My AirVPN review.

[stupidcats 14]

After using AirVPN for 5 months or so, I think I'm ready to do my review.

 

TL,DR: 

 

PROS:

 

They've a great philosophy. They fully support Internet Neutrality and they have no "traffic limits, no logs, no discrimination on protocols". 

 

CONS:

 

Bad servers. Bad support. 

 

 

My review:

 

Well, I always thought AirVPN was the best VPN out-there. Today, after thinking a bit about this, I must say I disagree.

 

AirVPN has shown to fully support Internet Neutrality. For example, this post shows that. They seem very knowledgeable when it comes to security/privacy discussions. Their reviews across the internet have been

very positive and as far as I know, there's no reason to suspect they're not following their mission.

 

Sadly, the positives end here:

 

Speeds: (Past: Perfect, Present: Below-Average/Average Dunno yet. Still testing. Apparently it's a problem on my end)

 

When I began using AirVPN, a few months ago, the speeds were great! I was getting almost my full speed, only getting 2mb less while connected to the VPN. Back then, I'd rate the speeds as "perfect".

Nowadays, I get 50% less speed while using AirVPN, that is around 15mb less. And that is if I'm lucky! Sometimes the differential is higher than that! Sometimes is lower though.. Today, I would rate the speeds as "average" to "below-average".

 

I created this thread about the issue (https://airvpn.org/topic/12768-airvpn-is-terribly-slow-nowadays-is-it-only-me/) and there are other people who've been having the same problem. "Staff" gave us an explanation about the issue. Sadly, the problem has not gone away yet.

 

Software: (Very good)

 

The software is very good I'd say. The network lock feature is very handy and does the job perfectly. I haven't had trouble with it yet, at-least not that I know of. There is however an issue with the client that AirVPN seems to be unable to replicate, therefore unable to fix. This thread explains the issue (https://airvpn.org/topic/12084-airvpn-does-not-remember-your-settings/). Basically, some users are unable to "Save settings" after checking the respective option. This is very frustrating at times. 

 

Support: (Below-Average/Average - See continuation of my review)

 

1)

 

I'm a linux user. I'm not a linux expert however.. Back when I joined AirVPN, I asked about adding the client to the start-up applications and the answers I got from the staff were not helpful at all. Perhaps because of my "newbie" nature. I had to go to a different forum in order to be able to run the client at system-start-up. I'm not sure how to rate this. AirVPN is not here to answer every question we ask them. Sometimes a user needs to do some "homework", and I think my issue here might fall in that category.

 

2)

 

After creating this thread (https://airvpn.org/topic/12768-airvpn-is-terribly-slow-nowadays-is-it-only-me/), somewhy, somehow, it dissapeared. I contacted AirVPN's support and they told me: "The topic had been hidden for a trivial mistake, we're sorry. It has been restored now."

 

I thought that was a mistake and it's perfectly ok. People make mistakes all the time, no big deal. Sadly, I guess was added to some kind of list. Now everytime I create a post or a thread, it has to be accepted. Maybe it was a mistake when they hid my post. Maybe they didn't like what they read and hoped I wouldn't have noticed? Well, let's see if this review gets posted. 

 

3)

 

Something I don't like about AirVPN is their forum/VPN setup. Basically, one uses the same account to connect to the VPN and to the forums. Of-course one can change that by creating 2 accounts. I made the mistake of not doing that from the beggining!

 

I've already given more information than I should, both in forums and in contacting support via tickets. After noticing this, I asked AirVPN to do 1 of 3 things. Either:

 

- Untie all my forum posts to me. Maybe make them "guest" or move them to a new account of mine.

- Delete all my support tickets

- Transfer credit to another account. 

 

The answer I got to each point was:

 

- "Please change your Display Name. Log in our web site, click your username on the upper right corner, click "My Settings", click "Display Name"." 

 

Comment: I've already done this and I still feel uncomfortable by using the same account to connect to the forums and to the VPN.

 

"This is not possible. Tickets are useful to our knowledge base. Answers to tickets belong to us."

