FrootVPN Review: Should you get it?

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Unfortunately, we live in a world where your network traffic along with your every other kind of online data is readable by entities such as advertisers along with cyber criminals and snoops. A virtual private network can change all that. FrootVPN is one of those VPN service providers who claim to have the best and the most secure VPN service out there in the market.

Basically what FrootVPN does is that it makes sure that your internet traffic is completely encrypted. That, in turn, enables you to become totally anonymous while surfing the internet.

As indicated in the beginning, there are a lot of VPN service providers out there but only a few offer the kind of services that you should pay money for.

Contrary to many other VPN service providers, FrootVPN is a bit of a lightweight in the sense that it does not have a local client. The number of servers isn’t that impressive either.

But the price that FrootVPN charges to new users for its services is definitely one of the points which makes it a reasonable choice for anyone who wants to try out a VPN service before signing up for that special one.

More importantly, in the review, we’ll also look at how FrootVPN stacks up against some of the leading VPN service providers such as IPVanish, NordVPN, and Private Internet Access.

If you want to know what does a VPN mean and how does it work on a basic level then we recommend that you read this guide.

Note: According to our tests, this VPN provider is not at the same standard as the industry leader IPVanish.

FrootVPN Features

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Speaking from an overall perspective, FrootVPN offers all the standard features and very few of the advanced ones.

It offers a good range of VPN protocols such as OpenVPN, PPTP, and L2TP. According to official sources, the company does not keep any logs on its users and in order to improve its anonymity services, offers no NAT which stands for no Network Address Translation.

If you don’t know much about routers then you don’t need to concern yourself with this NAT feature. But it does improve your internet security.

FrootVPN encrypts all its users internet traffic with 2048-bit encryption. This means that you’re encrypted traffic becomes much harder to break into. There is hardly an organization out there in the world that will spend the resource required to decrypt a 2048-bit encryption.

FrootVPN also offers a new feature the company calls PGP which stands for Pretty Good Privacy. This feature offers cryptographic privacy and authentication for all data communications.

Moreover, with FrootVPN you get to avail other features such as TLS 1.1 and PFS (Perfect Forward Security).

Official documents say that some organization has awarded FrootVPN an A+ in SSL rating sometime in December of last year, but we’ll keep our reservations.

The company also claims to have a dedicated internet access service and all users are granted unlimited bandwidth. FrootVPN users are connected to several 10Gbit/s high-speed connections and hence are able to access anything and everything that exists in the online world.

If you ever worried about your VPN connection suddenly disconnecting while you were in the middle of something important, then FrootVPN has some relief for you there as well.

The company claims that it has an uptime of 99.99%, which is frankly more than anyone of us could ever want. However, there are VPN service providers out there in the market that offer 100% uptime.

In the modern world, most online users access their favorite websites and apps through multiple and often times several devices. FrootVPn offers simultaneous connections for up to 3 devices with a single FrootVPN account. That number isn’t great but is still reasonable considering the amount of money FrootVPN is charging for its services.

As far as customer service goes, there is no mention of a live chat support on the official website. What FrootVPN does have is a 25/7 customer support system which is basically a ticketing system where you submit your problem through a form and a representative of the company gets in contact with you once the complaint is recorded.

FrootVPN Interface, Installation, And Setup

If you’re wondering why you couldn’t find any images related to FrootVPN service in action, then that’s precisely because it doesn’t have a native client for any platform. As a result, there are no screenshots of the VPN service that might be useful to a potential user.

So what do you do when a VPN service provider doesn’t offer a local native client to interact with.

Well, with FrootVPN you are expected to manually enter relevant information into your Windows system settings and then connect through that.

Windows 10 users can connect to FrootVPN using OpenVPN client and hence will be able to have an easier time.

If you’re on Windows 8.1 you can’t use the OpenVPN support for FrootVPN. Tough luck.

FrootVPN provides a comprehensive guide to help new users setup its VPN service but that still doesn’t make up for the fact that you have to connect to FrootVPN through manual configuration.

The documentation that you’ll find on the official website will do little to help you solve some of the problems you might face during the installation process.

Some users have reported that they faced difficulties in selecting regions offered by FrootVPN. You’ll have to do some magic with the URL FrootVPN uses in order to connect to different servers.

Yes, it is that difficult.

That brings us back to the main problem with FrootVPN. That is, a lack of local interface. Hence any information about available servers will have to be sought out from the official FrootVPN website.

