FrostVPN Review

FrostVPN is one of the cheapest on the market, but it doesn’t skimp on features or security. Transparent about their policies, FrostVPN can compete with the best of the best.

The process of writing this FrostVPN review has been an odyssey of discovery and surprise. The usual attitude many of us rightly hold towards free or affordable VPNs is that they must be scammy in nature – or provide a lower-quality service.

FrostVPN puts all such worries to rest. It’s good for novice users and experts alike, and, despite being based in the US, takes security and user privacy seriously.

Security and privacy

To sum up before we expand, FrostVPN has solid security and reliable encryption to protect you from malicious entities (be it websites or the government) tracking your downloads and exposing you to vulnerability.

FrostVPN offers:

• WebRTC leak protection
• OpenVPN, IPSec, and PPTP protocols
• DNS and IP leak protection
• Kill switch
• Automatically changing IP address
• Multiple UDP & TCP OpenVPN ports on all servers

The different security protocols serve different purposes, such as PPTP guaranteeing you’ll always remain connected even if the other gateways drop or you find them blocked. OpenVPN is the strongest and most difficult to block or exploit through brute force, and IPSec is more recommended for Apple devices.

The presence of a kill switch is an obvious plus. However, it’s disguised as “IP leak protection” far away in the Networking tab and available only on the Windows and Mac desktop clients.

Does FrostVPN keep logs?

FrostVPN distinguishes between logs on its websites and VPN logs.

On its websites and for the accounts registered with the service, the personal information stored about a user will not be sold or disclosed other than for complying with State or Federal laws. This doesn’t make you totally anonymous, but it’s not a bad compromise.

The above is especially better with the fact that FrostVPN does not track or save or keep logs user’s Internet traffic data such as what they download or what sites they visit.

In other words, connection logs are kept (date/time and location that someone connected to FrostVPN) but even this isn’t personally identifiable.

Speed and performance

FrostVPN’s speeds are largely dependent on which protocol you’re using, especially on mobile phones where FrostVPN doesn’t yet provide its own client. As a rule of thumb for the protocols, PPTP is faster than OpenVPN, and UDP is faster than TCP on OpenVPN.

We found that both our download speed and upload speed remained largely retained – however, the connection speed was a bit slow, and if disconnected, it’d take an even longer time to get the connection back.

With 8 in 40 countries, however, there’s no real risk of too many users connected to your particular server at a given time, and it’s also easy to find a server with favorable latency (as in, one closest to you, as that would naturally give you the best speeds). There’s even a built-in speed guide/test to check this for individual servers.

Ease of use and multiplatform support

While FrostVPN is supported on Windows, Apple devices, and Android, it only has custom apps for:

• Windows
• Mac

Meaning only desktops get the actual FrostVPN client. Other devices have to set up and manually configure FrostVPN with the gateway app of their choice, such as the OpenVPN mobile app.

However, the actual FrostVPN client is easy to use and has a simple interface that looks more TV-show-hacker than anything else but is nonetheless uncluttered and simple to navigate.

Additionally, there are extensive guides available on the website to configure FrostVPN wherever you want (even on routers), and you don’t exactly need to be an IT expert to follow the instructions, which is always nice.

Unblocking Netflix and other streaming platforms

If you’ve been reading this FrostVPN review in reverse order for some reason (or if you’re knowledgeable about security protocols), you’ll already have guessed that, technically, FrostVPN has all the right things in place to be perfect for Netflix.

As such, we’re glad to report that, despite Netflix’s great VPN ban users can still get around the geo-restriction of Netflix US (and Hulu, and Amazon Fire, and BBC iPlayer, and so on!) through FrostVPN.

Most importantly, we’d recommend running the OpenVPN protocol over UDP for faster speeds and more security if you’re going to be using FrostVPN for media streaming.

P2P and torrenting

When considering a VPN for use with torrent downloads, there are three aspects to factor in: are the speeds good, does it offer secure torrenting, and does it allow a P2P connection at all?

Secure torrenting often means the inclusion of a special security feature, usually a SOCKS5 proxy. This is good for VPNs especially dedicated to torrenting.

While FrostVPN doesn’t have this one feature, it does allow all P2P traffic on all servers, which is a huge plus since VPNs will often only allow it on certain selected servers.

FrostVPN’s security is good enough, otherwise, for torrenting as part of your everyday Internet usage.

Online censorship in China and elsewhere

China is often mentioned as a synecdoche for online surveillance and state censorship thanks to its regressive Internet policies and the infamous Great Firewall.

The Great Firewall of China goes so far as to not only block websites and services but even VPNs themselves.

Other countries – such as Belarus, or the Middle East – might act in a similar way.

FrostVPN, however, still reportedly works in China. Other VPNs have a stealth mode for this, but FrostVPN can do it just fine on its own.

Customer support

FrostVPN only provides customer support through a support ticket system (via emails). However, there’s a bifurcation of duties and different emails are set up for different purposes, ensuring speedy replies through parallel operations.

There’s a different email/support ticket system for Sales, Billing, Abuse, Technical Support, and General Inquiries. Emails don’t take more than 72 hours to get a response back, but this (three days) is still a long time when it comes to IT problems.

This is, of course, in addition to the knowledge base on the website which is very extensive and detailed, to the point of answering even specific questions, coming across as way more catering than a typical FAQ section would be.

Pricing

Pricing is, of course, FrostVPN’s strongest suit.

You can get FrostVPN for:

• $5.99/month, paid monthly
• $3.99/month, paid quarterly
• $2.99/month, paid yearly

There is no free trial, but there is a three-day money back guarantee, with the refund policy stating that this must be your first invoice with the company with your account not having had exceeded either 25GB or 25 connections. Can’t say fairer than that.

Other than the pricing model, all plans offer the same features and level of security, as opposed to reserving anything for the users giving over the most cash.

You can pay with only two methods, however, either PayPal or your credit/debit card.

Bottom line

FrostVPN is competent and reliable service that, while not having custom mobile apps, is a wonderful opportunity to protect your device and its data at a very low and affordable cost for VPN. It’d work well for beginners as well as experts with not-too-complex needs and, some might say, is definitely worth more than what it asks you to pay for it.