I have been using Astrill for one month now, during all this time I have contacted their support team twice and in both occasions they replied to me in under 24 hours, what I liked most of their support system is that unlike other VPN providers when you contact Astrill via email you are sent an automated reply with a ticket number and this gets logged into your account with the date and time, pretty much impossible to ignore and you can refer to your previous queries/tickets any time you like.
I was highly impressed with Astrill’s VPN client, it is one of the geekiest and most complete I have ever come across, it includes proprietary technology that Astrill calls OpenWeb, using this mode you can use the VPN to surf the Internet with one browser and a second browser using your real IP to visit a different website, you can also use the VPN for browsing the Internet and your real IP for filesharing, unnecessary since P2P torrents are allowed in the VPN using the specified servers, or tweak the VPN client settings so that a video site will be visited using the VPN proxy and the video will be streamed through your real IP, this can speed it up.
Astrill VPN client is compatible with all major browsers, Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera.
Astril VPN client main features
- Advertising blocking: Blocks website advertisements speeding up your Internet browsing.
- Stream flash videos directly: Video is streamed with real IP while website is visited using the VPN.
- Port forwarding: Changes Internet browsing port.
- Autoclear cookies: It helps clear cookies and flash cookies.
- Video accelerator & YouTube burst mode: Prevents buffering when whaching online video.
- Record media to hard disk: Downloads and saves videos or music to your hard disk.
- IP and website filtering: It specifies if the VPN tunnel has to be used or not for certain IPs and websites.
Astrill VPN client
Astrill’s VPN servers locations are more than acceptable, they go from Australia to Portugal wandering by the USA and Canada. Some of the servers are only available using OpenWeb (the ones located at places where bandwidth is expensive I presume), using OpenWeb for surfing considerably reduces the consumed bandwidth since OpenWeb only seems to work with your Internet browser using port 80, the VPN client informs you in real time of your download and upload speed.
Since I wanted all of my computer traffic to be proxied I selected the OpenVPN mode, I am in Europe using a 10MB pipe, Astrill USA and European servers gave me close to my full original ISP speed just the ping lagged a little bit, I am wholeheartedly satisfied with their VPN speed.
I used various times Astrill USA VPN to watch Hulu and their Canadian VPN to watch GlobalTV, no problems at all in both cases, they weren’t blocked.
I only have two grievances against Astrill, the first one is that they ask you for your mobile phone number in order to register an account, this is a big deal, in most European countries the only way you can get a mobile phone number is by showing your real ID, Astrill stores this phone number in your account, as I see it this is like storing your real identification, I rather they only stored necessary customer data like your email to contact you and nothing else.
The other thing that I wasn’t too happy about is when I discovered a permanent online voucher giving me a %30 discount with Astrill but I was unable to use it because it is only for new customers and I can’t open a new account with Astrill because you need a mobile phone number for that and I had already used mine up, what comes to my mind is that if Astrill can afford to make those huge discounts it now feels like overpaying.
Astrill VPN client settings
Overall the standard monthly price is pretty average but their yearly discount is superb value for money, you will be getting a reliable VPN service with a dozen servers and premium speed for the price of a cheap VPN, and if you manage to use the 30% discount you will be getting an unbeatable bargain.
If you want a 30% Astrill discount code visit Moviein3D and sign up for an account through their link.
Frank
I also ran into a problem with their mobile phone requirement, the biggest being that (gasp!) I don’t own one. When I asked why it was a requirement through their live chat, the support person (forgot to make note of the name) first just said that it’s a requirement for verification. When I pointed out to him that I was already “verified” by both Paypal and my credit card companies, he told me it’s a requirement of their payment processor.
I do business through Paypal all the time, so I know that they do NOT require you to get a person’s mobile phone number. So even IF whoever they’re using to process credit cards requires the phone number, there’s no reason they couldn’t have a separate payment gateway for those wanting to pay through Paypal. Just seemed fishy to me.