SwitchVPN is an India VPN provider owned by CS System, Inc. The VPN itself was introduced in 2015, but CS Systems has been in operation since 2010. In those years the company has grown admirably, with 250+ servers in 40+ countries, which is a respectable number for a mid-range VPN.
As far as their VPN itself, it has been found to have no leaks, offer a variety of VPN protocols, and have clients for a wide range of devices. We also found their website to be easy to navigate, and very professional looking. Customer service was another strong suit. While we do indeed like SwitchVPN, we think that there are many better VPN providers in our top 10 list of the best VPNs.
Features
We found SwitchVPN to have all of the standard VPN features that users look for. This includes:
- A no logging policy of all online activity
- Support for OpenVPN, L2TP/IPSec, IKEv2, and SSTP encryption protocols
- AES 256-bit encryption
- Network kill switch
- DNS leak protection
- Supports torrenting on all servers
- NAT firewall
- DNS technology
- Up to five devices per account
They are not missing any of the standard features, and we like their offering of four different VPN protocols. The DNS technology they have developed is unique as they claim it is powerful enough to work in China. We will review this when we have a chance.
This is a solid showing of features, but they don’t do anything beyond other good providers, and they certainly don’t match a great VPN provider like IPVanish VPN.
Servers & countries
With over 250 server in 40+ locations worldwide, we think it’s fair to say that they have an average number for a good VPN provider. Here’s a look at their servers:
- Europe: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK
- Eastern Europe: Czech Republic, Hungary, Israel, Romania, Russia
- Americas: Brazil, Canada, Mexico, USA
- Asia Pacific: Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea
This is a decent number of countries, though many have more, and they have multiple servers in many countries to keep things reliable. If they could expand their total server network numbers by about double they could be on our list of the best VPNs for geo-unblocking.
Reliability & Speed Tests
SwitchVPN make it very clear that they want to be seen as an ‘ultra-fast’ VPN service:
They also mention multi-gigabit servers for gaming on their features page. These are nice things to read, but absolutely every VPN makes some sort of claim like this. What we want to see are hard numbers. Quality VPNs will state which servers are capable of 1Gigabit+ speeds, not make blanket statements with no real promise.
We spoke with their live chat support and they confirmed that they do not impose any data caps or speed limits of any kind. This is encouraging as it will leave your speed up to you and your ISP, with no interference from SwitchVPN.
Pricing & Payments
SwitchVPN has two different pricing plans, which includes a regular service with three device connections, and a Plus service with five device connections. That’s the only difference between the two. They come in monthly or yearly renewal fees:
- SwitchVPN monthly: $5.95 per month
- SwitchVPN yearly: $3.33 per month, $39.95 billed yearly
- SwitchVPN Plus monthly: $5.95 per month
- SwitchVPN Plus yearly: $5.82 per month, $69.95 billed yearly
All packages come with a 30-day no questions asked money-back guarantee, which is always a huge plus. They also accept payment via credit card, Bitcoin, Alipay, and PayPal.
Overall, we feel that their pricing is about average, especially considering the server network you’re getting in return. You could choose a VPN provider like Cyberghost which asks $2.50 per month on their cheapest package, with access to all 3500+ of their servers.
Support
We were really happy with the support on offer from SwitchVPN. First, thier live chat was very responsive. We waited about 10 seconds to get a reply to our questions:
Besides live chat they have a very useful Helpdesk section with four major categories:
- Frequently Read Articles: This is a collection of six articles displayed at the top of the page. It will change from time to time depending on view numbers.
- SwitchVPN Apps: You can learn how to install each app for different operating systems. Each one is quite thorough, with images to help you along.
- SwitchVPN Manual Setup: As the name implies, it shows you how to manually set up everything related to your apps.
- Questions and answers: This isn’t exactly the largest FAQ section we’ve seen, and it also includes the top 6 which are displayed on the main Helpdesk page, but it is about average in terms of what’s provided.
This is pretty decent support, with their live chat being the standout feature. They could expand their FAQ section a bit to answer more questions before they’re asked.
Policies & logging
The SwitchVPN team have put a lot of work into the legal aspect of their service, and they have outlined the policies they’ve determined in two separate documents:
- Privacy policy: They log billing information such as your email address, billing address, and the payment processor handles the actual card numbers. They use cookies to track site performance. They do not share your information with any third-party, but will disclose it when required to by law. Fortunately, they openly state that they do not log any of your activities online in any way at all.
- Terms of service: The first thing covered here include basics like you must create an account, you can’t break the law in using the service, and that you have to be at least 18 years old. There’s a very thorough no-spam policy in place, so don’t think about doing any sort of spamming activities. You’ll also find their “Use as is” policy, which gives you no guarantees of the function of the VPN, and an indemnification which frees them from prosecution resulting from someone using their product unlawfully. Pretty standard stuff.
SwitchVPN had two other policies listed in their footer, DMCA and Export Control policies, but both of them went 404 when we wanted to read them.
The important point here is that they do not log your activities, but they will share your account details when required to do so by law.
Expert recommendations
There is no particular reason to dislike SwitchVPN. They’re an average provider, with average prices and a standard set of features and policies. We like their no-logging policy, and their providing of a solid kill switch feature. We would even recommend them for the number of countries which they have servers in.
Where they fall short of being a great VPN provider is their total number of servers and pricing. There’s no getting by the fact that you can get more for less, or the same price, from a number of other VPN providers we have reviewed.
