VPN Like WiTopia + Alternatives + Similar VPNs + Competitors

WiTopia’s Personal VPN is a service that will suit both new users and advanced users. The client manage to be simple enough, but also not short of advanced features and configuration options. The service has very good speed; and they have a well distributed server network that heightens your online anonymity. No matter your device, no problem. They are compatible with a wide range of devices. If you have issues, they have very responsive customer support to serve you. There are many other VPN like WiTopia that offer similar and also your desired security and privacy features. These similar VPNs are known as the best WiTopia alternatives and competitors available. In this article, we shall explore all the WiTopia competitors and alternatives to help you choose the most suitable option.

On the privacy and security front; they do not keep logs; they support the very secure OpenVPN and IPSec protocols, with military grade encryption; and they have built-in DNS protection.

One of the first complaint about the service is the absence of a kill switch feature. They also do not support anonymous payment methods, which could lead some to feel that WiTopia is not focused on users privacy. Then again, the service does not support P2P activity and torrenting; and users also cannot watch Netflix.

While prices are okay generally, it doesn’t sit well with a lot of people (include me) that you have to get at least a 6 months plan to use “our beloved” OpenVPN protocol. It’s almost like WiTopia has a monthly package that they don’t want people to use; they do not do refund except you are on at least a 6 months package. And that is despite the fact that there is no free trial/  version.

The company explains that WiTopia was meant to represent a “wireless/wired utopia” where your internet experience was safe, secure, and private. They launch the Personal VPN in 2005 stating that its as a result of their vested interest in vigorously maintaining your data security and privacy.

We all want an ideally perfect internet in terms of security and privacy. I dont know if you’ll differ, but I don’t want my personal information obtained by hackers and cyber criminals, and I also don’t want agencies monitoring my online activities.

WiTopia has talked the talk about helping us create that perfect internet utopia, and have rolled out a service (Personal VPN) to that effect. How well does this VPN perform in providing the best VPN service and protection possible? This review will seek to answer that question by providing an unbiased examination of WiTopia Personal VPN. WiTopia is one of the top VPN services, but if you are not satisfied with privacy and security features, you may try out other alternatives that strongly compete with WiTopia. Below are other VPN like WiTopia:

VPN LIke WiTopia + Alternatives:

• NordVPN
• Surfshark
• ExpressVPN
• Proton VPN
• CyberGhost VPN
• PureVPN
• Private Internet Access
• IPVanish
• TorGuard
• Hotspot Shield

Service Plans

Packages

WiTopia’s Personal VPN has three service plans each different in features – personalVPN basic, personalVPN pro, and personalVPN premium.

The basic plan features unlimited bandwidth, unlimited server switching, unlimited speed, and access to the full server network. It allows only 5 simultaneous connections and supports only the PPTP, L2TP/IPsec, and IPsec w/IKEv2 protocols.

The Pro plan gives you all the features of the Basic plan, and adds the OpenVPN protocol and stealth modes with TOR technology.

The Premium plan gives you everything in the Pro plan, and increases simultaneous connections from 5 to 8, adds a “secure my email” feature that encrypts and secure your email accounts (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook.com, Exchange/Office 365 and most any other email address). Also, unlike the other plans, the Premium plan can be used on routers and any devive with Wi-Fi.

Pricing:

The basic plan has five packages based on billing periods (1 month, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years and 3 years). The one month package cost $5.99; the 6 months package cost $28.99; the 1 year package cost $49.99; the 2 years package cost $79.99; while the 3 years package cost $109.99. The packages are discounted such that the longer your commitment the more your cost savings.

The 6 months deal breaks down to $4.84 per month representing a 19.2% cost saving; the one year package break own to $4.17 per month representing a 30.4% cost saving; the two years package breaks down to $3.34 per month representing a 44.3% cost saving; while the 3 years deal breaks down to $3.06 per month representing a $48.9% cost saving.

The Pro plan ditches the one month package, and has only four packages. The 6 months package cost $39.99; the 1 year package cost $69.99; the 2 years package cost $119.99; while the 3 years package cost $159.99.

