FinchVPN is an OpenVPN-based service in the lower-priced range as far VPN services go. Straight from the start, they seem to emphasize using their VPN to access restricted websites rather than focusing on anything like privacy and browsing the web anonymously.
They certainly provide multiple options that are easy on the wallet – but is it enough to warrant you putting some money down? How do they fare in terms of quality and does customer satisfaction suffer to keep the prices low?
Enough with the mysterious questions – on with the review!
FinchVPN Specs & Offers
VPN Name | FinchVPN |
---|---|
Leak Test | Leaks Detected |
Logging Policy | Logs |
Speed | Slow |
Torrenting | Torrenting & P2P Allowed |
Netflix | No Netflix |
Jurisdiction | Cooperative With Eyes |
Servers / Countries | 26 / 12 |
Max Connections | 1 |
Kill Switch | Does Not Have Kill Switch |
Anonymous Payment Methods | Crypto |
Free Trial | Available |
Refunds | No Refunds |
Customer Support | Email, Ticket, Forums, Social |
Price Starting From | $1.61 |
FinchVPN Pros
Pricing & Plans: Some of the cheapest VPN action we’ve seen!
FinchVPN offers their services for a price starting from $1.61 for their Pro plan and $3.21 for their Premiere plan.
They also have a free plan if you simply want to try their product first before taking the plunge. You’ll only get access to two servers out of their list of 12 countries and 26 servers – not a huge benefit if those servers are sluggish or underperforming for you.
Their Pro plan is designed for lighter surfers with a monthly quota of 25GB per month. All the servers are available for Pro users and their protocol is OpenVPN and PPTP (Limited).
Their best-selling Premier plan has no monthly quota meaning you can stream, download, and do anything you want without having to worry about running out. At $3.21/month, it’s still extremely cheap.
What makes their Premier plan different is port forwarding for added user customization if that appeals to you.
Prices with any plan are diabolically cheap, with their top plan working out at just $38.57 for a year. If there’s one thing FinchVPN does well, it’s their ultra-competitive pricing.
Interestingly, the Pro and Premier accounts include support tickets on top of email and live chat, unlike the free plan. This won’t be a big deal for most of you, but it is a differentiating factor for their paid plans.
Payment Methods: Over 80 payment methods to choose from
FinchVPN has a wide array of payment methods. They have over 80 international payment methods over more than 190 countries in the world. You’ll appreciate this extensive list if you live in a country that has other prominent payment methods beyond the typical credit card.
This includes PayPal, Bitcoin, SMS, and bank transfers.
Hopefully, you won’t have to go through a laborious process of signing up for other payment methods just to pay for their subscription.
What we really liked seeing is how helpful and informative the website is.
They explain what the payment methods are and also promote anonymity through education. Bonus points for Finch!
Sign-Up Process: A snappy, straight-forward sign-up service
Like many other VPN programs, you’ll need to sign up to have access to FinchVPN’s services. Thankfully, the process is straightforward and concise.
No credit card details are needed to sign up for their free plan. You just need to enter your username, email, and password.
To prevent users from making a mistake, the VPN gives a rather basic warning clarifying that the VPN does not give you free internet (it’s a pretty funny warning — they must have had customer complaints!).
Product Interface: Clean and pristine
With a clear and organized interface, users can approach the program in a carefree manner. Even if you aren’t so familiar with VPNs, you won’t feel intimidated because FinchVPN keeps things simple.
Everything necessary to operate the VPN is laid out in front of you. Tools, diagnostics, and even the program’s support and news can be accessed using their GUI client.
Having access to support within an app is very convenient, saving you time from switching to a browser and manually searching for it yourself.
FinchVPN Neutral Points
Customer Support: 4 support types, but alas – no live chat
FinchVPN offers email support, ticket-based support, discussion groups, and their very own Facebook in order to help their customers solve problems with the program.
The discussion group is filled with many guides and questions from their support team and users. It’s convenient that the posts on the group can be filtered from one category to another to ease troubleshooting.
However, it’s missing that one golden ingredient – live chat. This is strange since their pricing page deceptively states that live chat is available on all their plans. We’re knocking off a point for this.
Torrenting Policy: A few servers, and in one country
To prevent users from having to guess which servers work for torrenting, FinchVPN has a handy page and in-app tool to check if torrenting is possible.
When we checked the VPN, we saw that only its five Netherlands servers can support torrenting.
It’s nice to see any torrenting support, but to have it only in one country with so few servers limits FinchVPN’s usability for torrenters.
For unlimited torrenting, you’re probably better off with these VPNs that offer full torrenting support.
Encryption and Protocols: Plenty of protocol choice, but the encryption is questionable
FinchVPN supports OpenVPN, PPTP, L2TP/IPsec protocols with a wealth of settings. Its encryption is 128-bit Blowfish up to 256-bit AES, which is thought to be military-grade encryption. It’s not bad encryption, and yet the DNS leak test results were disappointing (read more below).
FinchVPN Cons
Servers and Locations: 26 servers does not make for a great VPN offering
As mentioned earlier, FinchVPN provides just 26 servers in 12 countries, which you can view below:
It covers most of the globe, but with barely 2 servers per country, server choice is severely lacking. With some VPNs like NordVPN offering 5359 servers, for them to offer less than 100 is a bit of a blow.
