Speed & Performance
Pricing
Features
Customer Support
Inside This Article...
If you check out the ZoogVPN website, you will see that they make some bold claims, including complete online privacy and blazing speeds. Of course, all VPN providers are going to champion their service, but it is my job to find out whether these claims hold up. So, let’s take a look.
Overview
ZoogVPN was founded by a team of three people who described themselves as techies and networking geeks – Sam Jones, Alex Ovan, and George Agal. They established the company in 2013, which Zoog Services IKE owns.
The company was incorporated in the Isle of Man, yet it is now located in Greece.
In terms of privacy sharing, Greece is pretty much middle-of-the-road. It is not part of the 14-Eyes international intelligence-sharing alliance, and this is a good thing! However, as it is part of the European Union, it still engages in data sharing with other member states.
ZoogVPN has a very small network. Their current network only covers 26 counties, with just under 50 physical servers in total. This will be a big drawback for a lot of people, especially when there are VPNs that have thousands of servers, such as ExpressVPN.
There are a handful of servers located in the Asia-Pacific region, yet the vast majority are in North America and Europe.
The only server in Africa is found in South Africa, and the only server in South America is Chile.
One thing that does go a long way to lowering server congestion is the fact that there are thousands of shared IP addresses available, according to the ZoogVPN website.
Does ZoogVPN Sound Right For You?
Speeds
I was not disappointed with the speeds experienced when connecting to ZoogVPN. In fact, the performance was great, both in terms of long-distance connections and those closer to home too.
The ping times were not as great. However, this should not really have much of an impact on most of the users of this VPN.
Not surprisingly, SiteGround offered a solid overall uptime of 99.998% with only 1 minute of downtime. In 30 days, there are 43200 minutes, so when you consider that my website was down for just 1 of those minutes, that’s pretty damn impressive!
According to LittleData, the average server response time is 553ms. Anything below 302ms would put your website in the best 20% of sites surveyed.
Anything about 998ms would put you in the worst 20%. Of course, no one wants their website to be considered in the worst percentage of anything, let alone when it comes to speed.
Thankfully, my SiteGround website outperformed my expectations. I recorded an average server response time of just 160.96ms which puts my website in the best 20% – hurrah!
However, I couldn’t leave my investigation there. A great review will look at multiple data sources, and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.
Next up, I checked out my site on Bitcatcha which looks solely at server speed response. Bitcatcha displays test results for their recommended web hosts. As you can see, SiteGround sits comfortably at the top of the table with an A+.
I input my website’s URL into the search box and received the following results. It’s worth noting that when I signed up for SiteGround, I selected their west coast USA server.
We can see from the data below that SiteGround’s server response time for USA west is just 69ms, that’s 0.069 of a second!
Choosing the same data center as mine, if your target audience is in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Asia, and Europe, your response times are going to be below average.
However, London didn’t fair too well. If you plan to get most of your traffic from the U.K., simply switch your SiteGround server over to their U.K. data center – viola!
Security
You can expect the bare essentials when it comes to the security features associated with ZoogVPN.
All of the traffic is encrypted with the standard AES-256. I was also delighted to see that OpenVPN is the protocol used. You can read my OpenVPN review for more information.
There are other protocols available, should you wish to change this setting. This includes PPTP, L2TP/IPSec, and IKEv2/IPSec. Personally, though, I would just stick with OpenVPN.
ZoogVPN does lack some advanced security features. I would have liked to see the addition of split tunnelling and some other extra security features, but perhaps they will come with time.
One thing I was happy to spot was a VPN kill switch. This is a great feature because it means that your privacy is protected even if your connection does drop out for any reason. After all, we have all been there when the connection drops suddenly for no apparent reason!
What is ZoogVPN’s logging policy?
I was delighted to see that there is a strict no-logs policy in place for ZoogVPN. The privacy policy clearly states that the company does not log user IP addresses, timestamps, apps or sites the user visits, or usage information on user activity.
Aside from your email address, the only other data that ZoogVPN collects is information regarding the total download and upload data transferred on its servers. The purpose of this is so the VPN service can be maintained.
Does ZoogVPN Sound Right For You?
Ease of Use
This is another box that is ticked when it comes to ZoogVPN. I think that you will find the software very easy to use, even if you have never used a VPN before.
The app is easy to download and use. As there are not many options to play around with, it makes the application very easy to use.
Does ZoogVPN Sound Right For You?
Torrenting
If you are looking for a VPN for torrenting purposes, ZoogVPN does permit this. However, you cannot torrent on all servers. They have some VPN servers that are for torrenting and P2P traffic.
It is easy to find the servers that are P2P-friendly, as you simply need to head to the locations list within the app, and you can spot them here.
