In this review, we’ll take a look at what makes SlickVPN a good or bad service.
We’ve spent quite a bit of time analyzing this service and in the upcoming sections, you’ll learn if it’s worth your time or not.
Table of Contents
Price
SlickVPN has three different subscription options.
The first is the yearly option. This is the cheapest option available where you only have to pay $4 per month. SlickVPN will charge $48 once each year.
In the monthly package, you have to pay SlickVPN $10 per month. This will be charged monthly.
The final option is the six-month package. Here you only have to pay $5 per month, so you’ll be charged $30 every six months.
Payment Options
No matter what subscription option you choose, you can pay for SlickVPN with a credit card, PayPal or Bitcoin.
Money-Back Guarantee
All SlickVPN packages come with a 30-day money-back guarantee. This gives you plenty of time to evaluate all the features that SlickVPN provides and to see if it’s the best VPN for you.
Note:
If you decide that it isn’t, you can get your money back as long as it’s been less than 30 days since you paid for the service.Features
SlickVPN has updated its service with its new Hydra feature. Hydra is a multi-hop gateway that goes through servers located in Washington, DC.
It may or may not go through other portal areas as well. Hydra routes the user’s connection to another portal which is different from the first portal. From there, it constantly feeds the user’s connection before finally connecting the user to the internet.
Simply put, because of Hydra your IP address is more obfuscated than ever before.
What’s more? Hydra also further encrypts the user’s connection. In fact, some sources say that SlickVPN encryption is so strong, thanks to Hydra, that it makes the user’s connection almost uncrackable.
Many sources say that the company operates a relatively complex business structure. How? Well, they make use of several offshore holding companies along with operating companies and subsidiary holding companies to do their work.
As far as marketing objectives go, SlickVPN is strictly a U.S.-based service provider, but the operational part of their organization is based on the island of Nevis. The island is located in the independent federation of islands in the West Indies.
So what about your information? In other words, what happens to it once you provide it to SlickVPN? Well, according to official sources, the systems that process all user information are located in and operate under the laws of the U.S. When something is subject to U.S. laws, you know that you’re going to see some problems as far as your privacy and anonymity is concerned.
A kill switch works by immediately halting your internet connection if your connection to the VPN server is lost. This keeps your information from leaking and can keep you out of trouble if you’re sharing material with all rights reserved.
As far as the number of simultaneous connections, SlickVPN allows up to five devices with just one account. This is great because it allows you to protect all of your devices at once without having to set up and pay for separate accounts.
Servers
Slick VPN offers servers with unlimited bandwidth in over 40 different locations. There are more than 150 servers in these locations. Some prominent locations are:
- U.S.
- Canada
- Brazil
- U.K.
- Norway
- Netherlands
- France
- Belgium
- Germany
- Denmark
- Turkey
- Italy
- Russia
- Ukraine
- Poland
Privacy and Security
As far as encryption technologies go, SlickVPN offers a strong 256-bit OpenVPN connection by default. It also uses the AES cipher which makes its encryption implementation method very secure. Moreover, it couples that with a 128-bit PPTP IPSec connection.
SlickVPN recommends that users use OpenVPN whenever possible. OpenVPN is the most secure and reliable VPN protocol.
How does it handle its hash authentication? It has a SHA-1 and a handshake via a 2048-bit RSA.
Legal Information
As we mentioned earlier, SlickVPN has lots of divisions which, as expected, divide the operations of the company into different subsidiaries operating along with offshore companies. With that said, we can confidently say that the majority of their operations are subject to U.S. laws.
Note:
That means that SlickVPN falls under U.S. jurisdiction. Of course, users will have many concerns about a service provider that is based in the U.S., but you don’t have to worry as far as this service is concerned.Why? This service has taken measures to avoid potential interference in their operations by the U.S. government.
How does it do that? First, it has a no-logs policy. It also maintains a warrant canary, which is what all new VPN providers are talking about.
A warrant canary for a VPN service based in the U.S.? That’s impressive. The company updates its warrant canary page every two weeks.
It’s also PGP signed.
All of this means that if the U.S. government asks SlickVPN for user information it can warn its users of the request. If it gets hit with a federal gag order, it can still inform its user base. For us, that’s reassuring.
We hope SlickVPN continues to offer this feature in order to maintain the high standards of privacy and anonymity that it’s held so far. Moreover, these measures also show that SlickVPN is serious about protecting user privacy.
Torrenting Ability
SlickVPN allows P2P traffic and torrenting on its network.
Customer Support
The company has 24/7 customer support, which is good news. The bad news is that it comes in the form of a ticket-based solution. Moreover, the only way to access this customer support is via the accounts area once you’ve logged in. There’s no live chat support either.
