DroidVPN Review

Overview

DroidVPN is a Philippines-based VPN tool that promises to secure your internet connection by encrypting all of your network traffic. Their website claims to provide anonymous browsing, fast connections, and a host of awesome features to boot. Can they deliver? Find out in our full DroidVPN review.

DroidVPN is a simple VPN app, built specifically to circumvent various blocks and restrictions. It is not packed with many features that you would expect from a typical VPN app, but it gets the job done if you want to get around geographical restrictions or the limitations of a Wi-Fi network.

In terms of speed, DroidVPN promises good speeds, and online speed tests show that they slow down your connection by the usual “VPN tax” amount. This can be considered more or less a disadvantage, as standard speeds are really nothing to brag about. If you’re looking for VPNs that can retain high speeds and provide you with many more servers around the globe, NordVPN is a better alternative to DroidVPN.

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For the price, DroidVPN offers good options for all the security features that they provide. They also offer unlimited server switches along with any of their premium plans, allowing you to switch servers and locations as needed while you’re browsing. The prices on their VPN services are available with discounts for longer commitment periods, allowing you to save some money if you’re okay with being locked down for up to a year.

DroidVPN supports both Windows and Android platforms. While these are the main platforms used by people nowadays, this is still severely limited compared to a lot of other leading VPN services which offer apps on every platform.

Unfortunately, DroidVPN is ineffective at unblocking Netflix. This functionality is becoming rarer as Netflix gets all the wiser to the various methods VPNs use to bypass their geo-blocking. Another drawback here is that torrent activity is strictly prohibited by DroidVPN’s ToS.

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One nice thing about DroidVPN is that they maintain a list of usable ISPs and VPN configurations for use in China. It’s always cool when a VPN is able to provide Chinese functionality, and it’s great that DroidVPN maintains a list of working configurations.

Their customer support network is a little lacking compared to some bigger companies, and they only offer support through email. They have a network of passive support on their website in the form of a blog and FAQ, but these hardly make up for the lack of direct support options.

Overall, the platform itself is easy to use, with a straightforward and tasteful UI, along with a bunch of settings allowing you to control how the VPN handles your connection.

Is DroidVPN safe to use?

Let’s just get this out of the way – DroidVPN is far from ideal in terms of privacy. Instead of any of the widely-used protocols out there, this is using a proprietary protocol. However, that’s hardly a problem since a lot of well-respected VPNs use their own technology as well.

One feature of their app is VPN over ICMP. This means that your data is transferred via ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) packets. Furthermore, DroidVPN uses AES-128 encryption, a weaker version of AES-256, to secure your data. Although this ends up with better performance, it’s also less secure and easier to crack.

There’s also more information about their privacy policy. In terms of data logging, DroidVPN stores the amount of bandwidth used, time, and IP. This information is stored for 7 days and is only necessary when there are abuse reports.

They also distinctly mention in their privacy policy that they comply with requests from LEA or government officials for user data. We can be thankful that they’re upfront about this stuff, but we definitely shouldn’t rely too heavily on the privacy features of this VPN.

The company itself is based in the Philippines, and they offer servers in locations across the globe. The Philippines isn’t part of any special security jurisdiction, so there are no extra-legal repercussions to worry about (as if the ones already mentioned were not enough). Just make sure you’re using the VPN for normal activity, and not something that might land you in hot water.

When we performed a leak test with the encryption running, the test revealed DNS leaks, as well as WebRTC and IPv6 leaks. All in all, the security features of this VPN seem to be lacking. It’s not particularly effective for hiding your activity or protecting your privacy unless you’re simply using it for simple tasks over a temporary period.

One last thing to note about DroidVPN’s security is that they don’t have a kill switch for their client. This means that if the VPN stops working while you’re still connected, your actual information will be revealed. Luckily, the team behind the VPN took notice of this and is actually working on fixing these issues.

Speed & performance

In terms of speed, DroidVPN actually gave us pretty good results. The reviews online are in keeping with this idea, as well, saying that they give particularly good results when connecting through the Android app.

How to download and install DroidVPN

When you visit DroidVPN’s website, you’re met with a nicely designed and industry-standard web page.

The official website is fairly straightforward. It’s actually funny how similar some of the different VPN websites are to each other.

