SmartyDNS Review 2024: Before You Buy, Is It Worth It?

Lightning-Fast Speeds On All Servers

SmartyDNS speeds were impressive — the VPN delivered on both short and long-distance connections. The VPN servers I connected to consistently provided enough download speeds for smooth HD streaming and torrenting. The biggest downside of this service is the upload speed decrease, which is noticeable across the board. There was not much of a decline in download speeds, it only went down about 30%. Interestingly, servers in Australia did extraordinarily well despite being so far away from my location.

Speed Test Results

SmartyDNS does not slow down download speeds considerably, but upload speeds will be significantly affected. I conducted several speed tests with SmartyDNS in order to obtain an objective evaluation of its speed. The speed tests were conducted on speedtest.net from my home in the United States. It is important to remember that results might vary depending on where you are, your internet provider, and the time of day. These results are only supposed to give you an indication of the kind of effect SmartyDNS is likely to have on your connection.

As a first step, I tested my internet speed without using a VPN, so that a benchmark can be established. Next, I ran SmartyDNS to test its effects on the speed of my internet connection. As part of my testing, I used servers located in the US, Canada, UK, France, Spain, and a more distant server located in Australia.

According to the speedtest.net results, I had an average connection speed of 235 Mbps whilst connected to the SmartyDNS VPN server, which was 30% slower than my average daily internet speed. The speed of my internet connection was around 338 Mbps, and it didn’t drop significantly when I connected to SmartyDNS servers.

The ping response times slightly increased across locations, while download speeds decreased marginally. It was the upload speed that was the most affected, but the results were still quite good.

My experience with all the SmartyDNS servers was good, including the ones in Australia, which were more than 13,298 km away from my location. The fastest I could get was 333Mbps on a London server, while the slowest was 172Mbps (on a Montreal server). You won’t have trouble streaming content regardless of how far the server is from you since full HD streaming demands 5Mbps and 4K streaming demands 25Mbps. Having used SmartyDNS a few times now, I can attest that it gives you plenty of bandwidth to browse, stream, and download without interfering with any other activity.

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Server Network — 20 Servers in 15 Locations

As far as servers are concerned, SmartyDNS has a limited number. Nevertheless, the ones it does have are positioned in some of the most popular areas of the world. The bottom line is that there are only a few locations and servers, but you will usually be able to find one near you to access the content that you wish to access.

SmartyDNS has an overall network of 20 servers located in 15 countries, which can lead to server overload when the network is busy. The company offers servers in the following countries: the Netherlands, Germany, the United States, France, Italy, Spain, Romania, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Russia, Singapore, Canada, Australia, Poland, and India. The servers are all fast, and some of them are also dedicated to P2P traffic.

Security — Powerful Military-Grade Encryption

SmartyDNS uses the strongest encryption methods available to protect your traffic online from anyone trying to intercept it and exploit it. It offers a variety of industry-standard features including OpenVPN, a functional kill switch, as well as effective leak protection. IKEv2 is surprisingly the default protocol of the VPN, even though OpenVPN is believed to be the industry standard. So, keep in mind to switch to OpenVPN as soon as you begin using it.

In addition to DNS leak protection, the security service uses 256-bit AES encryption — the strongest encryption that makes it impossible to decrypt your traffic as long as your computer is connected to SmartyDNS servers. If you visit their support page, you’ll learn that the AES-256 encryption is used with the L2TP/IPSec, SSTP, OpenVPN, IKEv2, and SoftEther protocols, while PPTP protocols employ 128-bit MPPE encryption. For my tests, I used OpenVPN since it is currently considered the gold standard of secure connections based on the 2048-bit encryption that it utilizes.

SmartyDNS also offers you protection against websites knowing your preferences and linking them to your identity to spam you with personalized ads, and it masks your torrent traffic so you won’t receive copyright notices or other annoying letters from your ISP. However, not all of its servers are designed to be P2P-compatible.