The ticketing system itself isn’t all that great to begin with.
The support department doesn’t take too long to respond to queries, but in a world where IPVanish and NordVPN exist VPN companies need to have live chat support available in order to compete.
User Interface
The SlickVPN download offers a standard Windows client. It uses the OpenVPN protocol by default.
To connect to the service just click the Connect button in the middle of the client window. The company has also made it easy for users to find all the options that its client offers. Moreover, the company has web tutorials to show users how to connect to their service in the best possible manner.
Note:
There’s one weird little quirk: you have to first add VPN servers to a group profile. Only after that can you use these servers.An advantage of this is if you don’t care about the geographical location of your VPN server and just want to connect, this setting can help you do that much quicker. In other words, you won’t have to waste time selecting your favorite VPN servers.
Most users want to connect to a VPN server that’s located in the U.S. for a variety of reasons. For such users, this setting wouldn’t help. Of course, if you don’t care where in the U.S. the SlickVPN client connects you as long as you can watch U.S. Netflix, then this setting would help you.
If you go to the Preferences menu, the client will reveal several useful features. You have the option to start the SlickVPN Windows client as soon as your operating system boots up. It also has the option to connect to a server as soon as you start your operating system.
This is important:
Additionally, it has two very important features in the form of IP and DNS leak protection. You can find these options in the Network tab from the Preferences menu.The Windows client also shows a warning message if the user has a Windows setup that may cause harmful DNS leaks. If you want to learn about these settings the client has content for that as well. This will help you resolve any of your VPN-related issues.
While all of this is great, SlickVPN could’ve scored a lot more points if it had programmed its client to provide a powerful DNS leak protection feature which would have rendered these unnecessary.
The Options menu has arrangements for users to connect via UDP or TCP. You can also choose your favorite port number if you happen to have one.
Note:
The company’s Windows client has an option for users to add an extra layer of security. It allows users to change their IP address after fixed time intervals automatically.Advanced users also have lots of options to look forward to in the client. It allows users to specify their own OpenVPN parameters.
When you combine the ability to alter your OpenVPN parameters with the connection log information that the client displays on the Main Menu tab, then it makes this client fairly accomplished.
Speed Test
Our speed test told us SlickVPN has VPN servers that give consistent, but not perfect, performance. They occasionally have issues while connecting to a number of servers. Moreover, we also found that you might have an unresponsive or sluggish client once it experiences some errors.
Generally speaking though, the client connected to VPN servers quickly without many failures.
In terms of pure speed, we found that the servers had high speeds on average. We didn’t notice any significant speed losses.
As expected, our research told us that if you want to experience the best speeds possible then connect to VPN servers located in the U.S.
Compatibility
The powerful SlickVPN Windows client has no compatibility problems with Windows and macOS. However, there are no iOS or Android apps. A SlickVPN iOS app and a SlickVPN Android app would be great to have.
While apps are only available for Windows and macOS devices, there are setup guides to get the VPN to work with Android, iOS and Ubuntu devices as well as DD-WRT and Tomato routers.
If you don’t want to use its default client on Windows or macOS then SlickVPN has setup guides for manual setup on these operating systems as well.
Conclusion
Pros
- Standard strong encryption technologies
- Several VPN protocols available
- Setup guides available for lesser-known platforms and routers
- Bitcoin is available to provide more privacy and anonymity
- Zero logs
- Reasonably high speeds
- Warrant canary
- Five simultaneous devices
- 30-day refund policy
- Relatively cheap
- Works with streaming sites like Netflix
Cons
- No mobile apps
- Windows client doesn’t handle errors very well
- No advanced features
- Users have to provide an email address
Alternatives to SlickVPN
After reading our SlickVPN review, you may feel like it’s right for you. It may have all the features you’re looking for and maybe the right price for your budget.
However, if you’re not convinced it’s the right service for you after reading our SlickVPN review, we have a list of the top 10 best VPNs on the market today that you can use to help you find the right VPN. You can also take a look at the VPNs we’ve listed below.
Some alternative options for you...
The Bottom Line
SlickVPN does all the things that a decent VPN should. It masks the user’s traffic and then reroutes that traffic through its own server network to provide security and privacy. This service offers lots of features for a VPN service provider, although we wouldn’t call any of the included features advanced.
It has a decent number of VPN servers and a good variety of locations. Its Windows client is solid and the VPN servers themselves offer high speeds.
Moreover, the company gives a lot of attention to the privacy and anonymity of its customers. That’s why it uses measures such as Bitcoin as a payment method and a warrant canary page.
Note:
If this review convinced you that SlickVPN is right for you, sign up for one of their packages. They’re reasonably priced and you can take advantage of their 30-day money-back guarantee if you’re not satisfied with the service.