Other VPN services such as NordVPN have dedicated apps that show you all you need to know about a particular VPN server such as its speed, load, latency and the like. Hence you don’t waste time in trying to connect to the best server.

With FrootVPN, as mentioned before, you’ll have to log in to the official website every time you want to change your servers. The official website also has a separate section where you can download the relevant files related to OpenVPN configuration and settings.

FrootVPN Server Locations

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Users who sign up for FrootVPN get to use its VPN servers that are located in five major regions of the world.

In other words, FrootVPN offers a total of five VPN servers to its users for connection in regions such as,

  • The United Kingdom
  • The United States of America
  • France
  • Sweden
  • Canada

Needless to say, that is an unremarkable list of regions. The server location choice is severely limited as far as FrootVPN is concerned.

If we compare that to some other VPN service providers such as Private Internet Access that offer thousands of servers in most regions of the world, then FrootVPN does look like a pretty average VPN service provider.

Not only does FrootVPN not offer a great number of servers, it also falls short in offering geographically diverse location of servers.

Users who wanted to connect to a VPN server located in China will have to look at another VPN service because FrootVPN doesn’t have a server there.

Like Russia or Australia? Sorry, FrootVPN won’t cut it for you.

FrootVPN Compatible Devices

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At the time of writing this report, FrootVPN only supported operating systems such as Windows, Linux desktop, and OS X.

However, if you want to use FrootVPN service on the go then you can do so easily with a device that is either iOS or Android compatible.

Do take note that FrootVPN does not work with a Windows Phone.

As mentioned earlier in the review as well, FrootVPN, unlike many other elite VPN service providers, does not have a native client of its own. Yes, you read that right. No local client.

In order to sign up for any of FrootVPN services, you’ll have to go to the company’s official website, which is pretty well-designed on a side note, and then input the appropriate details into a local VPN client.

You can also use FrootVPN settings to set up a VPN service directly into your operating system’s settings menu.

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FrootVPN Protocols

When it comes to VPN protocols, FrootVPN is surprisingly inconsistent with its platform support.

What do we mean by that?

Well, for one, FrootVPN claims that if offers various VPN protocols such as OpenVPN, PPTP, and L2TP for platforms such as,

  • iOS
  • Windows 10
  • OS X
  • Windows 7
  • Windows Vista

What the company doesn’t make so clear is the fact that if you’re on a computer machine that uses Linux as its primary operating system, then you’ll only have access to the PPTP VPN protocol. That fact is also true if you happen to use FrootVPN on a Windows 8 machine.

To the company’s credit, it has provided ways for users to install the FrootVPN service on various devices, other than computers and handheld ones, such as routers and other networking devices.

The only downside is that FrootVPN supports only a very selected range of routers. Compare that to some other VPN service providers like TorGuard VPN, which actually sells networking hardware and set-top boxes pre-configured with its VPN software, FrootVPN looks like something from the dark ages.

FrootVPN allows users to engage in P2P file sharing and BitTorrenting. Which is good news since many of the other VPN service providers don’t allow that stuff to happen on their servers. VPN services such as TorGuard do offer P2P services, but only allow them on certain servers.

FrootVPN doesn’t have any special servers. So forget about any high-speed streaming servers or double encryption servers.

Of course, if you want to improve your security in order to access the Dark Web then you can do that without spending a dime by using the Tor Browser along with your VPN service.

FrootVPN Prices, Subscription Plans and Payment Options

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Compared to some of the other VPN service providers, FrootVPN has a pretty straightforward price structure.

It essentially offers three kinds of packages. The most basic FrootVPN package cost around $4.99 per month.

If you extend your subscription package to a period of three months then you only have to pay $11.97.

There is also a special package for users who sign up for FrootVPN for a period of 12 months. That package can be had for just $35.88.

FrootVPN allows users to opt-in to its auto-renewal feature. Of course, this isn’t something that needs to be bothered with if you’re just checking out FrootVPN among a host of other VPN service providers to make up your mind.

For those who want to commit to FrootVPN, this option certainly comes in handy since you won’t have to spend time, renewing your subscription every other week, month or year.

As far as payment options are concerned, FrootVPN accepts all major credit cards. Along with that, it also accepts payments through newer technologies such as,

  • PayPal
  • Bitcoin
  • Web Money
  • Giro Pay

And while that is an impressive range of payment options, other premium VPN service providers do go further ahead and also offer payment options such as gift cards which offer even more privacy and anonymity.

