BullGuard VPN review: A great service with a problematic price - mannbrose2001

Bullguard

At a Glance

Expert's Military rank

Pros

Easy-to-use app
Offers a per-app kill flip-flop as healthy as a global option

Cons

Expensive
Limited features

Our Verdict

There's aught really wrong with Bullguard's VPN divine service. It's fast and information technology offers some key country connections straight though the list is relatively small at 16. The problem is IT costs just as very much as NordVPN with outlying fewer features, and no promise of added security measures. The essential question is whether this VPN is worth $85 annually. In its current state we get into't opine so.

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BullGuard VPN in shor:

P2P allowed: Yes
Business location: GB
Bi of servers: Uknown
Amoun of country locations: 16
Cost: $79.08 per year
VPN Communications protocol: OpenVPN
Data encoding:AES-256-CBC
Data authentication:TLS 1.2 with 2048-second DH
Handshake:SHA2 -512

Editor's Note: This review was adjusted on May 24, 2019 to reflect BullGuard VPN's pricing change.

Most every major antivirus maker offers a virtual private meshing Service. A couple of produce their own networks, but typically, Av makers rebrand ovalbumin-label services provided by third parties. BullGuard is one such AV maker, and it offers its rebranded white-label VPN inspection and repair as a standalone product, named BullGuard VPN.

Let me say right-wing off the top that BullGuard VPN is not a bad service. In fact, it's quite an good. The speeds are top-notch, and while the number of country connections isn't Brobdingnagian, the better destinations are covered. The app is also really impressible to employ making this a good choice for VPN newbies.

That's all very fit and good, simply is this service valuable the money? If you ask Maine, the answer is, "No, not really." Why? Let's honkytonk in, and I'll explain.

Note: This review is part of our best VPNs roundup. Go there for inside information about competitive products you said it we tested them.

bullguardvpn2 — BullGuard VPN with an active connection.

Features and services

BullGuard VPN offers 16 area connections including the Unitary States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the larger countries in EC, Japanese Islands and Singapore, and Australia. It's a good country selection and underhung by infrastructure from NordVPN. That suggests that BullGuardVPN should work with Netflix meet as Nord does, and in my tests it did.

Beyond the nation selection, BullGuardVPN features an App Kill Switch that will mechanically cease convinced programs from running if the VPN connection drops. There's also a more pandemic net kill switching that stops each internet access when the VPN joining disappears. Both are fortunate privacy guards if you involve them, though these kinds of automated blockers aren't always 100 percentage effective at preventing your true IP address from being open.

You can also launch BullGuard VPN happening startup with Windows, and make your reckoner invisible to others on a local arena network (Local area network). There are also options to add your own tailor-made DNS instead of exploitation the defaults with BullGuardVPN, and the selection to switch between Transmission control protocol and UDP for OpenVPN.

That's pretty much it for the app. At that place are no options for double-hop VPN connections, or the VPN-over-TOR servers that NordVPN has.

BullGuard likewise doesn't add any of its own security legerdemain to the VPN like other providers do. F-Secure's Freedome, for object lesson, scans your connection for bitchy attacks and files, though that does implicate yielding a little bit of privacy.

The fact that BullGuard VPN doesn't offer arsenic much equally its infrastructure provider or contribute some extra protection wouldn't be so risky if the price were better. The troupe recently dropped its toll for a yr of service down from $85 to 79.08. That's a little less than NordVPN's yearly charge of all but $84. But in my Word that's still bad shrilling for six simultaneous connections and a pretty generic (but unbroken) VPN service.

Privacy, anonymity, and trust

BullGuard VPN promises that it does not log up any of your web traffic, and BullGuard's customers are not affected aside NordVPN's privacy insurance. "BullGuard has its own privacy policy, there is not a relationship between the client and NordVPN," according to a company spokesperson. BullGuard is settled in London, United Land. Its Chief operating officer is Paul Lipman, and the COO is Mike Hodges.

BullGuardVPN accepts payment via charge card, PayPal, Beaver State wire transfer. You moldiness also foretoken up for a BullGuard account to use the VPN.

Public presentation

bullguardvpnsettings — BullGuard's settings screen.

In our tests, BullGuardVPN was faithful and performed similarly to NordVPN. Whole, BullGuard hit about 43 percent of the base speed, brought down largely aside slow speeds in Australia. Everywhere else speeds were hitting 30- to 50Mbps when the default speed on testing days was around 85Mbps. The buns line is you shouldn't have any trouble acquiring great speeds with BullGuard VPN no issue what you'Re doing.

Conclusion

Expect, BullGuard VPN works just fine, and it's wanton to use. Only you can pay an supererogatory $5 more for NordVPN to get all the added features that it has including the extra country connections. If you're already a BullGuard antivirus user, then perhaps BullGuardVPN makes Sir Thomas More signified, but even that's a firm sell.

I'd like-minded to see BullGuard do something extra with its VPN to make its $79.08 a twelvemonth. Some malicious filtering would be good—NordVPN also supports this on its own divine service with an opt-in feature called CyberSec—or mayhap add its plate network scanning capabilities to the VPN app.

The fact is BullGuard inevitably something extra to justify that price, or swing it even farther to a more reasonable $60 to $70 per year. As IT stands reactionary now, I'd look at NordVPN itself (even with its problems) or receive a PC security measur company that has its own VPN infrastructure so much as Avira or F-Fasten.

Editor's note: Because online services are often iterative, gaining new features and performance improvements over time, this review is subject to modification in ordain to accurately reflect the current tell of the service. Any changes to textbook operating theater our final review verdict leave embody famed at the top of this article.

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Ian is an independent writer based in Zion who has ne'er met a tech subject he didn't like. He primarily covers Windows, PC and gaming hardware, telecasting and music streaming services, mixer networks, and browsers. When he's not covering the news helium's workings along how-to tips for PC users, operating theatre tuning his eGPU frame-up.