FrootVPN Review

FrootVPN was founded by Frootynet AB in Sweden in 2014. It’s the third Swedish VPN I’ve reviewed till date (another ones are PrivateVPN and Mullvad). It is important to note that Sweden is a Nine Eyes jurisdiction.

It’s one of the most affordable VPN services available on the marketplace today.

But does that make it great? Do you really want the lowest price when your privacy is at stake?

In this review, I’ll discuss the pros and cons of FrootVPN. I signed up for them and used them extensively over the period of a few days.

So I’ll lay out how their performance, like speed. And tell you whether or not the cheap cost actually comes at a price.

Additionally, I will be comparing their customer support and other features to other VPN currently software on the market, revealing if it works on Netflix, if you can use torrenting, and more.

But before I dive into all things good and bad about FrootVPN, here’s some background about the company so that you know exactly who you’re dealing with.

FrootVPN Overview

OVERALL RANK:	#25 out of 78 VPNs
USABILITY:	Easy to Use
LOG FILES:	No Logging Policy
LOCATIONS:	35 countries, 150 servers
SUPPORT:	Low quality customer support
TORRENTING:	P2P & Torrenting Allowed
NETFLIX:	Yes 2/5
ENCRYPTION/PROTOCOL:	2048-bit
COST:	$4.99/mo
OFFICIAL WEBSITE:	www.frootvpn.com

Who is FrootVPN? Background…

My first visit to FrootVPN.com revealed a pretty legitimate, high-quality looking site.

It seems that the company has really put the time and effort into the aesthetics. The overall design seems modern, with a color palette of black, orange, and green.

There’s also a dialog box in the bottom right-hand corner if you need to live chat with a FrootVPN employee.

We’ll talk more about the company’s customer service quality later on. I had extensive experience with this little box.

Here’s what FrootVPN has to say about themselves on their website, aside from claiming to be the “fastest, cheapest, and most secure VPN”.

Other details on the homepage seem to be promising, like the “Keep no logs” graphic just below the fold.

This VPN was promoted by Pirate Bay in it’s early stages, which was pretty controversial, considering all of the legal troubles that they’ve faced for their torrenting practices.

As you may already know, Pirate Bay was even raided by Swedish police in December 2014, causing them to go offline for a few days.

The site changed its frontpage logo to promote FrootVPN, which lead to 100,000 new customers, according to TorrentFreak.

But first, let’s take a look at some of their features so you get a better idea of what they offer.

FrootVPN Compatibility and Features

Here’s what the service claims you’ll get with any package:

While those features look great, this VPN does have a lower amount of total servers than most other competitors, such as PIA. FrootVPN offers 150 servers across 35 countries including:

• Canada
• France
• United Kingdom
• United States
• Sweden
• Australia
• Netherlands
• Poland
• German
• Russia
• Switzerland
• South Korea
• Hong Kong
• Singapore
• Isle of Man
• Brazil
• Israel
• Japan

Their software is available across devices such as Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. It also works on routers.

So although you can ‘officially’ use FrootVPN on 5 devices simultaneously, you can really expand that with a router connection.

The company offers an installation guide here for DD-WRT routers. They also support IPv6.

Each of these devices can be connected through OpenVPN, PPTP, and L2TP protocols. OpenVPN is the best choice for most with state-of-the-art AES-256 encryption. While PPTP and L2TP are serviceable for older devices or connections who’re less concerned with top-notch security.

FrootVPN offers a Kill Switch, like many of the other leading VPN providers. That’s great news because it can save you when you least expect it.

If your network connection drops at any time, your VPN connection will also drop. Leaving you completely exposed to the public.

Unless… you have a kill switch that severs the connection instantly. That way, none of your browsing activities are shared.

FrootVPN Pricing and Plans 

Now that you know what FrootVPN offers, you’ll need to know how much it’s going to cost you.

But first, it’s important to note that the company has a 30-day money back guarantee policy.

So you can try out their service for a few weeks before being locked into anything.

Otherwise, pricing for FrootVPN is pretty straightforward.

There’s absolutely no difference in the three packages they offer, except for the amount and length.

You can choose between these billing plans:

• Monthly: $4.99/mo
• Quarterly: $11.97 ($3.99/mo)
• Annual: $35.88 ($2.99/mo)

Everything is one-size-fits-all. So there’s no guesswork about which features come with different packages. It’s all-in.

That keeps things nice and simple compared to the pricing plans of some other VPNs. There’s no mystery here.

You get access to every server offered by FrootVPN across every country, access on five simultaneous devices, and the same speeds on any plan.

The annual pricing plan is also a pretty competitive one. The value here is huge: a 40% savings compared to their other plans. Most VPNs aren’t $2.99 per month.

The only downside here is that the payment is one lump sum, but it’s worth it.

If you don’t want to pay every year, but still want to try out a valuable plan, I would recommend starting out with the three month option that will still save you 50%.

There are also tons of different payment methods available. Use your debit card, credit card, PayPal, Bitcoin, and Perfect Money, which is kind of similar to PayPal.

FrootVPN Pros

Here comes the part you’ve been waiting for.

I’m going to reveal my experience with FrootVPN’s speed, usability, customer support, and more.

So let’s get started with the good stuff first.

1. Strong Security & Privacy

FrootVPN uses 2048-bit encryption.

While not as secure as AES 256, it is a more practical option most of the time.

The service also offers PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), which provides “cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication.”

As of December 2015, FrootVPN received an A+ SSL Rating (Secure Socket Layer).

