iTop VPN review
Our Verdict
If you're looking for a free service for non-critical tasks with a generous data cap, iTop VPN fits the bill. But, while the paid plans offer plenty of advanced functions, it'south difficult to recommend thanks to a number issues nosotros found with its bones features.
For
- Decent costless plan
- Lots of added extras
- Long-term plans are cheap
- Can unblock BBC iPlayer and Disney+
Confronting
- Can't access Netflix of Amazon Prime Video
- Impale switch isn't watertight
- Poor website security
- Doesn't disembalm which protocols is uses
Tom's Guide Verdict
If you're looking for a gratuitous service for non-critical tasks with a generous information cap, iTop VPN fits the bill. But, while the paid plans offering plenty of advanced functions, it's difficult to recommend thanks to a number issues we found with its basic features.
Pros
- +
Decent free program
- +
Lots of added extras
- +
Long-term plans are cheap
- +
Can unblock BBC iPlayer and Disney+
Cons
- -
Can't admission Netflix of Amazon Prime Video
- -
Kill switch isn't watertight
- -
Poor website security
- -
Doesn't disembalm which protocols is uses
iTop VPN is best known as a free VPN provider, and compared to some of the competition, it's actually quite a generous service. For this review, though, we'll likewise be taking an in-depth look at iTop's paid plans, and the interesting extra features it has tucked away.
The free plan offers 700MB a day, which works out at 21GB a month – more than than Hotspot Shield, but less than ProtonVPN'due south unlimited free plan.
Paying users volition become 1,800+ servers spread beyond over 100 locations, which is a adequately decent range, with plenty of defended streaming and gaming servers, and a modest corporeality of P2P locations.
As standard y'all'll get dissever tunneling, iTop's Security Reinforce features (more on that after), plus tools for blocking malware, ads, and trackers.
To jump to whatever section of our iTop VPN review, click on the navigation bar at the top of the page. Otherwise, just keep scrolling to see if iTop VPN tin really claiming the best VPN services on the market.
iTop VPN price: how much is it, and is at that place a iTop VPN free trial?
Sign up for a single month with iTop VPN and it'll price your $11.99. That's quite expensive, but non quite the highest price nosotros've seen.
As always, longer plans piece of work out much cheaper. Sign up for 12 months and y'all'll pay $4.17 a month. Again, that's not extortionate for a mid-length program, information technology's all the same not exactly what we'd telephone call a inexpensive VPN.
Things go a lot more attractive when you look at the two-yr program (marketed at the time of writing as a Blackness Friday VPN deal with half dozen months free). That brings the price down to a very reasonable $2.31 a calendar month, which is up there with some of the cheaper services available like Surfshark ($ii.49 a month) and Individual Internet Admission ($2.03 a month).
You can pay with PayPal, card, and banking concern transfer, and auto-renewal tin be disabled at this stage so yous can avert being billed again at the finish of your plan should you want to change provider.
Finally, yous'll get a 15-day money-back guarantee on longer plans (not equally generous every bit the standard 30 days), or 7 days if you become for the monthly VPN programme.
How private is iTop VPN, and does it go on logs?
VPN protocols are at the heart of every single VPN service, and determine how your data is trransferred, and how it's encrypted to keep you lot safe. Most providers use OpenVPN and WireGuard – both trusted and open up source – alongside others, but iTop seems to stray away from the norm.
Instead of using 1 of the tried-and-truthful protocols, iTop apparently sends your information through a proxy connection to the VPN server, encrypting it with its own custom protocol.
While custom protocols aren't necessarily bad – ExpressVPN'south Lightway and Hotspot Shield'southward Catapult Hydra are 2 trusted examples – iTop doesn't give u.s. any extra information at all on what the protocol is doing, or how it has been designed. It might exist fine, merely we simply can't tell.
As well, when were signing up to the service, iTop requested our proper noun, city and Nothing code, which all seems pretty unnecessary since we'd already handed over our email.
Finally, iTop's website has a privacy issue of its own. Cheers to a poorly configured SSL certificate, we were able to access certain parts of the site while using unencrypted HTTP. That puts us at hazard, and really not good form for a product whose one task is to encrypt data.
Does iTop VPN continue logs?
iTop claims to be a zero-logging VPN provider, and it tries to back this upward in its privacy policy.
It claims: 'We do not log your activity while you are utilizing the Services, including your browsing history, the bandwidth you used, or how long y'all connected to VPN servers. We do not store your original IP address or the server IP address that y'all connect to.'
Even so, thanks to the data limit on the gratuitous program, this is impossible – bandwidth and device ID logs would be essential to achieve this.
Farther down the page, we discover that iTop VPN collects 'operating system, device ID, Internet protocol addresses, browser type, browser language, referring/exit pages, clickstream data of our websites and our products or services, and the pages or features of our software or services accessed by you and the time spent in that location.'
While a lot of that could exist to do with the website and not the apps themselves, it'south non entirely clear – and clarity is essential when it comes to VPN privacy policies.
