Provider Overview:
Astrill is a professional fast and secure VPN that protectes your privacy on-line and makes you anonymous all the time while surfing on the net. With Astrill, you can feel safe every time you turn your PC on and you do not have to worry about your personal data being stolen by somebody else. Astrill makes your internet activity completely covered, not even your ISP will know what sites you have visited. Astrill comes out of the box with UK and USA IPs, which in combination with easy few-step installation and 24/7 support makes it one of the best VPN solutions in the market.
Astrill Highlights:
- Proprietary VPN client application
- Proprietary Astrill-developed VPN protocol OpenWEB
- Over 40 VPN servers available
| Information | |
|---|---|
| Price | 10.99$ per month | 63$ per year |
| Traffic | Unlimited |
| PPTP |  |
| L2TP | |
| SSTP |  |
| OpenVPN | |
| Server Locations | USA, UK, Germany, France, Canada, Australia, Ireland,Netherlands |
| Network Restrictions | None listed |
| Moneyback Guarantee | |
| Payment Method | 2Checkout |
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Yup, they terminated my account this morning without giving any proof or notice as to why. I have disputed this to paypal and included this website as reference to the others that has similar experience with Astrill VPN.
I suggest everyone who purchase via paypal to dispute their case against this company immediately.
Same story as many others: account canceled with no explanation, more than 5 months remaining on my subscription. All that money is gone, they refuse to reply to any emails and the chat server is down. Clearly nothing but a scam. Don’t waste your money!
I was paying monlhty for about a year which was much more than paying for 1 year at once. So I ordered 1 year service but they kept charging me monlhty. I tried to disable automatic renewal but every time I clicked disable automatic renewal nothing happened. It is a known issue on their forum but they have not addressed it. Every month I emailed support and all they did was refund the month I was charged. I had to do this EVERY month. I kept asking them to just disable automatic renewal but they never did. I kept getting charged every month.I kept begging them to disable it and finally they got fed up with me and disabled my service without refunding the remaining 10 months I paid for!
I used Astrill for about 10 months. I was going to pay for another year when my 1 year approached. But yesterday Astrill changed all that. I could not log in (error #399). I tried to reset my password on their site. It said it changed and sent me an email confirmation but I still couldn’t log in. I contacted the web support. Mark curtly replied that I should contact level 2 support. He completely ignored my requests for a hint of what might have gone wrong (ignored for about 10 minutes). Level 2 support got back to me in about 1/2 a day. Here is what they sent:
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Hello,
Your account has been automatically suspended, because you have logged on from a computer connected with one of the accounts involved in a fraud scheme. The computer you kept logging on from is connected to over 112 other accounts, this is considered account sharing and is against Astrill Terms of Service.
Your account has been terminated due to Astrill Terms of Service violation, under section 5. Use of the Services by you
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So my last message from them is one in which they claim I was stealing their service which just isn’t true. I got no warning, no explanation, no attempt at helping me figure out what had gone wrong.
Up until then, I was perfectly happy with their service. It had a few glitches, but all VPNs do. But I won’t put up with being treated this badly from someone who is taking my money.
As a followup to my post dated March 8: Approximately 24 hours before the March 8 post I had sent Astrill a possible explanation with screenshots of why they might think I had been stealing their service. I told them I would give them 24 hours to give me back my account. Well it turns out that I was right — using a Parallels VM inside of a Mac seemed to set off their alarm bells. Unfortunately for both Astrill and ME, they completely ignored me for over 2 WEEKS! I have since found another VPN provider. I verified beforehand that this VPN provider does not mind my VM setup. This is just too little, too late, Astrill.
For those who are shopping for a VPN service, I would like to share with you the e-mail that I received from Astrill over two weeks too late:
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Hello,
We have learned that virtual machine caused your account to be suspended.
Your account is now fixed. Sorry for the inconvenience caused.
You can use your Astrill VPN account now. If we have refunded you already, you will need to place a new order from Members section (link deleted by Ed).
Best regards,
Astrill Support
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Astrill is one of the least reliable products I’ve purchased in the last year. It can’t hold a connection and of the 43 servers only a handful transmit at speeds over 10kb/s. I highly recommend trying any other VPN option. And should you go with Astrill anyway, be prepared for ill-tempered customer service and incompetent tech aid.
