VPN Like Torguard VPN + Alternatives + Similar VPNs + Competitors

One of the foremost strength of TorGuard VPN is ….. torrenting. They are easily the best VPN for torrenting. They are also one of the few VPNs that gives you access to Netflix for your streaming pleasure. With Torguard VPN’s over 3000 servers spread across all the regions of the world, your anonymity is greatly enhanced. And they have good speed for a exciting browsing experience. There are many other VPN like TorGuard VPN that offer similar and also your desired security and privacy features. These similar VPNs are known as the best TorGuard VPN alternatives and competitors available. In this article, we shall explore all the TorGuard VPN competitors and alternatives to help you choose the most suitable option.

Also, Torguard VPN has a lot of features set up to ensure users’ security and privacy: they support very secure VPN protocols including the OpenVPN protocol with excellent encryption, they have a kill switch feature, they have built in security leaks protection, and they offer the Stealth technology that makes your VPN use undetectable. Added to this they have numerous anonymous payment options, and they store no traffic log or session data.

They have an array of customer support options if you need help, and responses are both timely and helpful

It would seem that the Torguard VPN is all pros and no cons, but that’s not the case.

The biggest downside of the TorGuard VPN is Netflix. It is not all the time you see Netflix as a pro and a con. But it is here because, the basic Torguard VPN cannot access Netflix. You have to buy a dedicated IP address to get Netflix and that is quite expensive.

Another downside will be that the service does not offer free trials, and the 7 days money back guarantee is relatively short.

Also, Torguard’s U.S. connections means it is not safely away from the Five-Eyes as well as the invasive U.S intelligence agencies.

The company makes two things clear: (i) that they are not related in anyway to the Tor project as the name might suggest (ii) the tor in Torguard relates to torrent.

When they came on board, it was essentially to help guard/ protect users when torrenting, but they have since grown bigger. Now they are a full VPN service and they say they want to help you take back your online privacy and surf the web in complete privacy.

This review is to look at Torguard VPN critically to know if they really meet up with that promise to provide online privacy. TorGuard VPN 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 TorGuard VPN. Below are other VPN like TorGuard VPN:

VPN Like TorGuard VPN + Alternatives:

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

Packages

Service plan and pricing

TorGuard offers four different products. Apart from the main VPN service (called anonymous VPN), they also offer an anonymous proxy, an anonymous email, and a privacy bundle (a three in one package that combines the proxy, email and VPN).

The anonymous proxy is optimized for P2P file sharing, and allows you to use SOCKS5 and HTTP/ SSL. It is billed monthly ($5.95), quarterly ($14.95), semi-annually ($29.95), and  annually ($46.95). The anonymous email gives you secure G/PGP encryption and MITM attack protection; amd is also billed monthly ($6.95), quarterly ($15.95), semi-annually ($29.99) and annually ($49.95).

The main VPN service also has four billing options – every month, every three months, every six months and every year. The packages are different only in billing periods; they offer the same features and services. The monthly subscription cost $9.99. The quarterly subscription cost $19.99; this breaks down to $6.67 per month to give a 33.23% cost saving. The semi-annual subscription cost $29.99; this breaks down to $5.00 per month to give a 50% cost saving. The annual subscription cost $59.99; this breaks down to $5.00 per month and is still a 50% cost saving.

Just like with almost every VPN service in the market, you are better off by opting for a longer deal. You save 33% on the 3 months deal, and up to 50% on the 6 months deal. However, it is somewhat surprising that the annual deal is not discounted more than the 6 month deal; which means there is no incentive for choosing the one year deal over the six months deal.

It is nice to see that TorGuard have not one but two packages between the one month and the one year packages. This will serve the need of users who need VPN protection just for a couple of months.

What about Torguard VPN prices? Is it better or worst than the competition? The VPN monthly price definitely makes Torguard of the the expensive services; and also their best value deal ($5.00) is still almost twice the best value deal of some highly rated services.

