A relative newcomer in the VPN arena that may climb the ranking faster than its competitors. Our BulletVPN review uncovers everything about this service and its apps.
BulletVPN is a relatively new product of Nixworks OU based in Estonia. The first positive thing about this service is indeed its location. Why? Because Estonia isn’t a member of the 14 Eyes and has an overall privacy-friendly attitude. This means a lower chance of unwanted surveillance from the government and other snoopers.
Our BulletVPN review finds that this service is relatively expensive for what the feature set that it currently has to offer. Let’s look in more detail what we uncovered in our BulletVPN review.
Security and privacy: is BulletVPN safe to use?
BulletVPN is based out of Estonia, which is a good, privacy-friendly location for a VPN base. In terms of features, BulletVPN has the following offerings:
- OpenVPN
- PPTP
- L2TP/IPsec
- IKEv1 and IKEv2
- Kill switch and Bullet Shield
This is quite a broad variety. However, we’d like to point out that the VPN’s default protocol is PPTP, which is a terrible choice for security. Be sure to change it right away.
Contrary to what other BulletVPN reviews may claim, this VPN does have a kill switch as well as what’s known as the “Bullet Shield.”
Contrary to what other BulletVPN reviews may claim, this VPN does have a kill switch.
The kill switch does is it cuts off all internet traffic if you get disconnected from the VPN server due to some issue on the server side. If your kill switch is off, your device might reconnect automatically via your regular ISP connection, exposing your IP address to the resource you’re accessing and your activities to your ISP.
Bullet Shield will stop all traffic if your connection drops due to some other issue or due to manually disconnecting.
All in all, our BulletVPN review concludes that this VPN has good security features. We haven’t experienced any DNS or IP leaks either.
Does BulletVPN keep logs?
This VPN provider has thought of the general user. The Privacy Policy document is mostly clear and concise.
“BulletVPN does not collect logs of any user activity, nor can it link any other collected information to any specific user.“
BulletVPN does not collect logs of any user activity, nor can it link any other collected information to any specific user. But that’s not all. Here’s how the policy continues: “We do not collect any logs of user browsing history, connection history, traffic and data transfer, or DNS queries, nor do we store VPN connection logs of any type.”
BulletVPN also states that they don’t sell, trade, or disclose any data to “outside parties or otherwise unauthorized persons.” There’s no specific mention of the police and other government authorities. But on the positive side, even if they were forced to share data, it would be entirely useless.
So, once again, BulletVPN seems to be one of the services that are serious about your privacy and their no logs policy.
Speed and performance
BulletVPN promotes itself as having “blazing fast speeds.” We find such claims doubtful most of the time. But let our test results speak for themselves. For starters, here’s our baseline speed: 299 Mbps download and 239 Mbps upload with just 3 ms latency.
We fired up our BulletVPN Windows client for the first time and connected to a bunch of usual test locations.
Chicago, US
- Download: 33 Mbps
- Upload: 61 Mbps
- Dropoff: 89%
London, UK
- Download: 39 Mbps
- Upload: 87 Mbps
- Dropoff: 71%
Singapore
- Download: 5 Mbps
- Upload: 4 Mbps
- Dropoff: 98%
With the speed of our regular connection in mind, these are terrible speeds. Nevertheless, if you’re connection is as good as or better than ours, you will be able to enjoy HD and 4K video streaming (assuming your device supports these resolutions).
As mentioned, PPTP is set by default. This is an old and rather vulnerable protocol. Changing it may also change the speed. We recommend trying OpenVPN over UDP for the best possible security and speed combo. Although L2TP/IPsec isn’t as secure as OpenVPN, it may sometimes offer double the speed. So, it’s worth exploring the options.
Server coverage
Unfortunately, BulletVPN has a pretty small fleet of only 47 servers in 29 countries. While the diversity of locations is fine, it’s pretty small, especially when compared to industry leaders like ExpressVPN with 3,000+ servers, or NordVPN with 5,400+ servers.
Ease of use and multiplatform support
Despite its young age, BulletVPN supports quite a good range of platforms:
- Windows
- macOS
- iOS
- Android
- Routers
- PS3/PS4
- Amazon Fire TV
- Fire TV Stick
- Kodi
It’s possible that some of these devices need manual configuration. But don’t panic, the instructions on the website should guide you through the steps just fine.
BulletVPN has a user-friendly interface, making it easy to install, set up and start connecting.
On the Home screen, you see a big Connect button and below it, the currently selected location as a button. On the left, you find the main menu. Intuitive enough? We certainly believe so.
Nonetheless, we need to point out two issues here. First of all, while testing the VPN app for this BulletVPN review, we did experience occasional problems with some of the servers.
Another minus for us is the need for an extra click – to disconnect in order to change the location.
Our problem with this is that the app allows you to open the Locations screen even when connected to a server. However, when you select another server, this is what you get:
So, you need to click OK, return to the Home screen, disconnect from the current location. Then, go back to the Locations screen, select a location, and, yes, click the Connect button. How many extra clicks if you mess up once? Yep, there’s some development to do on this front.
BulletVPN for Netflix
Considering that this is a young VPN, it’s pretty impressive that we were able to access three popular Netflix libraries while testing for this BulletVPN review.
Yep, BulletVPN is a good choice for Netflix.
Let’s see what we found when testing the different regions.
Netflix US
It’s not like you can use all US servers to bypass Netflix detection. But we managed to access Netflix through the Chicago server.
