleak tool: we kept steady on the server in Frankfurt, Germany that we’ve previously selected, as we said we would. The IP remained unchanged after the first test, so we can assume the connection was stable and didn’t bounce us to another server. The location was displayed accurately and pointed to Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany (this one also mentioned the region), and the latitude and longitude values checked out. More so, IPv6 data remained unavailable, so there’s no reason to think it leaks. Because it doesn’t.
The DNS test returned far more results than the DNS test we did on IPX, but again, the servers that came back as results were located in Belgium and Netherlands (this time the proportions were more balanced, almost 1:1) and had nothing to do with our real ones or those of our ISP. The ipleak tests proved that Speedify doesn’t leak DNS requests.
Finally, no WebRTC requests were leaked and no Flash IP data has been compromised, either. Therefore, Speedify doesn’t leak WebRTC requests and Flash IP data.
Using BrowserLeaks: Our last security test in the series was performed, as expected, on the same server we’ve used for the previous two tests. You can see in the attached screenshots that the same IP address is displayed in the “IP address” section of the tool, so there were no sudden drops and/or re-connections during our tests, which means that (at least during our tests), the connection was stable.
The location parameters were looking good, the country, region, city, ISP, ASN, and timezone remained faithful to our expectations, as they all pointed to the same values as for the previous tests. It’s safe to say that, according to BrowserLeaks, Speedify doesn’t leak IP, IPv6 or location details.
The DNS servers, although in a smaller amount than what the ipleak test has returned, also included IPv6 DNS addresses. However, the servers were, as before, located in Belgium and the Netherlands, with no relation to us or our ISP. The DNS test proved that Speedify doesn’t leak DNS requests.
Last, but not least, the WebRTC test returned only a local IP address (probably the local IP address that we’ve been assigned in the VPN network) and the Flash leak test came out negative. So Speedify doesn’t leak WebRTC requests and Flash IP data.
According to BrowserLeaks, Speedify doesn’t leak IP, DNS, WebRTC and Flash IP data.
Well, the security tests have come to an end and the bottom line is that Speedify can, indeed, provide you with an airtight connection, since none of the tests came out positive for IP, DNS, WebRTC and Flash data.
Speed test results
Finally, we reached that part of the review that kept us on the edge of our seats so far, since everything, from this VPN’s name to the descriptions on its website claims that it’s the fastest one out there. And for good reason, too! It combines multiple networks in order to boost stability and speed alike. Well, without any further ado, let’s take a look at the results:
- Germany – 110 Mbps;
- Australia – 48 Mbps;
- Hong Kong – 48 Mbps;
- South Africa – couldn’t take the test – server was at full capacity;
- Brazil – 130 Mbps;
- USA – 95 Mbps;
We are very impressed by the speed values these tests yielded. We expected some way lower results, but, to our surprise, Speedify takes the throne as being the fastest VPN server we have tested so far. Great job!
Our experience with their support team
First thing’s first, and I know some of you will be disappointed, Speedify doesn’t provide you with live chat support. So if you encounter any issue while using their service or have anything you’d like to ask them, know that email is the only way to go.
We’ve tried contacting them via email and we received an automated response after a few moments. However, after little more than an hour, we got our reply. The representative we talked to was nothing short of pleasant, offering us helpful and extensive replies without any hint of condescension.
More so, if you’re the lone-wolf kind of person, you’ll be happy to know that they also boast an extensive collection of guides, specialized and sorted for each device type (mobile and desktop), so you can consider yourself covered.
Generous free version
As you know, as opposed to other premium VPN service providers, Speedify provides you with a free account type, and a generous one, too. While other VPN providers give you a few days to test their services or a couple of hundred of Mbs, Speedify gives you a full 5GBs worth of traffic per month, so if you only need a VPN for doing minor work, like checking emails, buying plane tickets or reading news, the free version can prove to be more than enough.
More so, if you’re afraid that those 5GBs worth of data might get used without you even noticing, you’ll be glad to know that you can configure daily and monthly data caps, in order to limit data usage and make sure you won’t run out of MBs when you’ll need them most.
Subscription plans
If you want to use this service in a carefree manner, without having to impose restrictions on data usage and worry if the remainder of the bandwidth will last you till the end of the month or not, you can commit to purchasing a subscription plan. The plans are sorted into three categories, and are available as follows:
|
“Individual” This plan can be used by a single user, on up to 5 devices and it costs: |
“Family” This plan can be used by five (5) users, each of them on up to 5 devices and it costs: |
“Team” This plan can be used by as many users as you want or need, each of them on up to 5 devices and it costs: |
|---|---|---|
| $8.99 for a monthly plan; | $14.95 for a monthly plan ($2.99 per user/month); | $8.99 per user for a monthly plan; |
| $49.99 for a yearly plan instead of $107.88, letting you save more than 50%; | $74.95 for a yearly plan instead of $179.4 ($1.25 per user/month), letting you save more than 50%; | $49.99 for a yearly plan instead of $107.88, letting you save more than 50%; |
As you can see, the prices aren’t exactly cheap, but also not at all expensive, either, considering that purchasing a larger (yearly) subscription grants you a more than 50% discount for all subscription types.
Conclusion
Speedify is a VPN service that’s meant to anonymize your Internet connection by spoofing everything about it, ranging from your IP address and DNS requests to your location and ISP. It’s part of a larger family of products, called Connectify Inc., which is located in Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Being in a 14 Eyes Alliance country isn’t great for their image, especially when it comes to users who are truly concerned about the well-being of their privacy, but they support a no-logging policy, which makes it impossible for them to share private data about your online activities with others, since they don’t have it to begin with.
They provide support for Windows PC, macOS, iOS and Android devices. You can use their service on up to 5 devices at the same time.
Their server network isn’t exactly large and, while that might not seem like an important issue, during our speed tests we realized the importance of having backup servers to fall back on: our attempts to connect to a server in South Africa (the only one), proved to be futile, since the server was at full capacity.
Security-wise, none of our tests performed with IPX, ipleak and BrowserLeaks, have been able to pick up on any leak, whether it’s IP, DNS, WebRTC or Flash IP leaks we’re talking about. So you can consider Speedify’s connection as airtight as a submarine.
Speed-wise, we were deeply impressed of how much faster our connection got when we used Speedify’s secret weapon: joining two connections to get a faster and more stable one. As pointed out in the speed test results section of our review, so far Speedify gave us the fastest VPN connection.
While torrenting (on certain servers; actually on a single server) and TOR are fully supported and behave great, you’ll be disappointed to find out that unlocking popular entertainment services such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and BBC iPlayer is not possible.
Speedify also includes a free account type, which is a generous one, since it provides you with 5Gbs worth of traffic data that you can use each month and restrict their usage by applying data caps, in case you’re worried they might not last too much.
More so, their subscription plan prices, while they’re not the cheapest we’ve encountered, they’re not the most expensive either and are entirely justified for all the perks they’ve got in store for you.
Do we recommend Speedify? Absolutely yes. However, if you’re looking for a VPN that can unlock entertainment services (Netflix, Hulu), we recommend you don’t pick this one.
PROs:
+ No activity logging; (5)
+ Fastest VPN connection we’ve tested yet; (5)
+ Airtight security; (5)
+ Friendly and helpful customer support; (5)
+ Generous free account type with 5GBs traffic per month; (5)
+ Unique, connection fusing technology; (5)
CONs:
– 14 Eyes Alliance country; (1)
– Can’t unlock Netflix, Hulu, etc.; (1)
– Narrow network of servers; (2)
– No live chat support; (3)
We grant Speedify a 3.7/5 rating.
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