Instead of going for the core VPN services, Torguard fans can opt to go for the 3 in 1 Privacy bundle, which is billed monthly ($11.54), quarterly ($20.97), and annually ($64.00). You can also pay for the dedicated IP Address add-on at $7.99 per month, $18.99 per quarter, $36.99 per six months, or $54.99 per year. A one month bundle plus a dedicated IP address will dig a hole of $19.53 (11.54 + 7.99) into your pocket. If you ask me, that’s HUGE for a one month VPN service.

Payment

Torguard VPN accepted payment methods will cater to every user no matter their privacy risk tolerance level. They suppprt an array of options – both the regular methods and the increasingly popular anonymous methods.

Torguard offers a vast array of online payment methods (actually up to 200 of them), this include the popular ones such as PayPal and debit/ credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Discover Card). Torguard options easily outnumber every other VPN service. However, while these methods are convenient, they scare users with low risk tolerance because they involve submitting personal information. On the other hand, the anonymous methods allow users to make payment without leaving any trail. Some of these anonymous methods that TorGuard supports include transactions with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. If you really want to have something close to total anonymity, then you wouldn’t want billing operations that require submitting your personal data, then you might have to take at look at TorGuard VPN.

Free trial

Torguard VPN does not offer free trial on any of their packages. I like to see free trials so that I can test a service without any financial commitment. If you are like me in this regard, you’ll have to look beyond Torguard to other services who offer free trials. And there are a couple of them.

Refund policy

If you are not 100% satisfied with the TorGuard VPN service, you can request a refund of your payment, and Torguard will give you back your money. The only requirement is that you cancel your account and make the request not later than 7 days from the date of the purchase.

This is a 7 days money back guarantee which is the only way to test the service free of charge since they do not offer free trials. Owing to that last part (about no free trial), the 7 days money back guarantee of Torguard seems very short. It doesn’t allow users enough time to fully appreciate the features and offerings of the service. Also, many of the highly rated VPN services give money back guarantees of up to 30 days.

Note however that any purchase of dedicated IPs will not be refunded. Also, the refund are made through the means of making paymemt; it means that payments made through anonymous methods such as gift cards cannot be refunded.

Features

Ease of Use

Torguard VPN is very easy to download and install. It’s also fairly easy to use with a simple and intuitive interface. The service also offer unlimited bandwidth which mean that your connections will not be throttled.

Supported Devices

TorGuard is compatible with almost all major operating systems, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. This makes it available for a wide range of users. They have web browser extensions for Firefox and chrome; and you can also set up the service on DDWRT routers and Tomato routers. There are detailed manual setup guides for the supported devices on their website.

Simultaneous connections

Torguard VPN service allows the simultaneous connection of 5 devices using one VPN account. Thus, you can protect your mobile phone, laptop, office computer and any other two devices without extra cost. This generous offering is more than that of many VPN services.

However, if you need additional connections, Torguard allows you to pay a token ($1.00 per month) for each additional device. This is also a very good offer. Services without this pay-as-you-add arrangement will require you to buy another VPN account if you must have extra connections, and this will prove to be more expensive.

Torrenting

You only need to know that the “Tor” in torguard means torrenting. Torguard VPN allows BitTorrent and all P2P traffic; even stating that: “At TorGuard we offer Bittorrent focused anonymous VPN services to keep you safe and protected“

Torguard is one of the most committed services to torrenting. They have shown this commitment by offering a product solely for torrenting – the torguard anonymous proxy. The anonymous proxy secures your torrent clients and protects your torrent downloads. Another torguard product (Privacy bundle) comes with the the VPN and the anonymous proxy optimized for torrenting.

With Torguard, you can be sure that your privacy is secured when torrenting. But it you are the paranoid user; Torguard have a torrent tracker (TorGuard’s Torrent IP Checker Tool) with which you can monitor your own torrent IP to ensure that your torren downloads are protected.