VPN Speed and Performance: Their speeds are as lacking as their servers
For a VPN service aiming to be the best and fastest, FinchVPN still needs to work on improving their speed.
North American VPN Server Speed Test
NA Baseline (Without VPN) |
Test Results (to NA Server) |
EU Baseline (Without VPN) |
Test Results (to EU Server) |
---|---|---|---|
Ping (5 ms) |
146 ms (+141 ms) | Ping (90 ms) |
260 ms (+170 ms) |
Download (98.6 Mbps) |
1.5 Mbps (-97 Mbps, -98%) |
Download (87.4 Mbps) |
3.1 Mbps (-84.4 Mbps, -97%) |
Upload (98.4 Mbps) |
2.5 Mbps (-95.9 Mbps,-97%) |
Upload (56.3 Mbps) |
0.9 Mbps (-55.4 Mbps, -98%) |
With so few servers, we expected strong performance at the minimum but were left disappointed, no, shocked. We saw a reduction by a jaw-dropping 98%! What can you do with 1.5 Mbps in this day and age?
If they want to be taken seriously, they have a lot to work on – and we’re not even finished. Read on…
Netflix Test: No Netflix, sorry…
It’s a shame. FinchVPN leaves TV addicts out in the cold; our tests didn’t allow us to penetrate Netflix’s bypass restrictions at all.
So for those looking for Netflix access, seek success elsewhere – FinchVPN will not help you here.
They’ve also made an announcement on their news page that BBC iPlayer doesn’t work either, so stop harassing them with support tickets. (That seems to be why they announced it, no?)
If streaming’s your favorite activity, we recommend you go with one of these best VPNs for Netflix instead.
Refund Policy: No refunds due to super-low prices
Considering the cheap services FinchVPN provides, the creators strictly do not provide refunds. You can always check out their free plan to decide whether you want to upgrade to a better plan.
Device Compatibility: Configuration required, Windows GUI
FinchVPN is compatible with Unix, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android, and Windows. A pretty standard offering, though it’s great to see Unix and Linux in the mix.
Though there’s a native Windows app, you’ll need to configure through OpenVPN to use FinchVPN with your other devices. Consoles or similar devices are not compatible.
As a result, we’ve popped this one into the Cons section. FinchVPN, add some more device support, show some love for the Apple fans and experienced VPN users!
Logging Policy: Everything is not as it seems
FinchVPN states that it doesn’t give out user information to anyone. Upon further inspection, however, we found out that this isn’t completely true.
Firstly, the information FinchVPN collects is your username, email, password and IP address. The creators use the username and password to provide users access to the program and the IP address is used to prevent spamming.
Within the application, a timestamp, traffic amount and user ID are also collected. These are used to monitor the performance of their site, prevent abuse and many more.
The questionable part is where it’s stated in their privacy policy that disclosing user information is reasonably necessary to “satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request WITH proper legal document provided.”
This simply means that FinchVPN can share your activities with law enforcement officers. That may not be a big deal to some, but one of the purposes of a VPN is anonymizing your activity.
It’s a shame, but FinchVPN fails in this regard as a result of the information above.
IP and DNS Leak Test: A bit all over the place
The results of the IP and DNS tests were disappointing and confusing. With the IP leak test, the IP address and WebRTC detection were inconsistent with the server we connected to.
The DNS leak tests revealed that FinchVPN doesn’t hide your DNS.
Kill Switch: No kill switch
The absence of a kill switch is a bummer. We always enjoy seeing VPNs work to add functions that focus on protecting users, so to see one missing from FinchVPN is a bad sign – especially given their encryption is already failing users. A lot to work on here, a lot to work on.
FinchVPN as a Business
FinchVPN was developed in 2012 by a Malaysian provider, who believes everyone should have unlimited, unfiltered, and uninterrupted internet access.
Most VPN programs do not meddle with the activities of users but the 6-year-old VPN explicitly does not tolerate spamming, forging of headers, distribution of malware, child pornography and other illegal activities. Those are some restrictions we can get behind.
Jurisdiction
This Malaysian VPN is free from the 14 Eyes Alliance which means users aren’t at risk of having their data collected by other countries.
However, it is written in their privacy policy that they may share information to law enforcement if deemed necessary, so that’s up to you to decide whether it’s a risk or not.
FinchVPN Conclusion: Cheap but poor service
At first glance, FinchVPN may catch your attention with its cheap price and simple interface. They win you over with lots of helpful information on the website…
Sadly, the VPN fails on many fronts, with poorly-performing DNS tests and questionable policies in keeping data confidential, not to mention a severe lack of servers and speeds. Downloading torrents is possible on chosen servers, but Netflix marathons aren’t.
This is one of the cheapest VPNs we’ve encountered that even has a variety of payment methods to cater to users all around the world. Account plans are much more customizable compared to other programs.
Still, cheap prices aren’t everything if you’re getting poor service in exchange. Until FinchVPN tightens up its service, we have to suggest you look elsewhere (like our top 10 list) for a great VPN service.
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