VPN service providers like PureVPN also offer their services in exchange for Starbucks card.

As indicated earlier, FrootVPN is really cheap when it comes to the prices of its packages and other subscriptions plans.

But that’s not all. Our research has indicated that FrootVPN is indeed one of the cheapest VPN services in the market.

There are hardly any VPN service providers out there that are cheaper than FrootVPN. However, if you want to go even cheaper then you can have a look at some of the free VPN options.

The only other genuine VPN service that comes close to what FrootVPN offers in terms of cost of packages, is SpotFlux Premium.

FrootVPN costs less than other known VPN service providers such as NordVPN and Private Internet Access.

Perhaps you should also keep in mind that modern VPN service providers offer all sorts of discounts through the use of promotions and special packages which run throughout the course of the year. There are those never-ending special sales to take into account as well.

Hence it becomes rather difficult to compare different VPN services on the basis of official cost alone.

But even with that, FrootVPN is never going to feel heavy on your wallet.

Plus, there is a 30-day money back guarantee with every package. In other words, you have very little to lose when you sign up for a package with FrootVPN.

FrootVPN Speed

As we have discussed countless times before, it doesn’t matter which VPN service you use. There will always be a performance impact on your internet connection speed and your web browsing experience will take a hit, albeit a mild one.

When you connect to a VPN service, your latency rate increases, your download speed along with the upload speed decreases.

Of course, that doesn’t happen all the times. Some VPN services such as PureVPN do the reverse of FrootVPN and increase the download and upload speeds.

Test conducted on Speedof.me and Security Gladiators Speed Test Tool showed that FrootVPN increased latency by about 150 percent. So if you had a latency rate of 130 milliseconds before using FrootVPN, you’ll have a latency of 320 after using it.

Ookla tests showed that FrootVPN decreased download speeds by 5.8 percent.

As a general rule, you always want to select a server that is physically closest to you. That way you’ll get the best possible speed out of any VPN service provider.

But then again, these are all just numbers. Real world performance always varies and hence no single judgment can be passed regarding numbers for any VPN service provider.

What we can say is that you’ll have a decent time surfing the internet while connected to FrootVPN. Pages filled with text will load quickly and YouTube videos won’t bother you provided you have a fast enough connection.

However, don’t expect 4K videos to load quickly if you’re accessing streaming sites like YouTube via FrootVPN.

Should You Buy FrootVPN?

The one thing you should always remember while signing up for a security software service is that, some extra features can be traded for improved performance.

Not everyone needs a kill switch or hundreds of VPN servers spread across more than 190 countries around the world.

Though it has to be said that VPN service providers need to make more effort in coming up with software application interfaces that are easy to look at and intuitive to use.

A decent VPN app must also allow users to switch servers easily and should offer plenty of servers to choose from.

FrootVPN doesn’t have any of that. It is so barebones that it doesn’t even have a dedicated native client for any operating system.

Hence, users who are new to the VPN industry will find it quite a hard task to set up FrootVPN and then connect to a server of their choice.

If you don’t have a good understanding of how Windows works then you’ll have trouble getting FrootVPN started.

FrootVPN does pretty well as far as speed is concerned as it doesn’t impact download speeds that much.

But the problems that hold FrootVPn back from being a reasonable VPN service providers are many. One of them is that it doesn’t offer much in the way of number of servers. That is a huge fault.

FrootVPN does come cheap and you will save quite a lot if you sign up for its annual plan. But you’ll have to spend quite a bit of time in installing FrootVPN on your system. Worse, you’ll have to invest more time if you encounter an error in the future. It’s your choice is you want to trade cheapness with your precious time.

All of that, doesn’t mean that FrootVPN isn’t a decent VPN service provider. It has some good points like low prices and acceptable speed.

Unfortunately, these good points are not enough to save FrootVPN from its massive downsides.

If you are serious about getting the best value for money VPN then you should check out IPVanish. They are our top ranked VPN provider. Read the IPVanish Review here.
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Zohair A. Zohair is currently a content crafter at Security Gladiators and has been involved in the technology industry for more than a decade. He is an engineer by training and, naturally, likes to help people solve their tech related problems. When he is not writing, he can usually be found practicing his free-kicks in the ground beside his house.
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