 

Comment: I found this answer quite sad. We're unable to delete our support tickets because the answers they've given belong to us. So, can we delete our questions or do they belong to you as well?

 

"About your last request to transfer credit to a different account, please open a ticket to "Sales" department, they will take care of the matter."

 

Comment: Great! I guess I'll be able to fix my issues after-all.

 

 

So, I've contacted the sales department in 13-December and got no answer until today. I created a forum post asking if they're on vacation, and if so, when are they getting back. The post has been posted a few hours ago and it has not yet been accepted**. Meanwhile, I got the answer I wanted from them via the ticket system:

 

"We could do it [the credit transfer] only under exceptional circumstances, we're sorry."

 

Comment: Not great! The sales department is unable to do what the other department said they could. This is very sad, as it's something I really wanted. They took 3 days to answer me, and only after I created a post about it. 

 

 

 

I've around 400 days with AirVPN still. I bought a 1-year subscription recently and honestly, I'm sad I did. I got it for a great price though, so maybe for that price they're not so bad? I don't know, I haven't thought about that very deeply yet. What I know is: If I didn't have so many paid days, I'd probably start searching for a different VPN. This can't be the best service out there, I'm positive it isn't. 

 

 

 

** As you read in 2), my posts now need to be accepted. It hand't been accepted at the time of this writing.

 

 

PS: There are places in this review where the english might be a bit confusing. I'm not a native speaker. I wrote this quite fast and today's one of those days that I cannot think. I'll be editing and improving the english.

[Staff 9971]

 

 

 

I've around 400 days with AirVPN still. I bought a 1-year subscription recently and honestly, I'm sad I did. I got it for a great price though, so maybe for that price they're not so bad? I don't know, I haven't thought about that very deeply yet. What I know is: If I didn't have so many paid days, I'd probably start searching for a different VPN. This can't be the best service out there, I'm positive it isn't. 

 

 

2)

 

After creating this thread (https://airvpn.org/topic/12768-airvpn-is-terribly-slow-nowadays-is-it-only-me/), somewhy, somehow, it dissapeared. I contacted AirVPN's support and they told me: "The topic had been hidden for a trivial mistake, we're sorry. It has been restored now."

 

I thought that was a mistake and it's perfectly ok. People make mistakes all the time, no big deal. Sadly, I guess was added to some kind of list. Now everytime I create a post or a thread, it has to be accepted. Maybe it was a mistake when they hid my post. Maybe they didn't like what they read and hoped I wouldn't have noticed? Well, let's see if this review gets posted. 

 

 

 

I've around 400 days with AirVPN still. I bought a 1-year subscription recently and honestly, I'm sad I did. I got it for a great price though, so maybe for that price they're not so bad? I don't know, I haven't thought about that very deeply yet. What I know is: If I didn't have so many paid days, I'd probably start searching for a different VPN. This can't be the best service out there, I'm positive it isn't.

 

Hello,

 

your alleged right to delete our tickets knowledge base is unacceptable for us. We are the only ones to have full discretion to keep or delete what we write, not you.

 

We will refund your last subscription payment, since you're so positive and so sad. We don't want customers who feel to have wasted their money. Our "no questions asked" refund policy is there for that. We're confident that our service is good enough to afford such a policy: contrarily to other services, we have no interest in defrauding the customer with false features, promises etc.

 

Refund requests this year have reached an inessential 0.3%. Most of them were refunds for the paid trial period and some of them were due to the fact that the customer wanted to subscribe for a longer period, obtaining a lower per month price. 100% of refund requests (except one that was asked after 11 months from the payment) were accepted.

 

Strangely you are so positive that Air is bad, that you continued to renew your subscriptions over and over, and you did it even a few days ago. Not only you never asked for a refund, although we follow the aforementioned refund policy, but you continued to subscribe, again and again.

 

Please open a ticket and ask explicitly for a refund (again: you don't need to provide any reason). It is more honest than recriminating your past actions while you're connected to the service and while you renew your subscriptions. Then, go use some other VPN service with the money we're giving you back, make a comparison, test your claims. Should you come back here, help us improve our service to make it even better.

