VPN99 Review [A Cheap VPN: But is it Cheerful?]

Welcome back to Top Dog Apps and another VPN review! VPNs are springing up all over the place these days, and today we are reviewing another interesting one named ‘VPN99’. With all those other VPNs out there, how does VPN99 stack up? Let’s find out together….

What is VPN99?

VPN99 offers (according to them) ‘online security at the best price’. So they are basically a VPN service that is focusing on low cost.

Acccording to them, they keep such a low cost due to the fact they use tech guys from Eastern Europe and keep the design and functionality of their service to a bare minimum. There are no bells and whistles, but this is what helps them have some of the cheapest prices in the VPN market.

From what I can tell, VPN99 is based in Cyprus. This may seem like a sketchy place to base a business at, but to be honest this is pretty much the norm for most VPN business’. The whole idea is that a VPN service will keep your data private and not share this data with governments.

However, some countries’ government may force the VPN service to give up data about their customers’ activities in certain situations. This is why most good VPN services are in ‘sketchy’ locations like Cyprus. This is not anything to worry about when it comes to VPN’s.

These are the main features of VPN99:

• Low cost: From $0.60 per month
• Accessible on multiple platforms (Windows/ Android/ Apple OS and IOS/ Chrome)
• 13 server locations to choose from
• Strict No Logging Policy (meaning they don’t log files on your activity)
• 2 Devices can connect to VPN99 at the same time
• 2048 Bit Encryption

Why Would You Use VPN99?

A VPN is a virtual private network….basically it will tunnel your internet usage through a tunnel to make the destination website think you are in a different country or to hide your IP address.

Some people simply don’t want to spread their IP and location information around, and choose to use a VPN to hide this. Others like to use VPNs to unblock certain entertainment websites and/or get better content.

For example, the American Netflix is often seen as the most complete experience with the biggest pool of entertainment, therefore people living outside of America sometimes choose to use a VPN to unlock the potential of American Netflix.

Services such as the BBC iPlayer service are only officially available to people resided in the United Kingdom. However, using a VPN may unblock this website for you even if you live outside the UK.

How Much is VPN99?

VPN99 do say they are ‘online security at the best price’ and you can’t really argue with the price portion of that statement when you see how cheap they are.

Even if you pay a month at a time, it is still only $1.99 a month, this is multiple times cheaper than most of the mainstream competition. Then it gets ridiculous when you see you would pay as little as $0.60 a month if you pay for a 3 year plan! Crazy!

What We Like about VPN99?

Cheap Service

If your main area of concern for a VPN is cost, then VPN99 has an excellent offering. It is tough to find a VPN service for such a low price. Getting billed $21.90 for 3 years of VPN service is pretty crazy, all things considered!

Good Speeds for the Price

Are these the fastest VPN servers we have ever seen? No! But, for the price, these speeds are more than good enough to allow people to stream video and do the usual things you would want from a VPN.

What Don’t We Like about VPN99?

Website Design is Trash (IMHO)

I found the VPN99 website design to be kind of trashy, and for some reason the low quality design makes me not trust them as much.

Add to this the fact they don’t accept Paypal, and I was a bit unsure whether I should give them my credit card details!

I was using the WayBack Machine for the location part of this review below and I noticed that actually the older designs of their website were (in my opinion) way better than the current one. Look below and tell me what you think! I don’t know what kind of website designer they hired recently, but they need to unhire them 🙂

Location? Seychelles, UK or Cyprus?

I have only being trying out this service recently, and from my research I could see that VPN99 says they are located in Cyprus. However, looking at historical data, it seems they have changed locations. Sometimes, saying they are based in the United Kingdom and other times the Seychelles.

Using the Wayback Machine, I could see that in 2016 they were claiming to be based in Wales in the UK, then later in 2017 this changed to the Seychelles.

I am sure there is good reason for this, probably meaning they changed locations due to governments becoming more aware of VPNs and therefore cracking down on them more (that’s just my guess). However, it doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.

No Logging?

VPN99 proudly state on their website that no logging of customers information is made, however this is not reflected in their Privacy Policy. It seems a bit weird that you would state this about no logging but then not back it up with your legal documents.

Varying Money Back Timeframes

If you buy a monthly subscription, you have a 7-day period to ask for a refund; it is only when you buy subscriptions longer than this that you have the 30 day refund period. There are areas of their website where they simply state “30 day refund period”, which is a little dishonest. To be fair, they do clearly state this on the purchase page when buying a subscription on the sales/cart page.

They did actually improve this, as it used to just be a 24 hour refund period!! Good to see they are making improvements! Unfortunately, I managed to find on their FAQ section that they still say they have a 24 hour refund policy! Doh!

How Many Servers?

More conflicting information on their website follows….VPN99 are giving me conflicting signals here. On their homepage they state “choose your server in 13 countries”, but when you go to the “our servers” page they list 24 countries. Then in the frequently asked questions section they say they have servers in only 5 countries. This is just getting plain weird now with all this conflicting info!!

Trustpilot 5 Stars?

VPN99 say they have a 5 star Trustpilot rating on their website. Usually, when websites say this, they allow you to click on the Trustpilot logo to hop straight over to the Trustpilot website. This is not the case for VPN99.

When I manually go over to Trustpilot I see they have a rating of 3.7…not cool! I can see why they disabled the direct linking!

No Torrenting

Just to make you aware, VPN99 blocks all torrent traffic on their service. To me, this seems fair enough as it is essentially illegal activity and users who torrent might hog a lot of the companies resources. I am sure this also helps them keep the costs down as they will have less legal worries when they don’t have people chasing them about torrent activity on their service. So technically, this point could be a positive or negative part of this review depending on your preferences 🙂

Should you Subscribe to VPN99?

VPN99 was looking so promising when I first set eyes on them. They seemed to offer decent VPN servers for a rock bottom price. However, there are too many inconsistencies within their business practices for me to truly trust them.

The main thing is the fact they talk about no logging in their sales page but do not state this clearly within their privacy policy. This is something that a VPN needs to get right and they clearly don’t! Then when you add in the frequent location changes and the changing information on their website, I would rather put my business elsewhere.

It’s a shame, because the premise of cheap but reliable VPN servers showed a lot of promise. Hopefully, they can address these issues and I can update this review later 🙂 Someone needs to go through their website with a fine tooth comb and make every statement consistent for starters!

For now, if you are looking for a cheap VPN, I would recommend Ivacy VPN over this any day. They are the best cheap VPN service I can find, anyway! They have a 7 day free trial too, that you can access by clicking here.

If you have experiences of your own with VPN99, we would love to hear all about them in the comments section below.