VPN Unlimited Review

When it comes to picking your first or a new virtual private network (VPN) service, there are at least a handful of options you could go with. NordVPN and ExpressVPN are the two VPN sticks by which all others are measured, offering a straightforward user experience with decent pricing and plenty of servers.

Meanwhile, other services like VPN Unlimited are forced to compete on other metrics, and the big one for KeepSolid’s VPN is the rare option to purchase a lifetime subscription.

It’s typical for VPN providers to offer monthly and yearly plans. Measured on these metrics, TunnelBear is equal third with IPVanish and TunnelBear for identical monthly pricing, but it drops to sixth for annual pricing of the dozen-ish VPNs we’ve reviewed. Uniquely, VPN Unlimited offers a lifetime plan, which is something that other VPN providers may only offer on a flash-sale basis.

For this review, I picked up the lifetime plan which, at the time, was slashed to $99.99. While that’s a fantastic price for a lifetime VPN subscription, there is a catch. On the pro side, VPN Unlimited offers an unrestricted seven-day trial. On the con side, the VPN Unlimited lifetime plan only has a seven-day money-back guarantee, unlike the monthly or annual alternatives, which have a 30-day money-back guarantee.

VPN Unlimited has one of the best and most user-friendly VPN onboarding experiences. Once you’re signed up, VPN Unlimited prompts you to select the device you’re looking to install the service on, then you can read a manual or follow the steps. The bulk of my tests was via the VPN Unlimited Windows software, and there’s also a Windows Store app for PC users if you prefer. For the most part, the Android app is identical to the Windows experience.

What was less impressive was a pop-up during my first connection that prompted me to rate the connection I’d only just started. Hmm. There were other initial hiccups, too, including a disconnection shortly after the first time I connected, followed by an elongated connection time. When it works normally, though, VPN Unlimited takes about five seconds to connect and disconnects immediately. Unfortunately, switching servers did tend to interrupt real-time internet services like music streaming.

There is a small window between disconnection and your ability to reconnect, so you’re better off switching servers while you’re still connected. Switching servers is incredibly straightforward: just click on the name of the server, then pick from all servers, torrent, or streaming tabs. There is a favorites tab, but be warned that it’s easy to accidentally click the server name rather than the star, so you’ll reconnect rather than favorite (a single click is convenient for server switching, but less so for favoriting).

VPN Unlimited is incredibly light on servers at 500+ across 80+ locations. At the time of review, my count had it at 57 countries spread across 76 core locations, five of which are torrenting servers, with an additional 11 servers for streaming (albeit all of them are in those 76 locations).

Outside of those initial connection hiccups, the most impressive thing about VPN Unlimited was how well it worked as a background companion. I accidentally left it on for three virtual meetings, totaling more than a couple of hours, and there weren’t any connection issues or noticeable delays. VPN Unlimited also plays nice with my usual day-to-day software, including Slack, Outlook, and a handful of PC gaming platforms.

By default, a basic VPN Unlimited subscription allows for five simultaneous connections. You can, however, pay an extra fee for one device, five devices, or 10 devices. These additional device add-ons are charged monthly ($0.99, $2.99, and $5.99) or annually ($9.99, $29.99, and $59.99), depending on your plan, but you can also add five more devices to a lifetime subscription for $9.99.

VPN Unlimited is supported on a wide range of devices, too:

Handily, there are easily accessible download links and, where applicable, VPN Unlimited installation guides for these devices and platforms on the VPN Unlimited website. More advanced users can also manually install VPN Unlimited on compatible routers and network-attached storage devices.

Whenever you connect to a VPN service, you can expect download and upload speeds to go down while latency will go up. Closer VPN servers to your location should result in less of an impact on your internet connection, but it also depends on the quality of the VPN servers. Either way, a good VPN service will have an acceptable impact on download and upload speeds as well as latency.

Using my Superloop NBN 100/40Mbps Fibre-to-the-Curb home internet as a basis for tests during the middle of the day, the table below breaks down how VPN Unlimited performs.

Any VPN service that can provide single-digit changes to download and upload speed gets a big tick, and despite only having one location in Australia to choose from (Sydney), VPN Unlimited offers great speeds and near-identical latency. The best-case speeds to the nearest US servers (Los Angeles) resulted in okay speed changes, which aren’t as flash as speedster Hotspot Shield or Mullvad VPN, but they’re still okay. Connections to the UK, on the other hand, are noticeably slow, particularly in terms of download speeds.

VPN Unlimited works well for torrenting if you use the dedicated torrenting servers. The table below shows the results of my tests with how well VPN Unlimited works with popular streaming services, which tend to have a knack for sniffing out VPNs, with two services from Australia, four from the US and one from the UK.

If you’re wondering how VPN Unlimited might work with your NBN connection, the table below should give you an idea. It uses the 15% best-case change to download speed percentages for VPN Unlimited US servers and the 59% for the UK server. The initial columns are dedicated to using those percentages to give a ballpark idea of how VPN Unlimited should perform on all NBN speed tiers, while the right ones show you how many streams you can expect to run on popular 4K streaming services: two from the US and one from the UK. Note that Netflix only allows for a max of four streams per account, whereas Hulu and BBC iPlayer can technically allow for unlimited.

VPN Unlimited has extras, but some of them like MonoDefense come with an extra cost component. It doesn’t help that VPN Unlimited judges you on this whenever you connect by displaying a MonoDefense status at the top of the screen. In terms of included extras, VPN Unlimited lets you switch connection protocols, plus there’s a kill switch and a Smart DNS service. You can also add trusted networks if you want to run VPN Unlimited in automated connection mode when you’re out and about, so your home network, for example, can be exempt from connecting to the VPN service automatically.

Strangely, there are features limited by platform. You can opt to stop DNS leaks on PC but not on Android, while Android has an app-exceptions feature (split tunneling) that’s not available on Windows.

VPN Unlimited is a solid VPN service that’s worth a look. If you want a buy-and-forget option and don’t mind splashing out on a lifetime subscription (especially during a flash sale), VPN Unlimited will serve you well.