 

In reality, the only sad thing here is that the freedom we offer both with our service and in our forums is sometimes exploited in an attempt to denigrate us, or maybe with the purpose to make a handful of gullible customers go away from Air. The tactics is always the same and it does not even deserve to be described (readers will have understood it easily).

 

It will not work: several VPN services that shut down in the last three years confirm once again that on the long run a business that's based on customers gullibility is doomed to fail. On the other hand, our 4 years uninterrupted growth is a resounding proof that our choice to never play on gullibility, bloatware and false marketing, but to focus on transparency, quality of service and mission compliance, was right under every point of view.

 

Kind regards

AirVPN Staff

 

[stupidcats 14]

Hey,

 

You seem to be pretty mad.

 

I've made a review and and I didn't write a single lie in my review. There were points in which I actually mentioned that you did more than what was asked of you. You feel my review was not rational and based on my experience with you?

 

"your alleged right to delete our tickets knowledge base is unacceptable for us. We are the only ones to have full discretion to keep or delete what we write, not you."

 

I'm sorry, but I don't understand your point. Instead of being so mad at my review, you should explain why you won't delete one's tickets. I think I should have the right to ask you to delete the information you've about me. You disagree with this? Why?

 

 

"Strangely you are so positive that Air is bad, that you continued to renew your subscriptions over and over, and you did it even a few days ago. Not only you never asked for a refund, although we follow the aforementioned refund policy, but you continued to subscribe, again and again."

 

I never mentioned that Air is bad. I said that you might not the best. I renewed my subscription 2 times. Once for 3 months and the other for 1 year (thanks to the discount coupon you provided for 25% off if I remember correctly?). It was quite an affordable price that everyone should've made use of that.

 

"In reality, the only sad thing here is that the freedom we offer both with our service and in our forums is sometimes exploited in an attempt to denigrate us, or maybe with the purpose to make a handful of gullible customers go away from Air. The tactics is always the same and it does not even deserve to be described (readers will have understood it easily)."

 

Go read my posts on this forums please. You'll see that I stood by your back and applauded you in every single post! I'm not trying to denigrate you, I was merely writing my review.

 

Of the 3 things I mentioned, (Speeds, Software, Support), please tell me where you disagree with me. I provided proof that my speeds were not good in the thread I created for that purpose. Others had the same problem. You agreed that there was some problems going on. I didn't lie, did I?

 

In the "Software" section I mentioned that your software was good. I can only comment on the stuff I know about, and in this section I mentioned the inability to save settings for some users.. If you check the thread I linked, you'll see that I made a post there, some time ago. You think this was all a conspiracy so I could create this review today? I also mentioned that since you're unable to replicate, you cannot fix the problem. There's nothing wrong with that. I gave you "very good". It would be "perfect" but as a user, I would've liked to have that small issue fixed and there's also some room for improvement (for example, mentioning which servers are being used as a TOR exit node. This was a feature proposal on another thread).

 

In the support section is where I wrote the most. Everything I said was true. I'm sad that you're unable to delete my tickets. I'm sad that you're unable to transfer my credit. I'm sad that I was added to a moderator queue without explanation. Was I supposed to be happy for the way you handled those tickets?! I opened a ticket asking for something and you refused that something. It's perfectly acceptable that I'm not thrilled about it. This is my review. It's not intended to be a dogmatic opinion. 

 

HOWEVER

 

Having read my review from top to bottom again, I forgot to mention some pros about AirVPN, which I'll do in the next post.

 

[stupidcats 14]

My review (continuation):

 

Software:

 

 

Something I forgot to mention in my first draft was that their software is open-source. The code is available on Github (github.com/AirVPN/airvpn-client). I really value open-source software and I don't think I'd ever use a VPN with closed-source software.

 

Support:

 

Back when I joined AirVPN, a few months ago, I had a problem with my payment. After opening a ticket with them and explaining the situation they gave me another 3 days free trial. I remember back then thinking that AirVPN's support was great! It really removed any doubts I might have had about paying for Air.

