WiTopia Review

WiTopia Personal VPN certainly gives out a positive first impression when you visit the provider's website, with endorsements from The New York Times and The Economist. The good impressions continue too; thanks to great client software and instant 24/7 support. Sadly, however, WiTopia Personal VPN lets itself down with extremely variable performance, leaving you with a service that's hard to recommend.

Our Score
3.85 / 5
Pricing
From $5.83
Simultaneous connections
8
Server locations
40
Jurisdiction
Unites States
Available on:
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Features

  • Servers in 42 countries
  • Well designed and innovative client software (for PC and Mac)
  • Excellent 24/7 live chat support
  • A choice of encryption protocols (OpenVPN on premium)
  • Support for some obscure platforms

Speed and Performance

We carried out a number of speed tests to check out WiTopia's performance. To start with, I used Speedtest.net to benchmark my connection without a VPN connection. My benchmark download speed was just under 7Mbps.

Next, I tested the Lisbon server, chosen by the WiTopia client's "quick connect" mode. The result was disappointing,  as it almost halved my download speed. Next, I connected to New York via L2TP and tested again. This result was even worse - far less than half our original download speed. Finally, I connected to the London server and got speeds of just under 6 Mbps, which was the best results I got from the service.

Overall I was disappointed with the mixed results, as they would almost certainly destroy my chance of streaming without buffering with the service.

Price and Plans

 

WiTopia Personal VPN offers two VPN services, a "basic" package and a "pro" option. They also offer a hardware VPN solution, but that is not covered in this review.

There are two fundamental differences between the two packages: The "Pro" option provides VPN servers in a greater range of countries, and supports OpenVPN, alongside a selection of other VPN protocols. The cheaper "basic" package offers no support for OpenVPN, which is our preferred protocol for security and privacy.

Another key difference is that the "Pro" package is only available on a six-month or annual subscription basis (at $39.99 or $69.99 respectively). The "Basic" package is also available for shorter monthly and three-monthly time periods. One month will set you back only $5.99, which isn't a bad starting price. However, considering the service overall, I wouldn't recommend it even at this price point.

Although WiTopia doesn't offer any free trial, they do advertise an "unconditional" 30-day money-back guarantee. However, the reality is that the money back guarantee is not always honored according to subscriber complaints.

Privacy and Security

WiTopia provides a good range of encryption protocols, and we found it easy to find the technical details we were looking for.

WiTopia offers PPTP, L2TP over IPsec and Cisco IPsec protocol options. In addition, OpenVPN (SSL) is on offer to those subscribing to the "Pro" package. Encryption up to 256-bit is available on the premium account. However, I am not able to confirm whether OpenVPN is implemented with Perfect Forward Secrecy, and so I can not definitively vouch for the security of the platform.

We consulted the provider's privacy policy and also spoke to the support department to clarify WiTopia's logging policy. We were told that the company doesn't intentionally monitor or store logs of customer activity, and that cache files are regularly destroyed. However, WiTopia does keep a "trailing" log that they use to identify any breaches in their terms of service.

To conclude, I cannot definitely recommend this service for privacy purposes.

Final thoughts

We had really high hopes for WiTopia - we experienced great support, the price was right, and the client software was really well designed.

It was, therefore, a crying shame to experience such inconsistent connection speeds during our speed tests, with results ranging from very good to truly awful.

In addition, this VPN is completely lacking important features like a killswitch. Also, the lack of OpenVPN on some subscription plans is a disappointment. To conclude, we find this a service hard to recommend when compared to other VPNs in a similar price range.

However, it does unblock iPlayer and Netflix US - so you may want to give it a test run for that reason alone!

Visit WiTopia Personal VPN »

1 User Reviews

gravatar profile picture
AC
on 2022-11-30 23:35:10.
Overall score: 1
The worst! Their system rarely works, drops the signal all the time or the VPN just doesn't work. I purchased the router and service. The router was supposed to be just plug it in and it works. However, that is the furthest from the truth. Then when I contacted them for help, they had me run several! Tests! I purchased this so I wouldn't have to work on it. In the end it still doesn't work and they won't refund. Avoid at all cost. They are a scam.

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Written by: Pete Zaborszky

Founder of ProPrivacy.com and privacy advocate even before Edward Snowden's revelations. Computing graduate from Imperial College London. Speaker at cybersecurity conferences e.g. IPExpo and regularly speaks on tech podcasts.

15 Comments

Omer D Veepiener
on February 23, 2018
Have been using it for more than 6 yrs and brought in more then a dozen friends to the service but am finally looking elsewhere. 7x24 support is fast response but the its very very basic support. if you have no idea about basic vpn setup and support they are goddly anything past that and its generally waste of time. speed IS hit or miss even with major cities like nyc, london, rome. this is when i can actually see the 45-50mbps testing without vpn. to be fair speed is never really bad but on a 50mbps connectivity i have seen losses up to 60-70%. still very usable for most tasks. my headache is that they do not allow you or support 3 very key things. - they will not allow you to access your local LAN while connected (basically all you need is additional route line but no help). so your printer wont work cant get to my NAS etc. the Viscosity client (which is white labeled to Witopia) can in fact do this but for some reason Witopia wont let you. - the client for some reason cannot be scripted to launch other apps WHEN vpn is up. not with applescript or expect. you can script it to launch when the Witopia app is launched but then they might communicate without the vpn being up and thats a can of leaky worms...
Robert
on February 27, 2017
I have been using the pro service for 6 years. Never had any issues with it. Speed is great and while i was traveling around the world i was able to watch all my location restricted shows from the U.K., Canada and the U.S. I`m now back in Canada and use it everyday to watch TV shows from the U.K.
Cindy
on July 1, 2016
I opened my bank account to check for activity and much to my surprise was a charge for 39.99. I never heard of this company before this happened. I did not authorize any payment and do not know how they got my credit card info. I contact support and hope they get this straight in a timely manner.
https://cdn.proprivacy.com/storage/images/2024/01/douglas-crawfordpng-avatar_image-small_webp.webp
Douglas Crawford replied to Cindy
on July 1, 2016
Hi Cindy, Now that's scary (although it could be the fault of your bank, rather than WiTopia)!
Tim
on March 13, 2016
I've been using witopia for 5 years now, mainly to connect to France and UK from around the world to access location-restricted TV and VOD services and it has always worked perfectly on my various PCs and Android. Very happy with the service, and good value for money in my opinion.

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