It was great a few months ago , but now it`s too slow for me: I can hardly watch a 5 min video on YouTube at average quality. I have to switch between servers a few times a day to find one with decent speed. I contacted support about this and they were pretty fast to reply, but did not solve the speed problem. Hope they add more servers soon, or I`ll be looking for a different provider.
I have not use Astrill’s VPN, but I have dealt with their customer service extensively. I was an affiliate of Astrill for several months, and now Astrill does not return my emails regarding the THOUSANDS of dollars they owe me.
No only that, their customer service is very ‘short’, cold, and uninterested in customer complains. I’ve had Robert from live support exit support chats with him before I was finished speaking, and have many emails ignored or responded with automated responses over the months. I think my favorite quote from Robert was “That doesn’t concern me, contact email support”.
It doesn’t matter whether their VPN is cheap,fast or reliable, because with such a rubbish customer support team, you’d better hope nothing goes wrong, or you’re on your own.
Scam! Stay away from this company! I got a great offer, 40% discount, 39$ for a year. I signed up, and then just as I was about to pay… the price changed! It almost doubled! Suddenly I had to pay 59$! What happened to my 40% discount???
I contacted support and they said they have no discount offers on their site. Then I sent them the link with the ad proving it was on their site, and in addition a screenshot of it. They then claimed I had signed up with another affiliate… which is not the case at all… why would I? Now they deleted the discount page on their site, and won’t give me the discount I have proved that I was offered. It is just a scam!
Be careful people! These guys refuse to register you unless you give them your mobil phone number. Why? What do they want your mobile phone number for? Why do they refuse to register you any other way? When do you start to receive ads on your mobile? There have also been reports about their program is a trojan. And they give you fake discounts and then try to charge you twice the amount. Stay away! There are a lot of other VPN services that are serious and are not trying to scam you. Go with one of them. Thats what I am going to do. Never Astrill again!
We just got back from China. Astrill worked perfectly in Beijing and Guangzhou.
Also, if you have two or more laptops I suggest you bring a wireless router. I haven`t tried it, but I`m pretty sure you can connect the router to the VPN and the laptops to the router. Beats buying 1 account for every laptop.
I was with Astrill for a month and their overall servers speed was great, they do have many locations but some of them, like Australia, is only available using the OpenWeb protocol which only works for webbrowsing (ie no torrents), not a big problem with that though, there are plenty of other locations using OpenVPN.
I did not like the OpenWeb protocol because some Web2.0 sites with feeds or video did not work with it, but nobody forces you to use it and OpenVPN is still available. Astrill has the best VPN client I have seen around, you can configure it to speed up streaming videos, block ads, etc.
I was happy with everything except by the part where they ask for your mobile phone number in order to register a new account, they send you a SMS message with a code to verify you own that mobile phone and then they store the phone number in your account once it has been verified.
I see it like storing your real ID because your phone number is linked to you and you just verified you own it, I felt this was unnecessary and all they should know about me is my email address, I can easily see a RIAA subpoena forcing them to release my phone number, anyone with the proper paperwork can force Astrill (or any other VPN) to reveal your account details, and you can’t deny it’s not you because you just verified you own that phone number using the SMS code they sent you.
Had it not been for that I would probably still be with them, they have great server speed and good support.
You *CAN* use Astrill on a router, or so I hear, but I wasted $40 on a router just to use Astrill, based on the firm confirmation that this router in fact could work with Astrill, only to figure out that it can’t. Their support for their router OpenVPN stuff is AWFUL… you will not know what router will work because Astrill washes their hands of any responsibility as it’s a “third party” firmware, even though they advertise it as a big selling point. Review below…
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Okay, Astrill has an advantage, and that’s that the VPN itself is pretty reliable. If you’re in China, you’ll only have minor probs with it, and it won’t be all the time.
The main problem is their support. When I think of Astrill’s support, I think of a little Filipino woman with an attitude who is getting paid peanuts and barely speaks English, whose neck I wanna wring with my bare hands.