Streaming

Many streaming activities are done under the cover of VPNs. This is because you can use a VPN to spoof your location and have access to content that is not meant for your particular geographic region. Torguard is an ideal VPN for streaming, especially since they offer dedicated IP address. When connecting to a VPN service you are using a shared IP Address (that is, your assigned anonymous IP address could also be assigned to other users). While you can still access some streaming sites with shared IPs; most streaming services can easily identify shared IPs, and then block and blacklist them.

With Torguard dedicated IP address, you can stream and watch content without worrying about interruptions that could be caused by streaming services blocking shared IPs. The only downside is that the dedicated IP address is an add-on that comes with price. It comes at the small but significant price of $7.99 on a monthly basis.

Netflix is the godfather of VPN blocking; and very few VPN services can give access to the contents of the streaming giant. It was not surprising that Torguard basic VPN or the proxy did not give Netflix. But the dedicated IP address add-on could.

However it should be noted that while Torguard gives access to Netflix only after incurring the additional cost of its dedicated IP address add-on, there are VPN services that give access to Netflix and other premium streaming services without any other cost other than the cost of buying the VPN.

Stealth Mode

Certain locations with strict censorship and firewalls use deep packet inspection (DPI) to identify and block VPN traffic. When this is the case, the regular VPN cannot give you access to restricted contents.

TorGuard offers multiple Stealth VPN protocols such for strict countries or firewalls like: OpenVPN obfuscation, OpenConnect/AnyConnect and SSTP protocols. Torguard’s Stealth VPN makes VPN traffic impossible to block, allowing you to directly bypass deep packet inspection and the world’s strictest firewalls. The Stealth technology does this by disguising VPN traffic to look like normal web traffic, and hiding the fact that you’re using a VPN.

Privacy and Security Feature

Protocol and encryption

The TorGuard VPN service supports OpenVPN, PPTP, L2TP/IPSec,  as well as IKEV2. These are the major protocols in the VPN industry. Though, OpenVPN is mostly used by users because of the numerous recommendation it receives, Torguard supports the other protocols to give users options. Because users might need different protocols to serve particular needs; Torguard VPN wide protocol offering will attract different users.

For encryption, Torguard uses state-of-the-art encryption (the AES 256 – bit encryption with SHA 512). This is the highest encryption level; and is the encryption used by security conscious organizations such as banks and the military. If speed is your priority, you may consider the AES 128 encryption which Torguard  VPN also uses. This encryption is also secure, but not as secure as th AES 256. With these encryption levels, you can be assured that Torguard VPN gives sound security.

Kill switch

There are some security and privacy features that I look out for in a VPN, and one of them is the kill witch feature. The kill switch should really be featured by any VPN services serious about giving users all-the-time VPN protection. The kill switch feature is the one thing that ensures that users data and real location do not become exposed when the VPN connection drops.

Torguard VPN offers a kill switch. Even at those inevitable moments of VPN connection drops, your privacy is intact, because Torguard VPN kill switch feature will cut off the internet connection, ensuring that you do not transmit data online without the VPN protection.

Security Leaks Protection

Security leaks such as DNS leaks and IPv6 leaks effectively reveals a user’s real location and online activities. Thus, any VPN serious about privacy should effectively protect against these leaks. Torguard has secure DNS servers and offer DNS leaks and IPv6 leaks protection.

The Windows and MacOS clients have a settings option to toggle on/ off DNS leaks protection; while the IPv6 leaks protection is a built in feature that is handled at the server level to ensure that you are always protected.

Protecting against IP DNS leaks with TorGuard is completely automatic. By default, TorGuard’s VPN app tunnels all DNS requests through TorGuard’s own VPN servers, so new users need no action to prevent leaks. The settings option to prevent IPv6 leaks is also enabled by default and completely disables all IPv6 access while the TorGuard VPN is active.

TorGuard’s commitment to protecting against security leaks have seen them design a special page that has a DNS Leak Test tool for you to examine if your VPN is leaking DNS requests. I checked anyway to determine if the VPN perform as promised; and yes it did. TorGuard did prevent all security leaks.

