The Internet came to life as a computer network connecting the military first, then academia. Then, a little more than a couple of decades ago, the Internet went public, packaging the world into bits and pixels. As a result, more than half of the world’s population has internet access currently. It’s been a revolution compared to Gutenberg’s mobile-type printer. It’s a source of information, expression, art, and support for billions of users everywhere.
The Internet created an environment in which some old problems do not exist anymore. However, that same environment, new in the human experience, has also developed novel problems of its own. The intrusion into the user’s privacy is one such issue. It’s so easy to spy on somebody’s online behavior if you know just a little about digital technology that you don’t need to be a hacker, a nerd, or an expert anymore.
However, privacy is not a lost cause. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) solve the problem of privacy for internet users by doing two things primarily: hiding a user’s private IP address and encrypting all the user’s traffic.
The Reliable Unlimited Secure (RUS) VPN service is the VPN industry’s new kid on the block, so in this article, I review it to find out if it is indeed as reliable, unlimited, and secure as its name promises. So now I start with my RusVPN service review.
RusVPN’s background
RusVPN is not even a couple of years old yet. It was incorporated by Iron Media Group Limited under the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth of Dominica.
On the Internet, where national borders do not count for much, we tend to dismiss a service’s country of origin. That’s often irrelevant, but not when it comes to privacy protection.
Let’s be clear on this: any business must honor and respect its local laws. For example, suppose a VPN is based in a country hostile to digital privacy (like the 14 Eyes Surveillance Alliance). In that case, the ability of that VPN to keep your data away from the government is limited, to say the least. This is why I don’t favor VPNs headquartered in the US, the UK, and other such countries, even if they provide a decent and cost-effective service. I can’t trust a VPN not to infringe on my privacy if its law requires it to do exactly that. In a gist: your VPN’s country of origin makes a difference.
The Commonwealth of Dominica’s law is written with individual privacy protection in mind. Breaking those laws leads to legal sanctions. That’s the kind of laws I want my VPN provider to follow because their government doesn’t get in the way of their jog. So RUSPVN is not obligated to hand over any information about any client simply because that’s the law of the land.
The Protection of Personal Data Act became law a few years ago in Dominica. The law forces those who collect data to be explicit about the information they collect and to explain if it’s anonymized or not. But, of course, this right is not extended to criminals, so if you’re known to have committed a crime elsewhere, that protection does not extend to you.
Security and anonymity in RusVPN
In most people’s minds, privacy, security, and anonymity are the most important reasons to use a VPN. RusVPN delivers on all three accounts. It uses AES256 encryption, which is military-grade, it’s the industry standard, has no known weaknesses or successful attack techniques – and both the academic and the hacker community have been going at it for years.
Protocols further enhance privacy as OpenVPN, L2TP, and PPTP. The available variety ensures that you’re safe on any platform you use.
There is a Kill Switch available, and this VPN never leaks your information outside the encryption tunnel. This means that your private data will never be exposed, even by accident.
The servers network
The RusVPN server network spans 50 countries and includes more than 300 nodes (individual servers). So, no, it doesn’t look that impressive compared to other VPNs I’ve used whose server list number in the thousands. But we must consider two things. First of all, a vast server number guarantees you nothing. Second, this network has been around for a concise period. The most important things to consider in this case will be the bandwidth available in each server and the overall quality of the service.
Many of the network’s servers are located in the UK and the USA. This is nothing more than the supply meeting a market’s demand. Those countries have more advanced users concerned with privacy and anonymity issues, so it only makes sense for the VPN to give those locations more attention.
That being said, if switching servers frequently is your thing, and you’re looking for a service on behalf of a company or group, you’ll probably need another network. The few hundred servers available in RUSVPN won’t allow a large base of users to be changing servers all the time. But if you’re an individual looking for a VPN to use at home, RUSVPN is just the thing.
RusVPN’s privacy policy
This is one of RusVPN’s best features, and it has to do with the fact that it’s headquartered in Dominica.
The VPN’s no-log policy is precise, clear, with no equivocations hiding behind nerdy jargon. RusVPN never logs any of your online activities. Period. That’s what I want to read in any VPN’s terms of service.
It only collects Google Analytics information about the non-subscribing visitors that reach its website, a standard marketing practice everywhere. But even that information collected is kept at a minimum. And if you don’t like even that, you can install the RusVPN add-on in your browser and opt-out of that.
However, as a RusVPN subscriber, none of your browsing information or history is logged anywhere, not even the Google Analytics bits. There is indeed a nonpermanent log that gets cleared every few hours.
The VPN also writes explicitly that they will do everything within their power to protect your information as long as you are a client. This is also because of their local legislative framework, of course, but at least the VPN acknowledges it clearly. The website also states that it will let every client know in due time and try to find a new jurisdiction if it was ordered to start keeping records. This is a most unexpected but welcome statement.
Platforms supported
You could think that RusVPN only supports the most popular platforms in the market because it’s such a young service. You’d be wrong. RUSVPN’s offer includes products for Android, Linux, iOS, macOS, and Windows. In addition, any router that supports OpenVPN works well with RusVPN, and there are browser extensions available for both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.
If your smartTV is very important for your internet experience, you’ll find no products you can install in it from RusVPN. However, this shouldn’t dissuade you. If you configure your router correctly to go through the VPN, your devices will be protected easily and just as reliably as if you had dedicated software installed in them.
Installing your VPN in your router directly is always the best option. In this way, every device connected through your router is VPN-protected, and they all count as a single connection to the provider. So, for example, RusVPN allows you to have as many as five concurrent connections to the network. But if your five devices are connected through the same router, it’s a single connection as far as the server is concerned. And any device connected to the router is protected too.