The reason I say this, is it is literally impossible to get a hold of a real person (read: not-monkey). Their live chat exists, but it’s ****ing terrible. They usually have this girl named Rosalie, maybe it’s just a buncha different third worlders, and she has literally NO idea wtf is going on. She’s like the human version of an answering machine. If it’s anything other than logging into the website, or something that anyone could figure out via Google or their website, and I mean *easily* figure out, she will refer you to “Tier 2″ or “Tier 3,” email support. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is the same person.
I have an email thread/exchange about 8 emails long for literally the same issue, and the last two exchanges I made sure to explicitly ask to “read all the questions” again, and answer all of them. I got a response back showing that not only didn’t answer the questions, but basically spat in my face by claiming that “all DDWRT routers can install openvpn and run Astrill,” when that was the whole point: that I have a useless new router that is DDWRT, and doesnt work!
Support is a joke. In fact, in the top “tier” support emails, they don’t even sign their names, like “Bob, Astrill,” so you don’t know which idiot is driving you insane, nor which to report to Astrill… who might already know and not care. I picture some asshole guy owning the company who is making the money passively and doesn’t give two s***ts about customer infuration.
Bottom Line: Astrill is pretty reliable, and not bad. Just pray you never have a problem with anything. There’s some guy floating around on the astrill reviews who was jacked out of money, apparently, as an affiliate. If you deal with Astrill’s support, you’ll immediately know first hand that he’s probably telling the truth.
P.S. Had to give it 1.5 stars… simply because their support is just so terrible, beyond words.. plus the $40 I dropped for the now 100% useless router.
Mods: Please delete my repost (above)
Update Feb 10th, 2012:
Okay, Astrill has now allowed me to switch back to OpenVPN, even though they are making an “exception.” Personally, I believe they should let customers switch back and forth whenever they want. It makes happy customers, and costs them little to nothing (I assume).
Regardless, after sending an incredibly courteous email to Astrill practically begging them to let me switch back if I could find a compatible router, they did allow this exception. Furthermore, a person actually signed his name on the email, so I know who to contact in the future.
I’m torn in writing this, because while they did help me personally, their support is severely lacking. However, they did make amends, and in the end I’m happy to have gone with Astrill. As I mentioned in the original review, their service really is reliable, especially if you’re in China.
Suggestions for improvement:
-Hire more native English speakers, even if it means your costs go up slightly. Customer satisfaction really is so key in a business prone to heavy competition like VPNs. As it stands now, people with issues get “passed around” a lot in the Astrill support network.
-Monitor your live chat sessions. Anonymously go into the chat sessions as a customer with a problem, and see how you feel you’re treated. If you feel like you’re talking to an answering machine and not getting the TLC you want — heck, forget TLC, common courtesy and not abruptly leaving the chat — then get a new operator(s).
-Allow more of “the customer is right,” such as allowing people to switch PPTP vs OpenVPN, *especially* if the customer has been patiently trying to resolve the issue for weeks. Be flexible. Happy customers are directly related to profits.
-Your OpenVPN service, I’ve yet to try. However, your support for it really needs tremendous improvement. I understand it might be costly to evaluate and 100% confirm which routers work with Astrill, but if it’s a main selling point, you must do this to retain customer trust and loyalty. What you’re doing now is akin to giving a child a gun for the first time and demanding he hunt his food in the wilderness if he’s to eat that night. You can’t wash your hands of responsibility… I’m a highly intelligent human being, but I’m not a programmer or computer wiz. If there are no guides available to determine *guaranteed compatibility* with Astrill, and you plan on telling customers they must buy a compatible device, then it’s your responsibility to make the guides, or you limit yourself to experts on VPN firmware systems, and pissed off customers.
Conclusion:
Thanks again to Astrill. If they upgrade their support system(s), and provide up-to-date documentation and information on OpenVPN, I believe they can easily become the undisputed dominant force in the VPN market. Whether they end up doing so is, of course, up to them.
TJ
I use astrill.com, it`s very reliable, many servers available and pretty cheap.
They have a fair list of locations to choose from and a custom-made application you can use to connect to their servers. I contacted support about 2 times and got a response in about one hour, which is OK for me. Good company overall and helpful support.
I am happy with Astrill, their application is clean, simple and mac-friendly. I had some issues with billing, as they declined my first order, and it took some time to straight it all up, but besides that it was all good.