Wippien Review: Is it Really a Free VPN?

Welcome back to Top Dog Apps and another one of our software reviews. Today I am looking at a VPN software called Wippien. Wippien has been around for many years, so my quesitons today are… Is it still relevant today? If so, what can it be used for? If you want to know more about Wippien, please read on 🙂

What is Wippien?

Funny you should ask 🙂 Wippien describes itself as a ‘Free P2P VPN Software’, along with the tag line ‘Easy Gaming, Easy File Sharing….easy chatting…with your real buddies’. To put that into plain English, Wippien is a way for you to connect with your friends and create a virtual private network (VPN) between you.

Wippien has been around a long time, as one look at it’s website will tell you (it’s like a late 90’s dial up style website, if you get my drift!). From what I can tell, it first came into existence in late 2007.

Wippien uses the Jabber protocol and will assign each user a unique Jabber ID. Very much like Wippien, Jabber is a relic of by gone internet times. To let you know how old it is, it refers to itself as an instant messaging (IM) service. Wow, I haven’t heard these terms for a long time! The Jabber part of Wippien not only helps with the connection, it also provides a chat platform for you to use to chat with the people you are connected to through the service.

Who Might Need Wippien?

When some people go to the Wippien website and look at the descriptions there, they may think that Wippien is a free VPN service they can use to fool Netflix into thinking they are in America and getting the full American content list. Or to hide their IP from prying eyes!

Although this is possible with Wippien, this is not the main purpose of the platform and there are far more modern and efficient ways to do this these days. The main reason Wippien was created was to game with your friends miles away and maybe share a file or two related to these activities.

So, if you came to this review hoping for a Free VPN, sorry but this is not the service for you.

I currently use the free Touch VPN Chrome extension for my free VPN needs, and it works well for that purpose. The only thing to be aware of is that free VPNs are only good for light users. If you want to be downloading and streaming video regularly, a free VPN isn’t going to cut it frankly.

If you are a heavier VPN user, I would recommend the excellent and surprisingly cheap Ivacy VPN (yeah, I know its a weird name!!) You can check out their 7 day free trial HERE.

Is Wippien Still Usable Today?

When you attempt to use Wippien (as I did), you will quickly realise how old it really is. The last update in the release notes was in August 2011, and the last forum post was at the end of 2012. This is what I mean when I was talking about a relic from the past 🙂

But can you still get Wippien working today? It is possible, but kind of annoying. The good news is that the application still installs and loads fine on my modern PC machine. The bad news is finding a Jabber server is going to be tricky these days, as not many people are still using that chat service. The Wippien software also doesn’t configure any firewall settings correctly, so you would need to do this manually.

The truth is, when you start realizing how many small problems you need to deal with, you quickly realize it’s not worth it! Let’s face it, the main purpose of this service is as a way to connect and game with friends, not to use as a VPN in the traditonal sense we think of these days (as explained above).

If you are looking to connect with your friends and game, this is built into most gaming platforms automatically these days. I often do co-op gaming through Steam, for example. If, for whatever reason, you don’t want to use these built in services (or they simply aren’t available for the games you want to play in co-op with friends, then there is a much better option.

That option is called Parsec! A free (and more importantly modern) way to connect with your friends and game. You will be amazed at how responsive and lag free this over the internet couch co-op gaming experience is!!

So, you see, it is simply not worth bumbling around with Wippien in this day and age! If you want to connect with your friends and game, choose Parsec. If you want a more traditional VPN, choose one of the many modern VPN services out there.

So Why Create this Review?

Frankly, I still saw people searching and asking about Wippien recently. According to Google, at least 10 people a month are searching for Wippien 🙂 For those ten people, they deserve to be updated about the VPN and online gaming situation! I wouldn’t want anyone struggling with Wippien for several hours when there are way better solutions out there these days.

Wippien used to be great, but now it has been abandoned and overtaken by more modern alternatives 🙂

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