OneVPN Review 2017

Summary
  • 4/10
    Features - 4/10
  • 5/10
    Speed & Reliability - 5/10
  • 3/10
    Security & Privacy - 3/10
  • 3/10
    Usability & Compatibility - 3/10
  • 4/10
    Support & Documentation - 4/10
  • 5/10
    Value for Money - 5/10
4.0/10

Summary

OneVPN is an unpolished service that seems to have been forgotten or not very well managed. The customer support experience was abysmal, the service itself had technical issues that were never addressed, and they are a long way from being able to compete in today's VPN market.

OneVPN is a Hong-Kong based VPN service, a product of Unravel Technologies Ltd. that started its activity not long ago according to their description. They offer 60+ locations in 21 countries: Czech Republic, UK, Norway, France, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Turkey, Sweden, Italy, Switzerland, Brazil, Mexico, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Malaysia, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The only information needed to sign up is a name and an e-mail address, but further information may be required depending on the payment method used at check-out.

They claim their motto is “to provide a perfect combo of Security and Speed”, so let’s find out how accurate that statement is.

Privacy and Logging Policy

OneVPN has a rather short and concise privacy policy, which states as follows:

One thing that was not clarified (even by the technical support department) was the phrasing “That is about all that we keep” which isn’t very reassuring.

Keep in mind that this privacy policy is current at the time of the review (beginning of 2017), and we recommend that you check out their privacy policy for the latest updates or modifications.

Software

OneVPN offers software for Windows, Mac and Android. Their iOS app is under development according to their website.

We tested the Windows application which is built to server the basic needs directly from the first page, but is lacking in design as far as we are concerned.

The features are available right on the first page but there were some issues accessing the settings button. We addressed this issue with the tech support department but they had no response on the sport. They informed us that our issue has been forwarded to the pertinent department and that we will be informed when a solution is found. More than a week has passed and we have not received an answer.

There was also a connection log glitch that we reported where the only thing showing was that the connection was waiting to be established, no other information was displayed and the application would eventually stall or disconnect:

This issues was also forwarded to the support team but yes, you guessed it, there has been no reply in over a week.

Features

OneVPN’s application is supposed to have some features such as auto-reconnect and kill-switch that we wanted to test out and speak about, but since there was no reply, we weren’t able to run the tests.

Regarding the service, there is a lot of advertisement done on the website for some features that were not explained to us by the support team:

When we asked about ad-blocker and Speed Booster, we were told that ad-blocker is enabled automatically ,which is not true, ads were still showing up and there is no indication that such a feature would be enabled within the software. Surprisingly, we were informed that our internet speed would improve with the Speed Booster, making it better than what our ISP provides. When we asked how this is possible, we received this answer:

This sort of sums up the customer support experience, but we will talk about that later, for now, we are still shocked about the claim that the internet speed will improve past the ISP limit. This is an obvious fake claim and anyone who knows how the Internet works would agree.

Regarding encryption, OneVPN advertises up to 256 bit encryption, which is a broad statement to say the least. There is no specification anywhere as to what type of encryption is used. Upon testing the connection we found that they use 128bit encryption for PPTP (this protocol is not secure, regardless of encryption strength) and AES 256-bit and RSA 2048 bit for handshakes for OpenVPN. It’s a matter of perspective, and we noticed that the lack of transparency is usually a reflection of a low quality service, which in the case of OneVPN is certainly true.

One thing we would like to mention is that while connected, OneVPN blocks the possibility to ping external hosts, which is odd, since it can help with diagnosing connectivity issues and help with the troubleshooting process.

Speed

The browsing speed test results were good:

The browsing experience was good, there were no interruptions or issues and we enjoyed the fact that the latency was good regardless of the server location.

When it comes to torrent downloads however, the results were below average:

We were expecting higher download speeds for some of the locations at least, but it seems that the browsing speed results did not reflect the quality of the overall connectivity and infrastructure.

Mobile Performance

We tested the Android application, and we have to say that even though it is somewhat self-explanatory, there are still a few things missing, such as direct access to settings and a bit less clutter:

It’s not necessarily the functionality that gave us a headache, but rather the clutter and the lack of logic when it comes to element displacement. There were also a few issues with the language used, and as our customer service experience confirmed, English does not seem to be their strong point.

Regarding the speed test results, we were disappointed to say the least:

The mobile browsing experience was chunky, with some interruptions especially when streaming media. Buffered content ran fluidly however, but it is easy to tell that the service is not up to the standards as far as mobile speed goes.

Pricing

OneVPN offers the following pricing plans:

The prices are technically fair considering the market, however, taking the performance of the service into account, it is not justified in our opinion. Assuming this would be a fully functional service with no issues and a decent support team, we would have thought much more of it.

OneVPN accepts a good number of payment methods. We enjoyed the diversity and we appreciate this aspect in a VPN service:

There is an affiliate program available, and if this is something of interest to you, we recommend checking out their website for more information.

Support

The technical support team was probably one of the worst we ever encountered, and that is a very nice way to put it. The tech we spoke to did not answer anything personally, just copy/pasted template answers that were not relevant. We were eventually escalated to someone who seemed to have a better grasp of the English language, however he was not helpful and our questions were never answered, our issues were never resolved.

