Public Review
Review from Team Pelican on Swiss VPN
My experience with SwissVPN has been positive. I initially subscribed for one month to try it out, and then resubscribed an additional 3 months. So, I’ve been using their service for 3 months total so far and will continue to be a customer when I need to renew a month from now.
A few comments:
The price is reasonable IMHO. I subscribed for 3 months service (with firewall option) at 24 CHF for 3 months (exchange rate was $26.96 USD at time of purchase). This is a small price to pay for basic anonymity.
To connect to the service, I use OpenVPN software (was the only program compatible with my system). Having never used a VPN service before, I was pleased that SwissVPN’s FAQ pages had easy-to-follow instructions to set up OpenVPN.
I was happy to learn that the programs I use that require an internet connection (besides Firefox & IE browsers and eMail software) all functioned normally and traffic was routed through the VPN (I did verify with this with a few programs that have IP data viewable).
The service is reliable and I’ve had open connections to the service for days at a time without unwanted disconnections. If an IP change is needed, you can simply disconnect and then reconnect and be assigned a new IP number.
The bandwidth is sufficient for my needs. I haven’t used other VPNs, so I’m unable to compare benchmarks for bandwidth speeds & caps of other VPNs if used from my system & location. My own results from http://www.speedtest.net/ were averaging 1.02 Mbps download and 0.98 Mbps upload between my ISP & SwissVPN.
Note: I haven’t encountered any issues that would require live customer support, but I gave it 5 stars anyway.
One last note not directly related to SwissVPN… my bank flagged the payment made to an out-of-country company as part of their loss prevention policies. A quick phone call with my bank to verify that I did authorize the purchase resolved this. So depending on your individual bank’s loss prevention policies, you may be contacted to verbally authorize the transaction.
I would recommend this VPN service. Just please be aware that the IPs are only Swiss, so if you require an IP to view media & TV shows (the UK as an example), you would need to find a different VPN that has assignable IPs for the countries you require.