The 6 months package breaks down to $6.67 per month; the 1 year package breaks down to $5.84 per month; the 2 years package breaks down to $5.00 per month; while the 3 years package breaks down to $4.45 per month.

The Premium plan is also without the one month package. It’s 6 months package cost $59.99; the one year package cost $99.99; the two years package cost $169.99; while $209.99.

The 6 months package breaks down to $10.00 per month; the one year package breaks down to $8.34 per month; the two years package breaks down to $7.08 per month; while the three years package breaks down to $5.84 per month.

Witopia’s pricing model leaves little to be desired. First, their finest package is not available on the short monthly term; the highly rated VPN services have premium monthly packages. Also, the best value deal of WiTopia’s premium package is $5.84, and that is about twice that of of some highly rated VPN services.

Payment Methods

WiTopia Personal VPN supports all major credit cards as well as PayPal. While these payment methods are convenient, they tend to take away from privacy. First, the operation require you to submit your personal data such as credit card information; secondly, the submitted information is stored in some format by the third party payment processing companies.

Privacy conscious users have called for anonymous payment methods, and many VPN services have responded by allowing payment with bitcoin and a host of other crypto currencies. Some services even allow cash payments. However, WiTopia do not support any anonymous payment methods; they still go with only the traditional options which hold privacy risks.

Refund Policy

WiTopia’s Personal VPN has a 30 days money back guarantee that allows you to request a refund of your money if the service was not to your satisfaction. To convey that there are no hidden clauses, many services describe their money back guarantee as a “No questions asked” guarantee. WiTopia prefers to call theirs an “unconditional” guarantee.

They concede that they may ask you why you are leaving, to make sure that it isn’t for some misunderstanding; but they add that you don’t have to give them a reason if you don’t want to.

I’ll say that WiTopia’s guarantee is unconditional only on the packages it is offered; this is because you are not eligible for a refund if you subscribed to the one month package of the Basic plan. This can make some users turn to other services because most services in the market offer money-back guarantee even on their monthly packages.

Free Trial

Witopia’s Personal VPN does not have a free trial; but they encourage users to take up the money back guarantee as a means of testing their service free of charge.

They explain that the service used to support traditional free trials long ago but stopped because the free trials invited wrong elements. In their words: “trials invite spammers, scammers, and other assorted “bad guys” that dirty up our network and IP address space“. Please don’t tell me to explain that, because I don’t know what that means.

Features

Interface

The app has not followed the minimalist approach that many VPN apps are tending towards, where the interface features just minimal small icons and text with a lot of free space. The main interface feature big icons and texts that clutter it. It’s a big accomplishment that the interface manage to remain simple.

The connect tab is the starting point on the Windows app. It features two connect buttons – a “Quick connect” button and an “Advance Connect” button. The “Quick connect” button is the feature that allows you to be flying with VPN protection with just one click. Click “quick connect”, and the app will automatically connex you to the nearest server for optimal performance; this one-click solution will appeal to new users.

The “Advance Connect” allows you to choose and connect to a choice server location. Clicking the button opens a page for you to: select a VPN gateway (server) location, select the VPN protocol to use, select an encryption level. Note that, it is only on OpenVPN that you can select an encryption level; with the other protocols, the app automatically chooses the encryption level.

After your custom selections, click connect at the bottom right of he page to close it. The servers lack basic information that would guide selection for optimal performance (such as server load and ping times). However, once you are connected, the featured map on the main interface allows you to view your connection by indicating your virtual location by a pointer pin.

The other tabs in the main interface especially the “Connection Log”, “Preferences” and “Custom Gateways” feature advanced features and configuration options that will appeal to advance users. Connection log shows you whats happening with your connection; Preference allows you to: change the default protocol, choose a default server location, change DNS provider and much more. Another tab on the main interface is the “Map Overview” which simply shows the WiTopia server locations around the world.

Supported Devices

WiTopia’s PersonalVPN is compatible with virtually all operating system and platforms. Needless to say, the five major platforms are covered – Windows, Mac OS, iOS, Android and Linux. You can use Personal VPN on Smart TVs, Gaming Consoles, Kindle FireHD, Google Chromebook, and virtually every device that has Wi-Fi.