 

I also opened a support ticked once asking if they had any "Discount Coupon" available and they gave me a 10% discount! Again I remember thinking that this was really good support.

 

 

 

Comment:

 

On my first post I mentioned the negatives of the support and forgot about the positives (which I just mentioned). I'm sorry for that, my review was not as objective as I thought it was. The reason for this was that the negative experiences were recent and the positive's were not.

[stupidcats 14]

"In reality, the only sad thing here is that the freedom we offer both with our service and in our forums is sometimes exploited in an attempt to denigrate us, or maybe with the purpose to make a handful of gullible customers go away from Air. The tactics is always the same and it does not even deserve to be described (readers will have understood it easily)."

 

I'd like to say something about this. I would've edited one of my posts to add this bit, but it's getting late and my posts were not accepted yet. 

 

I'm a member of some forums and some of them are VPN related (such as /r/vpn). I'm constantly mentioning you when someone asks which VPN they should go with. I did that until I had the negative experiences with you. If my attempt was to denigrate you, I would not mention you in every VPN discussion/thread there is. I would not mention both the positives/negatives but the negatives only. I would've lied in my review. I would've not continued my review and I would have asked for a refund already (after reading your post that is, the one in which you almost beg me to ask for a refund. I did not know you offered "no questions asked" refunds.)

 

You seem to want me to ask for a refund more than myself really. This leaves me sad.

[leno wtf 1]

Air needs to add LIVE support and that will make Air perfect A+++

 

Right now I'd have to give B+  lost  points for no live chat support.  Only negitive so your doing pretty damn good.  Keep It UP.  And please step up with live chat.

[Staff 9971]

Hello!

 

@epsilon

 

We're sorry, we have already explained our position and we don't wish to allocate more resources to answer in the same way: your requests can not be accepted, unless for very important reasons. We appreciate your dedication and ongoing support and thank you for your time for the review.

 

A couple of words about servers speed. Since the end of November, the point in time around which you claim the performance problem, the performance per client has increased, due to the addition of new servers and more awareness by our customers about ISP traffic shaping (especially on high bandwidth lines) and methods to mitigate it. You can easily verify that on the servers monitor page. We are keeping this trend since years: quarterly, with a couple of sporadic exceptions, we have always been able to provide an average per client bandwidth slightly higher than the previous period.

 

@leno wtf

 

At the moment a live chat support is not planned. From the experience of part of our staff, in most cases it makes the support service quality decay dramatically. The advantages it can provide for a strict minority of cases do not seem to justify the overall disadvantages. Each customer's problem needs to be tested thoroughly, requiring in most cases simulations and emulations, problem reproducibility on different systems etc., because our service has some very unique features. There's no way to provide such a support in a live chat. A live chat can be an enormous advantage for different services, but for how our service is, a live chat would be just a marketing tool and we're not interested in such deceptive practices.

 

Kind regards

AirVPN Staff

[leno wtf 1]

That makes alot of sense about the 'live chat' thanks for the input/reply.   My frustration today came because your sign up allows to create an account with wayyy over 32 character password and it accepts it as valid, Then,

when a user tries to login to app or to web page that user will see  "Invalid user/password" when that user is in fact using his known Correct Password, Only on the reset link does it warn of the 32character max.

This is what led to the situation of me wishing for live support. 

 

With all the above info I felt I had to re grade your service A+ as yall doing the damn best you can with the tools at hand.   

 

Please Continue the great work and allowing all peoples from all nations to access FREE and CLEAR interwebs.  The way it was supposed to be

 

Kind Regards also.

[leno wtf 1]

Fellow advanced poster.  I Too have noticed the personal nature of their replies, although different from most/all run of the mill web site forums, don't let this rub you the wrong way,

 

I think'   This is due to their genuine Pride in Their Product / Service and because of this pride it's likly taken as a personal hit when they see some negitive stuff.  YOu have good valid points and You didn't do anything wrong imho.