We also tried to run the Netflix speed test but ended up with an error message. Not that it really matters since our general speed test showed that the Chicago connection was 32Mbps.
Netflix UK
Here we got lucky by connecting to the London4 server. Again, the rest of the UK servers failed to stream Netflix.
Netflix CA
Yes, you can also stream the Canadian catalog if you choose the Toronto server. We failed with the other Canada servers. We also attempted to use Netflix AU and JP, but both resulted in the usual streaming error message.
It’s possible that you can also use this VPN to stream Hulu and Amazon Prime Video.
Nevertheless, despite what other BulletVPN reviews may claim, we couldn’t stream BBC iPlayer at all. On the whole though, we were fairly impressed with this VPN’s performance. Well done, Bullet!
BulletVPN for P2P and torrenting
Good news again – yes, you can use BulletVPN for torrenting and any other P2P file-sharing in general. In fact, this VPN supports P2P apps like BitTorrent, uTorrent, and Vuze for torrenting on any of its servers. This is surely a plus for Bullet since many providers offer only a limited number of dedicated servers.
Still, it’s possible that you may experience some issues with the server of your choice. If that ever happens, contact the support team to get it fixed.
The average speeds should be just fine for downloading and uploading large files. Should you have concerns for some reason though, check out our best VPN for torrenting tips.
BulletVPN for China
When we mention China and its Great Firewall, we usually mean all other censorship-friendly countries as well. China has sort of become a flag-bearer for internet censorship and surveillance. And the number of these privacy-opposing countries keeps on growing.
The repercussions for using an unapproved or (in certain countries) any VPN service are varied. It’s possible that you’ll be fined a few thousand dollars or worse. So, when it comes to using a VPN in a country like China, you’d better be cautious.
Our BulletVPN review finds that this service may not be the best for bypassing the Great Firewall of China.
Our BulletVPN review finds that this service may not be the best for bypassing the Great Firewall of China because it has no stealth protocol. However, this doesn’t mean that you necessarily won’t be able to use it.
Still, if you’re looking for a more reliable choice, you may want to consider our Best VPN for China picks.
Customer support
BulletVPN has the following support options:
- Live chat
- An FAQ database
- Setup guides
- Troubleshooting
- Support tickets
The good news is that BulletVPN does have live chat support. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always seem to work. We do appreciate the effort though.
Depending on its availability, you’ll either find a green Help or Chat button in the bottom left corner. If the button says Help, it means that you can send a message to the support team and they’ll get back to you. In a good case scenario, this won’t take longer than 24 hours. If you’re lucky, it could be within the hour.
Pricing
BulletVPN has three simple pricing plans:
- 1 month: $10.98
- 6 months: $9.16/month
- 1 year (+ 1 year free): $3.75/month
As you can see, now, for a limited period, you can purchase this VPN for an extra year for free by choosing the annual plan. This means a 66% discount. Still, we must mention that we consider this a bit pricey even compared to market leaders like ExpressVPN or NordVPN.
This VPN solution doesn’t have a free trial. While this may be a bit off-putting for some users, there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee to ponder. The refund policy is straightforward – we didn’t find any catch there. Some other VPNs have conditions you must fulfill in order to be eligible for a refund.
BulletVPN accepts the usual options – credit cards and PayPal. But that’s not all. The icing on the cake is an anonymous payment option – Bitcoin.
The icing on the cake is the anonymous payment option, i.e., Bitcoin.
In summary, it’s a tough question about the pricing. The truth is, even the discounted 2-year plan is almost as much as you would pay for NordVPN. But you can’t really compare the two when it comes to versatility and features.
Bottom line
BulletVPN offers a true no-logs policy since they couldn’t share any useful or personally identifiable data even if forced by the authorities.
It has average speeds, which is relatively good when we take the number of servers into account. Even if that’s not the only factor when it comes to download and upload speeds.
You can use BulletVPN for Netflix and torrenting as well, but the speed issues might cause some problems. As a matter of fact, we’ve only found a few weak spots: the speed, the versatility, and the pricing plans. We believe that for a newcomer, BulletVPN is too expensive. As a comparison, check out our best VPN picks to find better value for your money.
Well it doesn’t sound bad at all ! It’s not that expensive, even though you can have NordVPN for a longer period of time and a little bit less, but overall it’s quite convincing ! Thanks for the review.
I used BulletVPN for a while and it was a good enough service. It worked for torrenting and unblocking Netflix. But it should really lower it price since it’s not worth that much.
Loving this one, except for the price! It’s a little out of my pocket, but I love how well it works with Netflix. Oh well, I guess I can sacrifice a little bit of dough to get to watch my favorite shows. I’m keeping my eye out for better ones, though, because I really am not a big fan of how much of a strain it is on my wallett.
Based on your review, I’ve decided to give BulletVPN a try and they are pretty decent. They may not be the fastest providers but Netflix works flawlessly, no logs, easy to use and the privacy settings are good. That’s pretty much all I need.
Indeed, if streaming or torrenting is your main reason to use a VPN, BulletVPN won’t be your best choice. The good news, though, is that there’s plenty of great VPNs for both Netflix and P2P enthusiasts.
A good service it seems, but not a great option for starters considering the price. But BulletVPN did very well, I wasn’t expecting that. The speed is a pity, since many people use VPNs to watch Netflix or download torrents.