The layout should look familiar if you’re used to dealing with VPN clients. Navigating to their download page will give you a few stats about the app, as well as a download link for the Windows/Android version.

One of the main things that stands out about the downloads is that they don’t have clients for macOS, iOS, or Linux. This is pretty limiting compared to a lot of other VPNs which support every major platform. However, the team is working on apps for these platforms.

The download is nice and straightforward. You’ll get a .zip folder with all the files necessary to run the VPN. Once you’ve extracted all the files, you can run DroidVPN.exe in order to start the service.

How to use DroidVPN

Once you’ve got the software unpackaged and the .exe running, you’ll need to register a user account on the website in order to start the service. This is also pretty straightforward, and there are links in the client allowing you to access the registration page.

The tabs on the side allow you to change your VPN protocol. The ones they offer aren’t particularly comprehensive, and there’s a possibility that all of their available servers on a certain protocol may be full.

Apps & extensions

At the moment, DroidVPN only has app support for Windows and Android. This means that Apple users, or users on a less popular platform like Amazon Firestick, are out of luck when it comes to this VPN. The fact that the platform is so lacking in this respect is fairly concerning, but it is possible that being able to focus on a smaller amount of platforms actually makes the service more usable on those platforms.

The service doesn’t have any support for routers or Linux, but there are some solutions available for Linux Droid if you’re using that. This mitigates some of the negative impacts of such a narrow platform base, but it doesn’t completely rectify it.

If you’re an Apple or Linux user, you’ll simply have to wait until those versions are completed and released.

DroidVPN and Netflix

DroidVPN has a few US servers that work at unblocking Netflix US. However, it’s not very reliable and does not make this VPN a good choice for streaming.

DroidVPN for torrenting

In the past, DroidVPN did not allow any P2P traffic. Thankfully, it has reconsidered its stance on this, and now torrenting is possible on a selection of servers. If a server has [P2P] next to the name – it can be used for torrenting.

Using DroidVPN in China

As we mentioned before, DroidVPN provides a comprehensive list of different ISPs and configurations for use in China. While the actual results will vary, and it’s important to always make sure you’re using a comprehensive connection configuration in order to retain your privacy in China, having this functionality (and the list itself) is a nice little feature.

The different configurations list connection protocols and other settings that should be used when connecting through different ISPs in China. We were unable to find any actual user reviews of the performance of these configurations in China, but it’s still nice to see that the company cares enough to provide configuration resources and functionality.

Their full list of country configurations contains over 100 countries with close to 80,000 configurations designed for using the VPN in different parts of the world. Not all of the areas covered are restricted in terms of VPN usage, but it’s still nice to have this resource at our disposal.

Support

Again, the support network is one area where we found DroidVPN to be almost criminally lacking. Not even having a phone or live chat support is quite damning in an industry where technical knowledge is pretty much a requirement.

That being said, it can be hard to judge exactly how good customer support actually is without needing to use it.

In the end, it really depends on how much you think you will need support. If you know what you’re doing with VPN technology, and you’re confident that you can configure and use the client properly on your own, even lackluster customer support might not be an issue for you.

Pricing

DroidVPN’s price structure is fairly standard, although their actual prices are quite low. As you can see, the 1-year subscription is their best offer, at $2.99 per month.

DroidVPN limits your connected devices to 1, no matter which plan you go with. This means that, if you want to connect with multiple devices simultaneously, you’re out of luck. This is unfortunate, as most VPNs these days offer at least 2 or 3 connections.

For payment options, they accept payments via PayPal, PerfectMoney, and Google Play in-app billing. This is another area where this VPN is severely limited compared to some competitors. They have a free account available, which gives you access to their 8 free servers based in the US, for 100mb a day (resetting at midnight, GMT).

Bottom line

There isn’t a whole lot of positive things that stand out about DroidVPN. Other than their price, they underperform compared to the competition in almost every metric. Their speeds are alright, but their lack of robust security features is concerning. At least torrenting is possible with this VPN.

Not being able to use the client effectively for unblocking Netflix is also a big drawback. This client only really seems useful for casually safeguarding yourself for extremely temporary periods of time. If you’re going to need tighter security or effective privacy over a long-term period, this isn’t the VPN for you.

That being said, the speeds and prices are reasonable, making this a decent option for casual VPN usage on your phone, to protect against attacks while out and about.