Torguard is not affiliated with TOR. The “tor” in their name is short for “torrent” and this provider does offer P2P over their service. They have quite a few value-added products, as well, for users who want a more comprehensive privacy solution.
Pricing and Plans
Torguard has several VPN pricing plans, which are as follows.
- $9.99 per month for one month of service, five simultaneous connections and unlimited bandwidth.
- $19.99 for three months of service, five simultaneous connections and unlimited bandwidth.
- $29.99 for six months of service, five simultaneous connections and unlimited bandwidth.
- $59.99 for one year of service, five simultaneous connections and unlimited bandwidth.
The company also offers a torrent proxy service for:
- $5.95 per month
- $14.95 for three months
- $29.95 for six months
- $46.95 for one year
Remember that proxies change your IP but do not encrypt your traffic.
Anonymous Email is available for:
- Free up to 10mb with VPN service
- $6.95 per month for unlimited offshore storage
- $15.95 for three months of unlimited offshore storage
- $49.95 for one year of unlimited offshore storage
Torguard also has a SmartDNS service, which is good for avoiding geo-restrictions, at the following prices:
- $5.95 per month
- $14.95 for three months
- $46.95 for one year
Both the SmartDNS and proxy services feature unlimited speed and bandwidth.
VPN routers can also be purchased directly from this provider.
Free Trial / Money Back Guarantee
You get seven days to try out the service. Provided you’ve transferred less than 10GB of data, you’re entitled to a refund if you’re not happy with Torguard.
Privacy & Anonymity
Torguard does not keep logs of your activity online.
Torrent Policy
As you may have guessed from the name of the service, Torguard does allow torrents.
Customer Support
Torguard has plenty of information at their website. There’s also a 24-hour chat service on their site.
Product Testing
Torguard’s client does a good job of balancing functionality with simplicity. It’s easy to use, but you have all the options you need to control your VPN connection, as you can see from the screenshots below.
Countries and VPN Locations
Speed Test
baseline test
with Torguard VPN working
Torguard really didn’t affect our download speed to any noticeable degree. The connection tested was a 50mbps/5mpbs DSL from Albuquerque to Washington DC. As you can see from the comparison, both the upload and download speeds were very fast through the Torguard service.
IP Check and DNSLeak
The IP and DNSLeak checks both passed with Torguard.
Feature Summary
- PPTP, L2TP/IPSec, SSTP, IKEv2
- 5 simultaneous connections
- Free Viscosity software license
- Unlimited data transfer
- Stealth VPN
- Router compatibility
- 42-nation network
We Liked
- Fast speeds
- Well-designed client
- Great privacy policy
- Value-added features
- Can buy routers through company
Areas for Improvement
A little more intricacy on the client would be nice for power users, but it’s a good design overall.
Conclusion
Torguard lives up to its name. The company offers a great privacy policy, fast speeds and plenty of servers and nations to choose from. There’s little lacking in this service and, though it might not offer quite as sophisticated a VPN client as some other providers, it’s more than competitive in terms of the other features that can be bundled with the VPN.
While I’m sure this a useful product when it works, it doesn’t seem to be very mac supportive, though it claims to be. I purchased their “Anonymous Torrent Proxy” service and I had to submit 2 tickets in the first 4 days of service. And while customer service is very quick to respond via tickets (not via the claimed “24/7” live support since I got no response twice), it seems like the mac support is in super beta testing. Meaning TorGuard is trying to build mac compatibility as Mac users submit their issues. I was twice given different torrent clients to “try”. One of them being Deluge, which, has a VERY involved installation process and then would not launch. I’m sure this would be a great product if the Mac support was there and when it is perhaps I’ll come back. But it just doesn’t seem to be worth it to do all this troubleshooting for them after purchasing when I should have been made aware of the hoop-jumping beforehand.
Haven’t tried their proxy service yet, but must say I’m very pleased with the VPN. Just signed up and I’m getting great speeds on all their servers. Setup was also surprisingly easy, I didn’t need to install anything to use openvpn. They have a portable version that doesn’t mess with your registry – YESSS! Facebook at work again 😛
Excellent VPN provider!!! I just got 50% off via slickdeals and would recommend this service to anyone. Fast speeds on all the servers I have tried so far, and install was refreshingly EASY.
Haven’t tried support yet as I haven’t needed them but I see chat online during the day so that is nice.
Torrent proxy is blocking most of the connections so dont purchase the torrent proxy. I will try vpn package now.