At the moment, there are P2P friendly servers across 16 different countries, which include the US, Canada, a few in Asia-Pacific, and a number in Europe.
The fact that there is a no-logs policy in place at ZoogVPN will go a long way to making torrenting fans comfortable with this choice. Plus, as mentioned, there is a kill switch, which is something that I always look for in a VPN, especially when looking for one for torrenting purposes.
Does ZoogVPN Sound Right For You?
Unblock Streaming Services
ZoogVPN is a good choice for streaming, and they have clearly created their service with this in mind.
I had no trouble unlocking a lot of the major streaming services, including Disney+, BBC iPlayer, and Netflix.
You can check out the network status page at ZoogVPN for information on which servers will work with your favourite streaming service. This makes it easy for you to find the right server for you without having to go through the trial and error process.
You can expect quality HD streaming, with only a small amount of buffering, so there is not much to complain about here.
Does ZoogVPN bypass the Great Firewall of China?
If you were looking for a VPN to bypass the Great Firewall of China, I would probably recommend looking into another VPN.
Some of the best VPNs that work in China include Surfshark, NordVPN, and VyprVPN.
I am not saying you won’t ever be able to use ZoogVPN in China, but I would personally go for something that has a proven track record and is a bit more established in the VPN market.
There are some obfuscation tools that may be effective in high censorship countries. This includes the Shadowing feature, which makes it look like VPN traffic is normal Internet traffic so that you can get past those stringent censorship blocks.
So, the signs are very much positive, but it is still early days for ZoogVPN in this area, so I can’t really make any guarantees here!
Does ZoogVPN Sound Right For You?
Compatibility
Like the vast majority of good VPNs out there today, there have been custom apps made for the main mobile and desktop services, including Android, iOS, Apple macOS, and Microsoft Windows.
If you want to find a VPN for Linux, you can use ZoogVPN, but a little bit of manual configuration is going to be needed.
As is the standard in the industry, up to five devices can be connected at the one time when using ZoogVPN.
Games Consoles and Streaming Devices
If you want to ensure your streaming devices stay protected, there have been custom apps created for Android TV and Amazon Fire TV Stick.
In terms of games consoles, ZoogVPN can be used on any device that has an Internet connection. However, you will need to follow the installation process on a supported router. The process is not the easiest, especially if you do not consider yourself very tech-savvy. There are some set-up instructions on the site, which I did think were very clear and straightforward.
Browser Extensions
There is not much to say when it comes to browser extensions, as ZoogVPN does not offer any. If you would like to find out more about the best VPNs with browser extensions you can take a look at my reviews on Google Chrome VPNs and Firefox VPNs for more information.
Customer Support
The customer support offered by ZoogVPN is decent. There is a live chat feature available, although it cannot be accessed all of the time. Plus, it is only really useful for those quick and simple questions.
If you have any technical or advanced queries, you are going to need to use the email support to contact someone with more expertise. This can be a little bit annoying, as you are going to need to wait for an answer. I found that most of my queries sent via email were replied to within a few hours.
There is also a set-up section on the website, with guides and wizards to help you along the way, as well as a basic FAQ section. I think “basic” is definitely the best way to describe this part of the site, as it is not comprehensive.
Pricing
There are four different plans available, including a free plan.
With the free plan, you will get access to three VPN locations, and you are only able to connect one device. There are limited features and limited content access, as well as 128-bit encryption, zero logs, and very limited P2P. Bandwidth is also limited at 10GB.
In terms of the paid packages, all of the features are the same; it is the contract terms and length that differ.
The one-month plan costs $9.99 per month. You can save money by signing up to a longer contract. The one-year contract will cost you $35.99 for 12 months, which equates to $2.99, representing 77 per cent off. If you sign up for 24 months, you will pay $44.99 upfront for the full two years, which equates to $1.87 per month. This represents an 85 per cent discount.
There are a number of different payment methods for you to choose from. This includes PayPal, all of the major debit and credit cards, and bitcoin too.
Summary
So there you have it: an insight into my thoughts on ZoogVPN. This is certainly a promising VPN that has a lot of good features. The speeds are good, and this is also a great choice for streaming and torrenting.
Nevertheless, I would like to see ZoogVPN make some improvements in terms of the advanced security features they have available. While the kill switch is a great addition, I would be happy to see some more security features added to the service over the coming years.
Does ZoogVPN Sound Right For You?
User Reviews
ZoogVPN Pros:
- Simple VPN apps for popular devices
- Works with Netflix
- Torrenting permitted
- Fast VPN speeds
ZoogVPN Cons:
- Average customer support
- Very small VPN server network