 

Just I keep in mind any jabs/comments to staff is akin to looking over at them at the high school football game and saying, "Gee your kid really sucks ballz at football".   In this case replace kid with 'product'

 

 

Best To All.

[choq 7]

Strange, I can't find myself in the ts review. But I  also don not recognize the reaction of the staff. They are (almost) always to the point and professional. This is far to personal.

Keep on the good work! Have a nice day and relax.

[zhang888 1066]

I can't agree with OP, the speed on the current servers, in case your equipment and ISP allows that, can reach almost maximum speed.

I.e. on a 100/5 mbit connection I sometimes receive a download speed of 9-10MB per second, which is about 80Mbit. Not bad at all.

Ofcourse, I don't take those html/flash speedtest as a measure, and even not Air's internal speedtest, since there are other limitations that I won't

go into right now, about the maximum B/W you can get with a single connection over high overhead TCP protocols like HTTP.

So the numbers I achieved were either on well seeded torrents, or with 8-10 connections to a popular Usenet service.

All that with a hardware based pfSense firewall with AES-NI capable CPU.

 

I used to doubt the real-time accuracy of the statistics page to be honest, before I found myself occasionaly in the Top 10 there.

 

The speed tests OP posted in other 2 threads were inconclusive - the first test "Without VPN" gave him a speed of 1.5Mbit, and the other one,

even though he said it was with VPN, it was about 20Mbit.

 

I would recommend OP to test the speed again, in the closest geographical location, and this time with a well seeded torrent (Any Linux distribution)

with VPN and without.

 

The support seems to answer most of questions, so I can't agree with bad support either.

 

The only disadvantage is the limited locations of servers, but I really can't complain about speed. And I have many accounts with other providers as well.

[stupidcats 14]

Hello!

 

@epsilon

 

We're sorry, we have already explained our position and we don't wish to allocate more resources to answer in the same way: your requests can not be accepted, unless for very important reasons. We appreciate your dedication and ongoing support and thank you for your time for the review.

 

I'm sorry but you didn't explain your position to me. Perhaps there's a thread somewhere in this forum that explains it? If so, it would be cool if you could link me. All you said to me was "This is not possible. Tickets are useful to our knowledge base. Answers to tickets belong to us.".. This is not an explanation, or at the very least, not a good one. But alright, if you don't want to answer then there's nothing I can do about that.

 

About the speed:

 

- The thread I created was using testmy.net. I've been using speedtest.net in the last few days and the speeds seem to be good.. I've read somewhere, that speedtest.net was a bad measuring tool and that's why I started using the ones linked in the /r/vpn subreddit. 

 

I'll be testing the speed in the next few days. As of now, I can't use testmy.net or speedof.me (one is blocked and the other doesn't work, nothing happens when I click "start). What site do you suggest for this purpose?

 

 

I think my review is mostly correct. Most people will probably not agree with me, but what I wrote is what happened to me. So, if you're reading this and you disagree with me, please try to place yourself in my shoes. After doing that, please let me know if I'm in the wrong here. Having said that, if I had the chance to create this thread again, I think I would not do it. This review created such hate that I was basically asked to leave. So, "Staff", I would like to solve whatever is going on so I'll probably contact you in private to further discuss this. As it is now, you both hate me and you're protecting my privacy. That's not a good combination.

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

I can't agree with OP, the speed on the current servers, in case your equipment and ISP allows that, can reach almost maximum speed.

 

+1, proven multiple times around here. [i'll look for some links as soon as the sun rises. ]

 

The support seems to answer most of questions, so I can't agree with bad support either.

 

+1

 

The only disadvantage is the limited locations of servers, but I really can't complain about speed.

 

+1

 

Some thoughts here.

• Most of the users don't experience the same speed issues as you, Mr. epsilon. As an example, in your linked topic three or four users have explicitly written they had no issues with speeds and that the problem must be on your end.
• Bad press is bad. Staff's reaction is.. questionable.