It is also stated that the Personal VPN is compatible with routers. However, it is found that most routers are not supported. WiTopia clarifies that you can run the Personal VPN “through” a router, but not “on” a router; and they offer their own pre-configured and fully-supported VPN router solution (CloakBox Pro).

Simultaneous Connections

As mentioned in the packages section, WiTopia allows 5 to 8 simultaneous connections on one service account – the Basic and Pro plans allow five, while the Premium plan allows eight. This is a very good offering and it makes WiTopia’s Personal VPN an ideal service for small businesses. The industry average for simultaneous connections is five; and very few services will give you more.

Stealth Modes

When VPNs encrypt your traffic, monitoring agencies cannot see your data, but they can see that you are using a VPN. In some locations, agencies/ government hate that VPNs help users around internet restrictions, and they identify and block VPN traffic altogether.

This is where WiTopia’s “Stealth Mode” feature is invaluable. The feature will hide the fact that you’re using a VPN, and make your traffic less likely to be blocked. It disguises your traffic, making it look more like ordinary web traffic, and it will be allowed to pass through the network.

Thus, WiTopia through its stealth mode feature gives you a true unrestricted internet, even in locations notorious for blocking VPN traffic. However, the stealth mode is only available on the Pro and Premium Plan.

Torrenting:

WiTopia’s Personal VPN does not support P2P activities and torrenting. This would make a lot of users look beyond WiTopia because torrenting is increasingly becoming dangerous; and as such, users need to be safe and anonymous while sharing files.

Netflix

Try using WiTopia to access Netflix and you’ll get “Oops, something went wrong”. WiTopia was not able to unblock the streaming giant and give access to its vast contents. This is not uncommon with VPNs these days because Netflix is clamping down on VPNs and blocking VPNs so that people cannot use VPNs to circumvent their geo-restrictions.

Privacy and Security Features

VPN Protocol and Encryption

Personal VPN supports a range of VPN protocols which include PPTP, L2TP/IPsec, Cisco IPsec, and the openVPN-based SSL service. However, the OpenVPN is only available to the Pro and Premium subscribers, this means you have to subscribe to at least a 6 months package to have the very configurable and most secure protocol.

Though the PPTP is supported, it is not recommended for use because it is very insecure. It is quite surprising that WiTopia seems to encourage the use of IPSec over the OpenVPN. They describe OpenVPN as “fast and most secure”, and IPSec as “very secure and the fastest option”. In essence, what they say is that with IPSec you will get top notch security but better speed.

This is a shift from almost every other service that most often recommends the OpenVPN. Know that the OpenVPN is open source and has been tested for vulnerabilities; up till now, none has been found. It’s very secured; and also perfectly balances fast speed with its security.

As for encryption; WiTopia’s Personal VPN uses the strongest available which is the military grade AES 256-bit encryption. This is used on the OpenVPN and IPsec protocols. WiTopia also supports perfect forward secrecy, and unshared 4096-bit unique-per-user security certificates. These are excellent modern security methods that should assure you that your data is secured with WiTopia’s Personal VPN.

DNS leaks protection

DNS leaks are major security leaks that  compromises users privacy and security. DNS leak happens when DNS requests leaks out of the VPN tunnel and goes through the ISP DNS servers. So DNS leaks effectively expose a users real location and online activity to the users ISP. Therefore, any serious VPN should have DNS leak protection.

Many services allow you to toggle on DNS leak protection in settings; WiTopia does one better by having built-in DNS leak prevention. With this, you cannot make the mistake of forgetting to enable leaks protection.

WiTopia have their own global network of DNS servers, which by default are used to handle DNS requests; but there’s a settings option for you to choose to use someone else DNS servers. To cap this DNS section; WiTopia didn’t leak DNS in my privacy test.

