TorGuard VPN Review [WORTH A BUY?]

Welcome back to Top Dog VPNs…..I mean Top Dog Apps 🙂 Welcome to yet another VPN review. Today we are looking at TorGuard VPN, another one of the ‘hopefuls’ in the ever more crowded VPN space. Want to know if it any good? Read out TorGuard VPN review below….

What is TorGuard VPN?

TorGuard VPN is a service that comes from Orlando, Florida. The thing that sets TorGuard apart from other VPN services is the amount of different services and VPN types they offer.

As well as offering VPNs for streaming and business use, they also offer such things as a privacy based email service and VPN routers (meaning routers with their VPN embedded into them).

As we are reviewing their VPN service today, here are Torguard’s main feature list around this:

• Unlimited Speeds
• Unlimited Bandwidth
• 8 simultaneous connections to one account
• Open VPN and Open Connect supported
• Available on all major platforms (Windows/ Mac/ iOS/ Android/ Linus/ Firefox & Chrome extensions)
• Over 3000 servers in over 50 countries

How Much is TorGuard VPN?

Looking at the basic VPN service for individuals, you would pay $9.99 for a month, down to just under $5 a month if you sign up for a year. I find it weird they don’t go cheaper than this for a longer commitment period, as a lot of their competition do this.

TorGuard VPN is around the same price point as their main competitors, maybe just slightly more expensive. For example, my current gold standard VPN Pure VPN would ask you to pay around $4 for a year commitment period.

If you are interesting in a streaming bundle, it will give you dedicated ‘streaming ips’ especially for streaming services such as Netflix. They say these IPs are specifically designed for this purpose. Roughly speaking it will cost you double the price of the regular VPN detailed above to get the ‘streaming bundle’.

A business VPN bundle simply gives you a cheaper price for buying more accounts of their VPN service in one bulk purchase.

What Do We Like About TorGuard VPN?

Payment Options

TorGuard VPN has an excellent set of payment options. They have something for everyone, from well-known payment providers such as Amazon Pay and Paypal, to privacy based ones such as cryptocurrency. The only negative thing here is that if you pay with cryptocurrency you cannot get the 7 day refund like everyone else.

Accessibility

TorGuard VPN is available across a wide variety of platforms. They cover mobile and popular personal computing platforms, as well as having a Firefox and Chrome extension. This means you can access their service no matter which platforms you like to ‘hang out’ on 🙂

Excellent Help Articles

I have reviewed a lot of VPN services, and most seem to have a really basic set of help or how to articles to help new customers find their feet. Therefore, it is good to see that TorGuard have treated this part of their business seriously. Not only do they have a good selection of well-written help articles, they also have a YouTube channel too.

You won’t get stuck if you choose to use this VPN service 🙂

Forum

It is good to see that TorGuard offer a forum for their customers to chat and troubleshoot together. It is great rare for VPN services to do this, so it shows a real commitment from TorGuard to try to create a community not just to make money from their service 🙂

7 Day Refund

It is good to see TorGuard having enough confidence in their VPN service that they offer a full 7 day refund. The only thing I will say is that it would be even better if they could extend this to 30 days (something that is more inline with what most modern consumers expect). Also, it’s a bit weird that cryptocurrency purchases don’t get any type of refund. If they are worried about volatility of the currency, surely they could offer a refund at current rates.

No Logging

There are way too many VPN providers out there that proudl state ‘no logging’ all over their website but don’t back this up in the privacy policy on their site. Thankfully, this is not one of them. They clearly state
“TorGuard does not collect or log any data from its Virtual Private Network (VPN) or Proxy services” in that policy, as well as revealing they do log Apache web server information, but that this is not linked to any usernames and passwords.

What Don’t We Like About TorGuard VPN?

How Many Simultaneous Connections?

Some sales pages say 5 and others say 8, so which one is it? It is important that any business has a clear and consistent message for its service across its website and promotional material. Having conflicting information looks amateurish and badly thought out in my opinion.

Based In Florida?

When we are looking into privacy based services such as VPNs, we want to see that the jurisdiction that they are based is not one that may force the service to pass over sensitive user information. America is certainly not a country that falls into this category, as it is both a current ‘enemy of the internet’ and a ‘5 eyes country’.

TorGuard try to hide the fact they are in America on their website and when they give out addresses, they try to imply these contacts are agents only and not the base of the company. Frankly, I am not convinced this is enough.

Bad Design

The website is not the worst designed I have ever seen, but it still a million miles away from the sleek and modern aesthetic I look for these days. The Torguard site reminds of one from at least ten years ago! Not exactly a game breaker, but doesn’t exactly tell me this service is on the ball and following trends.

The apps they run TorGuard VPN on aren’t much better. You certainly don’t get a ‘big company feel’ from anything they put out in the public domain.

Old & Slow Cart Platform

When trying to pay for a subscription, I noticed that as well as having design from ten years ago, they also have a cart platform from a similar period. Every time I choose a plan, I need to wait around ten seconds for it to load. The whole thing looks like a slow mess to me.

With so many affordable cart platforms out there, I don’t know why they would stick with such an old and outdated one!

Confusing Pricing

TorGuard talk about so many different features, the pricing becomes a bit of a headache to say the least. You have the streaming bundle that basically adds a privacy email and dedicated streaming IPs to the mix. What if you don’t need the privacy email? There is no way to just add the streaming IPs to a regular plan.

I challenge you to go look at their cart page and not feel confused. For example, if you choose the anonymous VPN option on their pricing page you will be shown three tiers within this. The way the different features are listed is confusing and hard to compare.

They should have a simpler pricing structure with optional add-ons that you can pay more for if you want. What they currently have is not flexible enough and will end up with users paying for features they don’t need.

Weird 7 Day Trial

Yes, it is good that they offer any kind of free trial, but this one comes with weird strings attached. You need to send them details of your current VPN subscription, which will grant you the 7 day trial if verified by TorGuard. Then if you cancel your current VPN service (and again provide proof) they will extend to a 30 day trial.

You need to read a small essay to figure all of this out! Why not just offer a more simple 7 day trial. It’s weird to me why you would put these barriers up to such a feature.

Should you Subscribe to TorGuard VPN?

TorGuard VPN is a solid service that has some good points to consider. Yes, they have pretty decent servers and are taking privacy seriously, which is good to see. This is balanced out by the fact they are based in America and have such a confusing and outdated pricing structure.

The problem is, the VPN space is super competitive right now and it takes a lot to break into the handful of top services. I believe TorGuard VPN aren’t quite their yet. Look at my current gold standard recommended VPN right now, Pure VPN. With them you will get a much more modern service that is fractionally cheaper and blazingly fast. It is hard for TorGuard to compete with this.

Check out Pure VPN for yourself by taking a look at their official website. This is currently my go to VPN service.