When it comes to selecting the right VPN service provider, a lot of research is in order. The right service provider can make your virtual private networks secure, fast and efficient; while the wrong ones can really give you a false feeling of security. Here is a comparison between the VPN services offered by WiTopia and Astrill, two well-known VPN service providers.
WiTopia provides secure virtual private networks all over the world, and currently has customers in close to 160 countries. Their services function well even in countries that employ Internet censorship policies. They generally have two plans on offer – PersonalVPN and PersonalVPN Pro.
PersonalVPN is priced at $49.99 per year and offers PPTP, L2TP and IPSEC services; it employs 128bit encryption with an AES 256bit cipher. The DNS servers are free and have their gateways in every continent. The only known blockage points in the world for their VPN services are in parts of Belize, Canada, China, Morocco, Guyana, Italy (Telecom Italia), Oman and the UAE.
The Pro Plan comes at a price tag of $69.99 per year and has all the features of the PersonalVPN plan, along with additional dedicated AES 256bit openVPN servers, custom connection ports and with OpnVPN and SSL services. Both plans support a wide range of Operating Systems, both mobile (iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian etc), web OSes (ChromeBook, HP WebOS) and the standard Desktop Systems (Windows, Mac and Linux). As for support, WiTopia offers live chat support and email support 24/7, throughout the year.
Astrill offers services that ensure privacy in a number of ways. It hides your network’s private IP addresses from the outside world and prevents governments and employers from monitoring or snooping into your private network activities.
Astrill offers encryption on any kind of network: Wi-Fi, private wired networks, or even cellular networks. Since the VPN layer prevents packet sniffing and data access from unauthorized entities, security is not a concern anymore. Astrill offers gateways in the US, Canada, UK, Netherlands, France, China and Australia.
Astrill’s support system too is top-notch. With 24/7/365 availability, advanced ticketing systems and phone support by trained technicians, the support offered is one of the bests available.
Daniel C.
Sander D.
If some asks from me about Astrill, i would like to give it 3/5 because low speed in peak hours. Overall performance was good than others in China.
I am pretty satisfied on how Astrill works for me. I got 1 year free stealthvpn and it’s working great on my laptop and android. 🙂
I am very happy with the service. Brilliant, Fastest, simplest yet most secure VPN ever.
Astrill’s customer service is the most horrible experience I have ever had with any company. They don’t respond for a few days and when they do respond via email, they suggest things that don’t work. After many chaser emails from me, finally they agreed to take a look at my PC remotely. We scheduled a time and then they don’t show up.
They treat customers like trash. If you do not wished to be treated that way, don’t subscribe to their product. Look elsewhere.
Asrill have the worst customer support, lies and cheating, i was asking them for a discount on 12 month subscription and they told me, „i get 15% if i make a positive review on FB/Twitter“, after i done this, they askes me to do one more review , after i doesn´t this, they tell me, i only get discount of 10 % if i do it on my wall pubilc and positiv to all my friends, on facebook, so i should lies to all my firends after the cheated me 2 times ??
1. Astrill Email from 8.06.
Hello,
We apologize for the inconvenience. As you are our valuable customer we are offering you 15% discount. Please do us a little favour, write a small review on twitter/Facebook( Max 140 chars) and send a screen shot of your post.
Contact us back if you need further assistance.
We DID is, got nothing!!!
2. Asrtill E-Mail from 8.06
Hello,
We’ve extended your account for one day. You can post a review by using astrill and please don’t forget to send a screenshot in .png or .jpg formats
Contact us back if you need further assistance.
Best regards,
Astrill VPN Support
https://www.astrill.com
I open astrill did the review, so now 2 reviews done, als as per your advice, and now u ask me to lies to all my friends about great customer support at astrill after taht experience?
3. Asrtill Email
Hello,
You need to post the review on your twitter/Facebook wall (about “140 characters”). Not on Astrill feedback page.
Contact us back if you need further assistance.
Best regards,
Astrill VPN Support
So guys, that cheating. Nothing else, and all Reviews, are not done from happy customers at all looks like Astrill need to press customeres for good feedbacks.
You adviced me 3 times to do reviews first for 15 later for 10 % and i got nothing at all
Beware all and get a good service, a product itself is worth nothing if customer service is a mess!
We apologize if Astrill VPN did not work as good for you as you expected.
1) We offer speed test tool in Astrill application on desktop device so that our customers can test all servers’ speed and select the server which works faster at their location since server’s speed depends on your current location and ISP.
2) You are requested to please report this issue a [email protected] as we do not suspend the membership or account like this. If there is any issue with the payment or your account, you will be given detailed information and steps to be done further.
3) We apologize for the inconvenience.If such measures are taken, they are just to ensure customer’s security.
4) Please note that our system detect automatically if such tool is being used by an account thus account is suspended just for security purpose.Once confirmed and security measures taken, we restore the account soon.As it clearly states in Astrill Terms of service that using such tools is not allowed in Astrill VPN services.
5 and 6) Usually Live chat and phone support team deals with all level 1 queries and level 2 department of email deals with all technical and billing issues. If required, technical issues are dealt via Live chat as well but billing department is available only via email.
7) We apologize for the inconvenience, our customer service is 24/7 so that all your queries are answered and all issues are addressed in timely and effective way.
Was a customer of Astrill for over a year and have the following input for anyone considering Astrill as a provider.
1) Some servers will crawl to nearly a dead stop (think 1200 baud speeds). You will find yourself having to switch servers often just to get pages to load. When I would contact support on the matter, I’m told “You are on a shared server, what do you expect?”
2) Paid for TWO years of service + 1 At Home Plan. After the first year of service, my account was terminated stating the subscription expired. Provided documentation of payment, documentation of the system status of services purchased (taken at different points in time), and documentation illustrating the invoice that was furnished was not accurate. Astill billing stonewalled the topic, refusing to address the inconsistencies and no refund for the year of service unfurnished.
3) When FIRST joining, few days into the service, I had to prove I was a legit customer and had to go through hoops to show payment.
4) Few months later, I was accused of spamming on their services. Few days of support emails and everything was eventually resolved… but huge frustration, especially after the heavy handed requests as a new customer to prove payment.
5) Chat support is only L1. Most real issues will require contacting L2 through email or ticket.
6) There is no way to communicate w/anyone other than L1 live…. not L2, not billing.. no one.
7) One tech support rep stated Astrill ‘knew everything’ about their customers… fyi.
We apologize if there was any misunderstanding and inconvenience.
Please note that we offer 10% discount coupon code for all our existing customers who purchase Astrill membership from Astrill website.
As per our discount offer “We can offer you 10% discount but before that we would like to ask you for a favor. Please write a small review (about 140 characters) about Astrill VPN service on Twitter or Facebook and post it on your wall. You need to have at least 20 friends or 20 people following you on Twitter or Facebook to apply for this discount. Once you have posted it Please contact us back with the link or screenshot and we will immediately give you 10% discount coupon code.”
*Please note that if you want to buy 2 year plan, you can not apply any discount of that package as it is already discounted.
We keep offering various discounts from time to time.You can visit our Twitter page for checking on discounts from this link : https://twitter.com/astrill
I have had plans with both. ASTRILL is better on several fronts. It offers a dual encrypted product (stealth vpn) which masks your open vpn connection from deep packet inspection. The PC client can be downloaded and installed with no need for configuration of the certificates. Best for me, they provide a native Linux client – very considerate and quite rare! Back end systems are more advanced. Witopia used to deal with me by email rather than tickets.