Stability and server speeds in RusVPN
Privacy isn’t free. By that, I don’t mean the fee you need to pay to your VPN provider, whichever one it is. Routing your data through specific servers and encrypting everything back and forth takes computing power, and thus it makes everything slower. There’s no way around this. Every VPN will affect your speeds in some way. Because it can be a complicated process, even within each VPN, the changes will vary according to many variables, such as the servers you choose, the protocols available, and other factors.
RusVPN’s servers are not optimized for speed. The number of servers in the net does not allow for an efficient traffic distribution among clients. And every server performs differently, too. For example, a particular server can be prolonged while another one is quite fast.
The result is a VPN with an overall unstable speed. Again, if you are a home user, this could be irrelevant to you. But if you’re looking for an institutional service for advanced processes, businesses, or a vast amount of users, then maybe you need to find a different provider.
Streaming websites and Peer to Peer networks in RusVPN
As far as unblocking streaming websites go, RusVPN is pretty good. Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Crunchyroll, and HBO are all unblocked by RusVPN’s servers. Hulu takes a bit longer, but you can fix that by switching your server. Some servers within the network are called “rapid” because they are optimized for unblocking content and lift some restrictions. They do the trick and, on top of that, they also give you the speed you need to enjoy from the content you’re unlocking.
You will find in other RusVPN reviews that the reviewer couldn’t unblock US Netflix or other streaming services. Well, I don’t doubt so. It’s all about choosing the correct server, and I can understand how a reviewer, even a good one, can’t afford to try 20 different services to report a single sentence in a review. So if you don’t succeed at once, just change your server and keep trying.
Any content you want is at your hand’s reach with the help of the correct server in RusVPN.
Then we have torrents. They’re a different kettle of fish. RusVPN does allow them, and so do the Commonwealth of Dominica’s laws. So the provider gives you the ability to torrent whatever you want from wherever you are.
RusVPN’s user-friendliness
User-friendliness and advanced features are opposite sides of the same coin. Often a service that excels in one of those aspects leaves much to be desired on the other. RusVPN is like that because setting it up is a friendly process that new users will find straightforward and painless. Users who like more advanced options, on the other hand, may find that they lack options.
The user interface is simple, the controls and settings are straightforward. Almost everything you could need is available from the home screen. The vital data (your IP address, connection status, etc.) are evident.
The platform will suggest a server for you to use based on your current location (as revealed by your IP address). If you just click on the last server used, you will get a list of countries. Some of them are recommended, but you can choose any server you fancy from the 330 available on the list. Then you click connect on the homepage. That’s it. You’re connected now.
If your experience with RusVPN has taught you that a given server is better for you, for whatever reason, you can find it in the “common” tab, where you’ll also find the button that turns on the Kill Switch.
In RusVPN, you can choose the protocol you want for your connection, as you do with most other premium VPN providers. Of course, every protocol has its own strengths and weaknesses, but there is a concise explanatory note next to each of them so that you don’t choose on faith alone.
But it would be best if you remain aware of updates. The RusVPN apps you download and use on your devices do not update themselves automatically. Instead, you need to keep an eye on the service’s website to know when new versions are available. Then you must delete your current version and install the new one.
Pricing
You can get RusVPN for free for seven days, which is how long its free trial lasts. But you probably still need to know more about prices and plans.
Signing up for longer-term plans is more expensive in the immediate payment, but it saves you money monthly with most VPN providers. This also applies to RusVPN. If you go with the 3-year plan, you will save an astonishing 70% (paying effectively only 3 USD for the monthly service). That’s 107.64 USD every three years. The yearly will cost you 59.87 USD (4.99 per month), and if you want to go one month at a time, you’ll pay 9.99 USD. This last price is the industry standard for high-quality VPN services.
RusVPN’s customer service
This VPN’s customer service is surprisingly good. It has everything. There is a live chat feature, email support, web forms, and telephone help. That gives you plenty of options to convey your questions, complaints, or demands.
In the live chat, you can exchange messages with a RusVPN customer care agent in real-time. You can ask them any question in your mind and have an answer almost at once. You will find that you need to wait for somebody to chat with you now and then, but it’s never more than a 20-minute wait.
Email support is, of course, much slower. But that’s just the nature of the beast. You fill up a form detailing your problem, send it, and then wait for an answer which will need about a day to arrive in your inbox.
The advantage of this type of customer service is that you’re very likely to get a more detailed answer than from the live chat representatives. Of course, this says nothing about live chat representatives, but email answers are meant to settle a question once and for all; there’s no “next question” expected.
There are also two numbers to contact RusVPN for customer service. This is nice, useless, though on the company’s part because it’s rather pointless if you’re not in or around the UK. Unfortunately, it’s not toll-free, so you have to pay for the long-distance call, and, depending on where you are, that could be more expensive than your VPN monthly fee.
RUsVPN and the great Firewall of China
The VPN works in China if that’s an issue of importance to you.
Final thoughts
So now you’ve read my honest and unbiased RUSVPN review.
The provider is one of the newest VPNs in the industry. The service’s quality is outstanding overall; does all the tricks you want a premium VPN to do. It works in China. It can unlock Netflix through some servers, it’s perfectly safe, and its price is within the industry’s average. Additionally, it’s one of the most user-friendly VPNs in the market.
If you are a beginner looking to learn VPNs inside and out while using a good service that fulfills all the tasks a good VPN should do and cares for your privacy, this is the VPN for you.
But if you are more of an expert, you could find it lacks some of the things you want.
Fortunately, you don’t have to take my word for it. The 30-day refund policy on offer allows you to experience the VPN by yourself and decide if you want to make it your permanent option without risking any money — just keep in mind that the refund only applies if your traffic remains under 500MB.