SmartyDNS is equipped with a kill switch as well, providing you with the necessary protection in case of a connection failure. It can be used as a standalone feature, and it allows you to pick which apps are to be shut down when the connection drops. SmartyDNS runs its own DNS servers as well, protecting your personal information against unauthorized access.

With the software, you can enforce leak protection for DNS, IPv6, and WebRTC. It is built into the client, and you can enable it from your app’s “Connection Guard” settings page. The good news is that it actually works. I was not able to identify any DNS leaks based on information found at ipleak.net. Additionally, there were no WebRTC leaks detected. The result is exactly what you want to see — it offers reassurance that SmartyDNS’s Windows client adheres to its privacy obligations.

Based on my tests and the results obtained, it can be seen that SmartyDNS has no leaks at all. When I connected to their Manchester server, I was assigned the IP address 199.115.116.103. The image above shows that neither my IP address nor my location was revealed – my privacy was maintained. Overall, I can say with confidence that SmartyDNS is an effective leak-free VPN.

Privacy — Zero Traffic Logs

The provider claims that no connection or activity logs are kept, nor is there any information pertaining to your network activities while using SmartyDNS, making it impossible to link specific network activity to individual users.

Here’s a snippet from their privacy policy:

In addition, the company mentions that certain data will be collected from clients, but that the data collected will be kept to a minimum. The provider does not tell us what constitutes this “minimum” and all we have is their word that no meaningful logs are being collected.

When signing up with SmartyDNS, you can choose to provide SmartyDNS with certain personally identifiable information, but this is not required. You will however need to enter a valid email address before you can sign up.

If you are looking for a VPN with a no-log policy that is transparent and devoid of loopholes, then you may want to stay away from this one, due to their data storage policy. I recommend going with ExpressVPN as it has a proven record of keeping the privacy of its users uncompromisingly secure.

Stay safe with SmartyDNS!

Torrenting — Has Limited Servers Optimized for P2P Sharing

SmartyDNS supports torrenting and peer-to-peer traffic but only on selected VPN servers. The P2P servers supported are clearly identified within the app’s server list, spanning a total of 5 countries, including the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, and Germany.

I found it effortless to download torrents at a fast pace by utilizing the nearest downloading server, without needing any supplementary options or settings. The only prerequisite is to ensure that you are connected to a P2P-compatible server.

With SmartyDNS’s no-logs policy, torrenters will be able to use it freely without worrying about their privacy. You are also kept safe with a kill switch, which safeguards your IP address from being exposed in the event that the VPN connection drops. The only functionality that is missing from the app is port forwarding.

Does SmartyDNS Work in China? It Appears To Work

Since I wasn’t able to perform the test myself, I can’t guarantee SmartyDNS will consistently bypass China’s internet censorship. However, my live chat conversation with SmartyDNS technical support revealed that the VPN does work in China, but you’ll need to use the OpenVPN protocol in the SmartyDNS app or the SoftEther protocol to accomplish this.

To be honest, I won’t be surprised to hear that it failed to work in China. Obviously, to bypass the Great Firewall of China, you’ll need a VPN that offers obfuscation technology that SmartyDNS clearly lacks. The most strategic method to ascertain the possibility of SmartyDNS accessing internet service is to download the VPN before traveling. If you need to connect to a VPN while in China, then I would suggest that you try a reliable anti-censorship VPN service like ExpressVPN.

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Editor's Note: Transparency is one of our core values at WizCase, so you should know we are in the same ownership group as ExpressVPN. However, this does not affect our review process, as we adhere to a strict testing methodology.

SmartyDNS provides fantastic customer support, which is crucial for any reliable VPN. Live chat is available during working hours only (16 hours per day) and is highly responsive and helpful, however, their knowledge of technical aspects of the company is lacking. This hole is filled by the ticket support system, which was far more helpful and supportive.

As part of my testing, I interacted with SmartyDNS customer service several times via live chat. I was able to speak to a live person within minutes of my request, and each time I was provided with adequate answers. A real answer, not an automated reply or a link to the support page. One drawback about SmartyDNS customer service is the fact that it does not provide support in any other language than English. It is possible to receive help in another language through email, but the live chat is only available in English.