Logging policy

TorGuard VPN says that they have a strict no log policy. They explain that they do not store any traffic logs or user session data. This is the kind of no-logging claims that every VPN service like to make; but some have been found to keep logs against their claims, so I tend to look beyond the big no-log advert speaks.

I went to the privacy policy to know if they have fine prints that says otherwise. Torguard VPN privacy policy is one of the shortest I have seen. It clearly explain all the information that the service collect and why it collects them.

They collect: contact data and content submitted through their support channels; account information for setting up your account; and payment information (through the third party payment processors) for processing payments. And that’s all the personal information collected; this kind of information is also collected by many of the other VPN services. A user may contact support department or the official TorGuard.net data controller and request that all personal information in the Torguard system be removed.

TorGuard makes it clear that they do not collect or log any data from their Virtual Private Network (VPN) or their proxy services.

Jurisdiction

Torguard VPN parent company is in Caribbean Island of Nevis, but they are very well under U.S. jurisdiction with the company’s office in Orlando, Florida, United states.

Is being in the U.S any big deal? The U.S. unfriendly privacy laws means that in theory the service can be forced to retain and disclose users data while also being forced to remain quiet about it. Add the fact that U.S. intelligence agencies (NSA and FBI) have a checkered past with regards to respecting individuals’ privacy. Also, throw in the fact that the U.S. is a member of a global spying network called 14-Eyes, where 14 member countries and their sympathizers work together to collect and share intelligence.

Now you understand why it’s such a big deal (in fact a big privacy threat) for VPN services to be located in the U.S. Though, Torguard VPN claim not to keep logs and that they will have nothing for authorities that come looking, privacy conscious users will still be put off by their U.S. location.

Servers Network

Torguard VPN has over 3000 servers in over 50 countries. The robust server network improves anonymity because it gives you a lot of options for spoofing your location; it also improves performance because you will less likely meet a lot of users connecting to and sharing the resources of a few servers.

Also, Torguard out-perform a lot of VPN services by its server operation – both in server count and countries covered. Many of the highly rated VPN services operate only a few hundred servers; Torguard’s over 3000 servers makes them one of the industry leaders in this category. In terms of geographical distribution,  Torguard’s network is also one of the finest. It is widely distributed across the globe ensuring that anywhere you travel to, there will be a TorGuard VPN server nearby.

TorGuard server network features Europe, North and South America, Asia, Oceania, Africa and the Middle East. It impresses me that Torguard VPN have servers in Africa and Middle East, because these regions are often neglected by many VPN services.

Speed

The speed of a VPN just cannot be ignored. No matter the level of security and privacy that a VPN service gives, if it does not give at least serviceable speeds, it will barely see users. To determine the speed of the VPN, I measured by how much the service dropped connection Speed.

On the average, Torguard VPN dropped download speed and upload speed by 45% and 51% respectively. These are very respectable speeds and will allow you do virtually anything, even to watch HD movies.

Customer Support

Torguard has a very sound customer support service. There are various means of reaching out to Torguard for assistance. You can use the live chat service, the online ticketing system, the email service, and even a telephone service. The is easily on of the most extensive support service in the VPN industry. Torguard also has a strong social media presence; you can catch them on Facebook. Torguard also operates a blog where you can get updates on new features on the service, as well as security news peeks.

A customer support service no matter how extensive will make no meaning if feedback do not come when needed. Response timeliness have been the undoing of many VPN services, but not Torguard VPN. Torguard response timeliness is one of the fastest in the industry. The email and ticketing systems respond to queries in less than an hour (sometimes in even a few minutes). There are a few services that compromise quality responses for fast responses; but not Torguard VPN. Their fast responses are usually specific, and very helpful in solving the issue.

Torguard also have the many self help articles in FAQS, knowledge base and guides. These hold: answers to common questions about the service, answers to technical questions for using the service smoothly, and detailed steps for setting up the VPN on supported devices.