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

I'm sorry but you didn't explain your position to me. Perhaps there's a thread somewhere in this forum that explains it? If so, it would be cool if you could link me. All you said to me was "This is not possible. Tickets are useful to our knowledge base. Answers to tickets belong to us.".. This is not an explanation, or at the very least, not a good one. But alright, if you don't want to answer then there's nothing I can do about that.

 

Not sure if it's the same but in my experience a knowledge base is quite useful to provide IT support. Problems and issues are very very diverse, and to avoid wasting time figuring out the same issues over and over again you can just create a knowledge base and look up the solution to similar problems there. That's, I think, the explanation for the Answers to tickets belong to us. I hope that somehow answered your question.

[Staff 9971]

 

I'm sorry but you didn't explain your position to me. Perhaps there's a thread somewhere in this forum that explains it? If so, it would be cool if you could link me. All you said to me was "This is not possible. Tickets are useful to our knowledge base. Answers to tickets belong to us.".. This is not an explanation, or at the very least, not a good one. But alright, if you don't want to answer then there's nothing I can do about that.

 

Not sure if it's the same but in my experience a knowledge base is quite useful to provide IT support. Problems and issues are very very diverse, and to avoid wasting time figuring out the same issues over and over again you can just create a knowledge base and look up the solution to similar problems there. That's, I think, the explanation for the Answers to tickets belong to us. I hope that somehow answered your question.

 

 

 

Much better than this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us

 

 

Kind regards

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

 

 

I'm sorry but you didn't explain your position to me. Perhaps there's a thread somewhere in this forum that explains it? If so, it would be cool if you could link me. All you said to me was "This is not possible. Tickets are useful to our knowledge base. Answers to tickets belong to us.".. This is not an explanation, or at the very least, not a good one. But alright, if you don't want to answer then there's nothing I can do about that.

 

Not sure if it's the same but in my experience a knowledge base is quite useful to provide IT support. Problems and issues are very very diverse, and to avoid wasting time figuring out the same issues over and over again you can just create a knowledge base and look up the solution to similar problems there. That's, I think, the explanation for the Answers to tickets belong to us. I hope that somehow answered your question.

 

 

 

Much better than this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us

 

 

Kind regards

 

Dat beat..

[CultureVulture 30]

Ohhhhhhhhh yeaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh..........

[AB10134 8]

I'm currently on a trial account and I've had two support tickets opened and answered within an hour with solutions that worked along with requests to let them know with a follow up ticket if my problem was solved ( a proper response in under an hour is awesome customer service ! and i'm not talking about some template they copied and pasted ).

 

Live chat would be nice but i'd rather their staff maintain the network and answer trouble tickets in a timely fashion then sit at a computer waiting for some one to " live chat " then wait a few mins for them to type in a response.

 

So far my experience with AirVPN has been pleasant.

 

My only gripe is a lack of westcoast NA servers but i'm sure that will come with time.

 

My two cents.

[DudeGannivelka 2]

Hello,

 

So I'm a newly AirVPN customer, I was previously using another VPN service which was really efficient but had one important lack in features that I really needed :

 

 - The possibility to do port forwarding.

 

I could only disable or enable their NAT Firewall, and when disabling it, my synology port 22 was constantly under attack (chinese IPs ftw...) but when enabling it i couldn't access to my Synology server (and all its softwares) from the outside.

 

So it does what I want i.e. port forwarding, my only issue now is that two of the main websites my Synology needs to acess to are blocking traffic from AirVPN servers (thetvdb and trakt), so now I'm pondering the fact to just stop using VPN altogether since I'm living in Europe and we are a bit more free about our Internet usage and since I use anyway encrypted connection for bittorrent and SSL for newsgroup.

 

What is your experience about the blocked internet websites ? Does AirVPN support usually find a way to lift the ban ?

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

Does AirVPN support usually find a way to lift the ban ?

 

As Trakt appears to be quite popular around here I think it's just a matter of time Staff will do something about it.

Thanks to the block I got interested in this service, too, and I'm hoping for a quick fix.

Usually you change the servers and it works again. Popular services and websites might get microrouted internally to one of the multihop servers.

[PortlyNinja 17]

Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one