Surfshark Review

Quick Review

Founded in 2018, Surfshark is one of the newer players in the VPN industry. Although they are a relatively new provider, they have performed very well in speed, privacy, and security tests. With AES-256 encryption, OpenVPN, and IKEv2 support, Surfshark also has a strict no-logging policy and a kill switch to protect your information if your connection is lost.

Additionally, it supports split tunneling, VPN chaining, and URL and ad blocking. Oh, did we mention that they now have a total of over 1,040 servers in 61 countries? As if that wasn’t enough for a promising VPN service, Surfshark also allows unlimited simultaneous connections with a single subscription! So, it’s a great choice if you’re looking for an affordable, fast, reliable, and long-lasting VPN service.

Privacy / Anonymity

Surfshark doesn’t lack in security either. It offers all the basics you’d expect, such as DNS leak protection, an automatic kill switch, secure encryption, and its own version of a double VPN called MultiHop that provides an extra layer of protection. Surfshark also offers plenty of extras such as the HackLock feature that alerts you if a data leak occurs, as well as a CleanWeb feature that effectively combats any tracking, phishing, or malware threats.

If you’re tired of seeing random ads pop up every time you’re online, you’ll be happy to know that they now offer a special search tool that doesn’t keep track of your browsing history. This means that advertisers can’t use your preferences and browsing history to bombard you with personalized ads. And yes, Surfshark works in China, but the manual setup required could be problematic. But hey, if there’s a will, there’s a way! We would be cautious if we tried to use a VPN service in China, however.

One of the biggest concerns about privacy and VPNs is whether or not the provider keeps logs. Surfshark does collect some information like your email address, password, and billing information, but these are only necessary to manage your account. It does not collect information about sessions, bandwidth used, browsing history, network traffic, and connection time. Additionally, this VPN provider is based in the privacy-friendly British Virgin Islands, which means it is not part of the Eyes Alliance jurisdiction. If there is one thing to worry about, it is that they may collect third-party advertising identifiers for marketing purposes, but you can easily fix this by disabling them in your app settings.

Speed ​​and Reliability

In general, you can expect a slight loss in speed when using a VPN service, depending on the strength of the encryption method. However, this loss should not be too significant. After all, what good is a VPN if you can barely browse the internet or play online games due to excessive lag and buffering? Luckily, Surfshark performed very well in all of our tests. Before trying to connect to one of their servers, we had a download speed of around 40.70 Mbps. The speed dropped to 25.40 Mbps when we were connected to the US server and to around 20.07 when we used a UK server. The speed is pretty much consistent and still fast enough for video conferencing and even online gaming. We tried connecting to a server in Asia, specifically Japan, and we still got an impressive speed of 13.29 Mbps. Overall, the results were excellent and we didn’t notice any connection drops or speed drops during testing.

Platforms and Devices

As we mentioned earlier, one thing that sets Surfshark apart from the competition is that it offers unlimited simultaneous devices with a single subscription. It offers secure browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox and is compatible with major platforms such as macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android. If you want to use Surfshark for your Playstation, Xbox, Linux, and gaming consoles, you can refer to their website for manual installation guides.

Server Locations

Surfshark was only established in 2018 and yet it has managed to build an impressive server network in a short period of time. This VPN now offers over 1,040 servers in 61+ countries.

Customer Service

Surfshark’s customer service is awesome. They have a 24/7 live chat option, which you can find on their homepage. You don’t even have to go to their help page! We tried to submit a question and didn’t have to wait long. Within a minute, a representative answered our question politely and professionally. The agent was friendly and very efficient. In addition to the live chat option, Surfshark’s help page has a knowledge base full of tutorials, general information, and common billing questions. Pricing

Surfshark

currently offers 3 subscription plans. A monthly subscription is available for $11, while a 12-month subscription is only $4.99 per month. That’s a 50% savings! The best deal though is the 2-year plan, as the monthly price is reduced to €1.49 per month, making it one of the cheapest VPN services on the market. All of these plans are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.