Torrenting and P2P traffic are allowed through FrootVPN, too.

FrootVPN claims not to log any of your data, other than your email address and username.

This is great news for your privacy, because you’re probably only interested in using a VPN to protect your privacy in the first place.

The only downside is that you need to be able to trust your VPN provider (like FrootVPN in this case), because they will be able to connect your personal data (like your email address) to your account.

2. Cheap Pricing

FrootVPN’s month-to-month pricing of $4.99 is pretty good.

However, they offer some massive discounts for both quarterly and annual plans.

The 40% savings on the longer option is an amazing deal.

In fact, it makes them one of the cheapest plans I’ve seen at only $2.99/month.

Only ZoogVPN and VPN Unlimited are slightly cheaper (by only ~$0.50/month).

3. FrootVPN seems to work with Netflix (at least for now)

FrootVPN claims to work on Netflix. So I was excited to see if the claim was true.

After all, some people only use a VPN for Netflix access to other countries’ titles.

When I first tried to access Netflix using a server out of Vancouver, Canada, here’s what I was met with:

But when using a different server from Mexico City, Netflix actually worked. Here are some of the titles that immediately appeared:

I was able to watch a few of these titles, so it appears that Netflix does work on FrootVPN, on select servers, in select countries.

4. Solid Usability

FrootVPN’s usability was pretty good initially. It was also easy to install.

Once you download the software, you’ll be prompted to log in.

Then after entering your credentials, here’s what you’ll see on the FrootVPN platform:

This is about as complicated as it gets.

You can scroll through the list of servers to connect there, press the star to add the server to your favorites, or go to the drop-down menu to click on a server.

You can also use the drop down menu to select which kind of VPN you want to connect to.

Overall, not too bad.

 

FrootVPN Cons –

FrootVPN offers excellent security and pricing.

Unfortunately, the rest of their offering couldn’t live up to that high bar.

Here are a few of the biggest drawbacks I saw with FrootVPN.

1. Very Slow Download Speed

Privacy is awesome. But you can’t completely sacrifice performance at its expense.

For example, I ran some speed tests from US, EU, and Asian servers to find out just how good FrootVPN is at managing traffic.

Here is what I found.

US Server (California)

• Ping: 181 ms
• Download: 19.47 Mbps
• Upload: 14.19 Mbps

These speeds could definitely be a bit better.

EU Server (Netherlands).

• Ping: 46 ms
• Download: 18.59 Mbps
• Upload: 40.57 Mbps

These are actually pretty low speeds for the EU.

Asia Server (Singapore)

• Ping: 228 ms
• Download: 32.09 Mbps
• Upload: 9.28 Mbps

Honestly, this result was kind of disappointing. Going from 40 Mbps upload speeds for EU servers to only 9 on Asian servers is a huge decrease.

Overall, I wasn’t impressed with these speeds. Especially when you compare them to VPN providers.

And the fact that FrootVPN tries to claim “high-speed” is one of their biggest benefits. Just take a look at this case-study we did in order to find out fastest VPNs.

2. Low Customer Support Quality

One of the most common complaints about FrootVPN is that their customer service experience is lackluster.

Here’s what my experience was like.

When not logged into your account, here’s what happens when you click on the “Need help?” button on FrootVPN’s site:

You have to enter in an email address to proceed forward and ask your question.

However, if you’re logged in, the live chat looks a bit different. You can access the “Support” area from your dashboard in the bottom left-hand corner.

You account member details can also be found on this page.

When you click on support, you’re directed to a FAQ page to see if there’s an answer to your question there.

If it isn’t, you’ve got a couple options to talk to customer support. The most prominent is the live chat feature.

When I tried to submit a message, I received a notice that all agents were busy.

You’ve got to enter in your name and email along with your question.

Here’s the one I submitted:

Once clicking the checkmark, you should receive a notification that your message has been sent.

If you don’t want to take the live chat route, FrootVPN also offers a ticketing option:

However, you can assume that this method works the same way as live chat does when all agents are “busy” or offline. In other words, your message goes to a queue somewhere to wait for a response.

After submitting a question, I expected some kind of an email from FrootVPN letting me know that my question was received and giving me an estimate of how long it would take for them to get back with me.

I never got one. And hours later, I still hadn’t received an answer to my question.

It wasn’t until the next day that FrootVPN got back with me. Here’s what they said:

All they did was link me out to a FAQ. Instead of, you know, answering my question.

This seems to match the commentary about FrootVPN across the web. Many other people have complained about long wait times.

It’s hard to call live chat “live” chat, when it isn’t always live.

Do I recommend  FrootVPN? 

Overall, I do not recommend FrootVPN.

This VPN is really secure, private, and it allows for torrenting. It’s got a great encryption, no logging policy, and it’s very affordable.

You can access Netflix, which is a huge bonus.

However, there aren’t a whole lot of bells and whistles with FrootVPN. Download and upload speeds are super slow and customer support was pretty bad.

Disappointing user reviews seem to claim that the service is secure and that it works. It just doesn’t offer a ton of servers, options, speeds, or resources for technical help.

All in all, FrootVPN seems to have a great foundation laid out with a ton of potential.

But they still have some work to do in my opinion.

They aren’t terrible by any stretch. However, if you only need one VPN service, there are much better options out there.

Have you ever used FrootVPN before? If so, what was your experience like? I’m always interested to hear what other enthusiasts have to say about the VPNs that I review! Let me know below.

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