Logging

WiTopia explain their logging policy saying: “We, by default and design, absolutely do not capture or store logs of a user’s internet activity, browsing, content, websites, or servers visited“

That would make them a no-logging VPN. But since some no-logging VPN have fine prints that shows they monitor and store a truck-load; it is important to examine the fine prints of WiTopia’s privacy policy.

In its privacy policy, WiTopia explicitly states what information is collected and why the information is collected. The privacy policy will definitely win points for clarity. But will it win point for for privacy?

They do store some information. They store the email address and name you enter when creating an account; they store the shipping address you provide when you order the WiTopia preconfigured router; they store emails and communication from the customer support channels. They use third parties to process payments, and the information you provide as part of the payment process is handled by these third parties.

That’s about all the personal information that their privacy policy reveal that they collect. In all, it is not privacy invading. And there are services that cater to paranoid users by eliminating collecting any personal information both in the account creation and the billing processes.

Also, when you visit, the WiTopia website capture non-personal-identifying bulk information such as; title of the web pages being viewed, referring websites, and geographical popularity. WiTopia stresses that they do not capture IP addresses or other personally-identifiable information, and that the data captured cannot be used to personally identify users or visitors.

This would not be comforting to some because WiTopia was not specific about how they capture the website analytics data. WiTopia only say that they use “a basic installation of website analytics software”. This is not specific. For example, do they use internal analytics or third party trackers like Google Analytics? Know that Google Analytics give some users the chills.

WiTopia responds to valid and legal subpoena requests, but only after serious scrutiny and affirmation that the request complies with both the “spirit” and letter of the law. In any case no logs of a user’s internet destinations or online activities are maintained, so they cannot provide information that they do not have.

Witopia say that they are into the online security business and not the advertising business; so, unlike some VPN services, they do not run any advertising or have ad partners that they share your personal information with. Lastly, WiTopia allows you to request deletion of archived account data.

WiTopia’s privacy policy used to include this: “Some indirect data, and the other bits that are cached during the regular course of running an Internet business, are regularly destroyed, mostly during our weekly maintenance windows, we only keep this minimal and temporary ‘trailing log’ of indirect data in case we learn a user is violating the terms of use”. The privacy policy now has no mention of these cache files or how WiTopia now identify possible breaches of the terms of service.

The Terms of Service reveals that Witopia service is subject to United States export controls which means you cannot use the service in a prohibited territory, country or organization (which currently include Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria and any organization named on the United State’s Commerce Department’s “Denied Parties List”).

Server Location

WiTopia’s Personal VPN operates servers in 74 locations within 45 countries around the world. The server network includes every region of the world. Europe and North America, as usual with VPN services, have very good representation; South America also has good representation with Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Costa Rica; Asia is also well representatd with locations in China, India, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Oceania has Australia and New Zealand; Africa has Egypt and South Africa; while the Middle East has Isreal. This is a splendidly distributed network that guarantees that anywhere you travel to in the world there will be a nearby server that you can connect to for optimal performance. It is worth noting that Personal VPN operates servers in some very tough locations that usually strangle VPNs (such as Russia and China).

WiTopia easily out perform a lot of the competition with their server network; many of the other services operate in significantly fewer countries.

Speed

WiTopia’s Personal VPN did well on the speed front. The service didn’t drop speed to unbearable limits; with nearby servers, speed drop was almost not-noticeable. Close servers recorded speed drops of 7% – 16% while the farthest servers recorded drops of 57% – 74%. On the average, the service set network speed back by 36%.

This is pretty impressive because some other services that drop speed by over 50% are still considered fast. While WiTopia’s Personal VPN is not the fastest VPN service; they have very good speed.

Customer Service

WiTopia’s Personal VPN advertises a live 24x7x365 support service. They also make you know that their email and live chat support service is non-outsourced. If you have any issues, you can contact a WiTopia support staff directly through email, online ticket, or live chat. One of the best thing with WiTopia is that their support service (email) gives incredibly fast responses to users’ queries.

They also have the self help resources such as FAQS and setup guides. The WiTopia site hold series of guides for setting up the Personal VPN on the purported devices. The FAQs featured will also help addresses most of the questions that users have asked in the past about the service.