TotalVPN Review 2016

Introduction

Welcome to our review of TotalVPN. This provider may be new to the market, but they seem to be further along than others. They have a very smooth and polished website and interface. In this review, we will go through the options to see why they have caused such a stir.

Pricing and Discounts

The price of a service can make a difference. You can sign up for a Total Premium account which includes unlimited access to 30+ server locations, uncapped speeds, and 3 simultaneous connections. The Total Premium plan has two price structures. One month of their service is $12.44. When you buy a year, your price is $104.28. That means your monthly price drops to $8.69 a month. As you can see in our image, you will get 20% off the first billing cycle during their current promotion. In other words a month of service is $9.95, and the year is $83.40, or just $6.95 a month.

There is also a free account, but it is speed capped at 2mbps, and you are only allowed 3 obscure locations.In our opinion, the premium version is well worth the cost.

In the image above, you can see that TotalVPN accepts several payment methods. Those are credit cards and PayPal.They accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express and others. It is nice to see that they give you different options. We also like their 30 day money back guarantee.

Features

It is always nice to see features in a VPN service. Often times, that is what sets one provider apart from another. Though TotalVPN does not have many advanced features yet, they do have some that may be added on to the service. In the image below, we will show how to access the ones in the client. After firing up the client, click the gear as shown by the red arrow. This is where you can select the protocol and set it up to connect to a certain country on startup. As we mentioned earlier, they also have several addon features that they call upgrades. Supercharge locations are priority servers that have only a few people on them. That is great for downloading large files quickly. Priority Support gives you a place at the front of the support line. Extra connections are also available, should you need more than 3 simultaneous connections. Those are all available at an extra cost.

Server Locations

TotalVPN has servers in more than 30 locations, spread out across 25 different countries. As you can see in the image below, they have servers in a variety of different countries. They also have a good number of US servers.

Of course, this list is subject to change, since they add servers and locations from time to time. Though having access to that many servers may not be necessary, it gives you a list to help you reach whatever goals you have.

Performance

Depending on your goals, speeds can make a difference. If you like to stream content from other locations, there are few things worse than having the video buffer frequently, only because the speed isn’t good enough to support it. You may expect to see a speed loss when using a VPN because the connection is encrypted. in our speed test below, we encountered a very slight speed reduction of 7%.

To give you a frame of reference, you could expect up to a 25% speed loss and it would be within normal levels. With some servers you may experience a bigger difference, but you will want to check the server load on the website. You can imagine the speeds would be different if you use the supercharged servers. For this test, we used the IKEv2 protocol with AES-256 bit encryption. We usually like to use OpenVPN, but that is not supported by their Windows client yet. However, the IKEv2 is considered to be a good and safe alternative to the OpenVPN protocol.

Security and Privacy

TotalVPN offers the usual protocols you would expect. OpenVPN, PPTP, IKEv2, and IPSec. Their website says that L2TP and SSTP are coming soon as well. Though we like to use OpenVPN whenever possible, their Windows client only offers PPTP and IKEv2. As we just mentioned, IKEv2 is a good and secure alternative to OpenVPN, so be sure to choose that protocol. Be aware that the desktop clients default to PPTP, you may easily switch the protocol. TotalVPN has stated they do not keep activity logs, so your actions are not tracked while on their network.

Support

Support is something that can make or break any provider. TotalVPN offers several different means of support. They have a knowledge base, tutorials, a ticket system, and even a 24/7 live chat option on the website. By using their live chat feature, we got answers to the questions we asked immediately. The staff is friendly and knowledgeable. We didn’t submit any help tickets, so it is not known how quickly they answer those.

Compatibility

TotalVPN offers applications for the following operating systems.

Additionally, you may be able to set up a manual configuration for your router, and they are working on apps for Chromebook, Linux, and Windows phone. We are glad to see so many options available.

Sign Up Process

Like other providers, TotalVPN believes in making their sign up process easy. You start by entering your name, a valid email address, and a password.

1. Download the client and click the upgrade button. You will now see a screen that looks like this.
2. Select your term of service.
3. Select your payment type.
4. Click the checkout now button
5. Enjoy the VPN service.

There you have it. Enter a name, email address, password, and pay for your service. Now you may pursue whatever goals you have.

How to Use TotalVPN for Desktop

Just like with the sign up process, using TotalVPN on Windows or Mac is easy. Start by launching the client. You will see a client that looks like the image below.

Just like with the sign up process, using TotalVPN on Windows or Mac is easy. Start by launching the client. You will see a client that looks like the image below.

1. Before you connect, be sure to click the gear as shown by the red arrow, and change the protocol to IKEv2 for Windows, or Cisco IPSec for Mac.
2. Now, you have the option of doing a quick connect, or you may search for a specific country.
3. After selecting a country, click the connect button. At the top of the screen, you will see a green light saying you are connected.

How to Use TotalVPN for Mobile

For mobile use, we will demonstrate by using the Android version. However, we will talk about the differences between it and the iOS version, because they are different. Start by searching for “Total VPN” in the Google Play store, download, and launch the app.

Once you login, you will see a screen like the one above. If you want to quick connect, click the green button. Clicking the 3 horizontal lines in the upper left hand corner will bring up the servers like you see in the second panel. In contrast to the Windows app we showed earlier, the servers are arranged not only by country, but by city name as well. Choose a server and click the connect button. The third panel shows what you see when you are connected. As you can see, the Android app uses the OpenVPN protocol.

In the iOS version where it says protocol, you may change the protocol by clicking on it. The choices available in iOS are IPSec and IKEv2.

Final Thoughts

Favorite features of TotalVPN:

• Easy to use interface
• Stand alone clients
• 30 day money back guarantee
• 24 hour support
• Fast speeds
• Ability to add connections

Thoughts to make TotalVPN better:

• Add some advanced features
• Add more servers in the Netherlands
  
• Add Bitcoin as a payment option

To wrap up this review, there are very few negative points that we can mention here. We would like to see them add some additional servers in the Netherlands, because the servers there are overloaded. The only other thing we would like to see are advanced features like kill switches, and the support team stated a kill switch was coming soon. Their interface is straight forward and very easy to use. We like that TotalVPN is offering their new members a 30 day money back guarantee, which would give you more than enough time to see if the service is right for you. Sign up today to save 20% off.