This is normally not something we overthink, because if a service works well, there is minimum interaction with the customer service department. However, in the case of OneVPN, a service with so many issues, we would expect them to at least be able to guide us in the correct direction.

At the end of the day, we wasted several hours on a chat (more than three to be precise) trying to figure out why the settings button is not working and why our account activation failed several times even though we went through the setup process successfully… twice. There were some issues that occurred later as well, but the support ticket raised was not answered even after over a week had passed.

Conclusions

The overall experience with OneVPN can be described in one word as incomplete. There are however several aspects that cannot be neglected, so here is a quick breakdown of what we liked and what we did not:

Pros:

  • Clean website, very user-friendly.
  • Easy sign-up and installation process.
  • Free trials available upon request (automatic for mobile devices).
  • Fair prices, (assuming the service would be fully functional and without issues).
  • Wide variety of payment methods available, bitcoin accepted.
  • Good browsing speeds.
  • Proprietary applications available for the major operating systems.
  • Accessible FAQs and guides.

Cons:

  • Dismissive privacy policy. They use broad statements to describe specific situations, which is not ideal.
  • Sensational claims such of services and features which are not explained or justified (ad blocker, speed booster, NAT firewall, best in the world and so on).
  • Ping disabled, there was no explanation as to why from the support team.
  • Low torrent download speed.
  • Poor mobile performance.
  • Abysmal customer support experience, one of the worst we ever experienced.
  • Application issues and bugs that were not addressed even though requests were open for over a week.

Considering the experience with OneVPN, we award it a 4/10. We feel that the product is not being developed and monitored by the company. It seems like it was just launched and forgotten, there is no true support and if issues occur they are not addressed. Customer support is just an unfortunate chain of misunderstood issues and confused non-English speaking representatives. Unfortunately, the quality of the service simply does not raise to today’s standards.

10 thoughts on “OneVPN Review 2017”

  1. I have been OneVPN customer for about 6 month and I have to say that claims about the speed and the support are not true.
    The speeds are great: on my 150/4 connection I get about 140 download speed with AnyConnect from Cisco and the support is great.

    Reply
    • I disagree with most of the part in this review. I think the issues are not correctly highlighted. They have 21 locations and 60 servers so far, which makes them less competitive among other VPN providers. But when it comes to service quality i think they are pretty good. I never had encounter service drop outs or disconnections. I am using it on Android and Windows Laptop. Android app is simpler which makes it lighter and bug free which i like. I never connected with the support so far because i never feel the need to, all the material is available on their Knowledge Base section. So i cannot comment on the quality of service provided by the support. I think for internet users who require USA and Canada servers only, OneVPN is best option. They have 8 USA server and all of them are pretty fast + Torrent supported. Atleast OneVPN is 10,000 times better then PureVPN and Ivacy which suck so bad that i almost cried trying to set them up. They didn’t even refund me.

      Reply
  2. very poor service, most of the VPN servers are always down. OneVPN’s support is always offline as you can see on their website. and no reply on emails so cant get any help. and on the support page in knowledge-base section, which ever link you click, it returns in “404 not found”..

    fake claims of 24/7 support as support is not available for even a single minute,, you cant even ask for a refund after purchase as there is no way to contact them,, Please stay away from them

    Reply
    • Hello,

      We always refund the money with the 7-days money back guarantee, Further the broken links 404 has been set months ago, Support is always available on website and on email [email protected] , having any issue contact us directly.

      Thank you

      Reply
  3. onevpn’s website (onevpn.com) can’t open for 2 days. Dont know what is happening. They already had no customer support for around a month as the live chat was always offline and they did not reply on emails but now, the website is offline itself. Any idea where they went after selling too many annual, lifetime and other accounts? If you have paid for a onevpn acount, just keep regretting now bcoz you have been fooled..

    Reply
  4. I can confirm that the service is _absolutely_ unsuable since two months ago. Majority of servers is down, and are not even maintained by the company anymore. Support apologized for issues in the beginning, and just closed support tickets. Also they removed previous conversation from the logs. Now they just don’t respond anymore. Tickets are not being handled. But much worse: the website was in a dangerous configuration state for several days (wordpress). You have to assume that they probably handle your private information with the same sloppiness…. So a BIG WARNING: Don’t trust this service! Good example that you get what you payed for. SCAM

    Reply
  5. I have got the subscription of OneVPN 2 months ago and suddenly everything gets stopped, after that i contacted the support and they told me to have latest version of OneVPN has been launched 1.07 the support help me out and everything gets fine and better as i was required.
    Contact support your issues might get solved.

    Reply
  6. what to do with the lifetime plan when not even 1 out of the 70 servers connects? why why why?
    Buy this so-called “VPN” and pull your hair. A very long server list to impress you but just for a show-off only,, Looks like they only designed some photos on Photoshop and gave you saying that this is the “App” … because you can’t do anything on that “App” except watching its unimpressive layout. dont dont dont buy please

    Reply

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