Finally, iTop hasn't undertaken any kind of independent audit of its policy, servers, or apps, and so while we don't accept any concrete reason to distrust these claims, we practise have to take the company's word for it.
How fast is iTop VPN?
No one wants to deal with sluggish Internet speeds, and keen performance is oft at the top of most people's shopping lists when information technology comes to picking a VPN. We tested iTop VPN in the UK and US on 1Gbps connections to see what it can actually offering.
In the UK, nosotros saw pretty standard speeds of 180-190Mbps. That shouldn't slow yous down, merely it'southward by no means a fast VPN. All the same, in the US iTop perked upwardly a bit, delivering speeds of 360-400Mbps. Nosotros fifty-fifty saw one test attain a massive 900Mbps, but this wasn't repeatable and was dismissed as an outlier.
Compared to other VPNs using OpenVPN, that'due south quite impressive – ProtonVPN reached 460Mbps, while top-rated provider ExpressVPN only simply cracked 300Mbps.
Even so, compared to those services using WireGuard or other next-gen protocols, iTop lags backside. ExpressVPN'southward Lightway hitting effectually 600Mbps, and others like NordVPN and IPVanish broke 800Mbps.
Information technology'southward also worth noting that we can't tell exactly what protocol iTop VPN is using here. When we test just about every other VPN, we know that while OpenVPN speeds might be a piffling irksome, we're still fully encrypted and safe. With iTop, who knows what it's doing (or non doing) in the proper noun of better speeds?
How good is iTop VPN for streaming and torrenting?
Having a streaming VPN is important for many users, so it'due south a big role of what we examination.
When we tried to access BBC iPlayer with iTop, nosotros were pleasantly surprised, and we got in straight fashion. We had the same effect from Disney+, with the defended servers in New York and Los Angeles.
Nonetheless, we weren't able to access Netflix, even when nosotros used the dedicated servers, and Amazon Prime number Video was also a no-become.
How adept are iTop VPN's desktop apps?
Good app design is important, and while iTop'due south Windows VPN app isn't awful and offers some very interesting features, the basics have been neglected.
Take the server listing, for example. Most VPNs society their servers in some logical way – possibly alphabetically, or past ping time. Not here, though. iTop seemingly has no social club to its servers, and although in that location is a search bar, information technology's non logical in the lsightest. You also don't get a Favorites or Recents tab, and then you'll have to either search every time, or memorize that mixed-upwardly list.
Likewise, when you hit the large ol' on/off button, you'd expect to exist connected to a local server. Nope – from our UK base we were connected to Japan, and so Deutschland. Hardly ideal.
The good news is that iTop offers defended servers for a lot of different activities. There are options for Netflix, Disney+, PUBG, WhatsApp, Facebook, and a huge amount more than. The quick admission pane as well allows you to connect to a number of preset server selections to take the fuss out.
Then, those features are smart, but in truth nosotros would far prioritize a simple, effective and logical layout and feature-set rather than and somewhat one-half-hearted chief product with lots of bells and whistles tacked on.
How good are iTop VPN'southward mobile apps?
On iOS, iTop's app is nearly as basic as you can get – it's quite literally an on/off button, a drop-downwards for protocol selection, and a location list. Information technology doesn't even have a settings menu.
Android is much the same, although y'all get split tunneling, and a list of servers that's in a different order from both iOS and desktop. Not a biggie, but if yous use information technology beyond dissimilar devices, it could get abrasive.
What extra features does iTop VPN offer?
For the desktop apps, at that place'southward a remarkable amount of stuff to run through here.
To outset off, you'll get a kill switch. In our testing this worked virtually of the time, although it did fail when we deliberately crashed the app. Nosotros also didn't get a notification that this had happened, then we could've been exposed unwittingly if this had happened in existent life.
You'll go split tunneling which works as it should, directing your browser traffic, for example, through the VPN while leaving the rest untouched.
DNS Protection can help to protect your DNS settings from outside modification. Yous'll besides exist able to choose from a number of public DNS providers similar Google, Verizon, OpenDNS and more.
One feature that's missing is auto-connection on insecure Wi-Fi. Most VPNs offer this at present, then information technology's a surprising omission.
Security Reinforce is an interesting add-on, however. It will scan your PC for non-optimal security settings in other apps, and will flag these and then you can suit them. All the communication information technology gave was good, and it'south a very useful feature.
Finally, Browser Privacy is another nice feature with tin automatically make clean up your browser,
While all these features might be useful, some aren't necessarily what you need in a VPN – but information technology'due south nice to see them. However, we'd definitely prioritize bones app features over these.
iTop VPN review: Concluding verdict
With tons of extra features that avant-garde users will get a kicking out of, iTop is a pretty powerful VPN, and its gratis option is worth considering. However, for those looking for true online privacy, we can't recommend the service thanks to its untestable and undisclosed protocols – and while the apps are powerful, they lack the smooth and entry-level usability we've come to expect from modern VPNs.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/itop-vpn-review
Posted by: stephenscarn1954.blogspot.com
0 Response to "iTop VPN review"
Post a Comment