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

Speeds Are Fast on Nearby Servers but Not With Distant Servers

ZoogVPN impressed me with fast speeds on nearby servers but not with distant servers. The speed of the servers far away from my location dropped significantly. ZoogVPN’s 1Gbps servers provided me with unlimited bandwidth, and I was able to stream, play online games, and surf the web unrestricted.

Speed Test Results

Before connecting with ZoogVPN, I had a base internet download speed of 46.23Mbps, upload speed of 6.76Mbps, and ping time of 46ms. During my tests, ZoogVPN servers provided me with an average download speed of 28.7Mbps — a 37.9% drop in my internet speed. I think this is a good indication of ZoogVPN’s dependability when it comes to fast connections, even though many factors can influence a speed test.

Nearby servers like the New York, London, and Canada servers gave me download speeds of 33.84Mbps, 31.09Mbps, and 29.92Mbps. However, my download speed dropped significantly with the distant servers. The server in Japan produced 9.32Mbps, an 80% drop from my base internet download speed.

The upload speeds dropped moderately during my tests. I got an average of 2Mbps on a 6.7Mbps base internet upload speed. This speed was sufficient but not ideal for activities like gaming, where upload speeds and ping matter much more. I saw my latency ranging from 100-400 ms while connected to the VPN and upload speeds between 1-3Mbps. These speeds simply aren’t ideal for fast-paced, multiplayer gaming.

Server Network — 45+ Servers in 25+ Countries

ZoogVPN has only 45+ servers spread across 25+ countries. When compared to larger providers like CyberGhost, which has 100 servers in 91+ countries, its server presence appears limited. The servers, however, cover a respectable amount of territory, including Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific, Australia, and Africa. The largest coverage is in Europe, followed by North America.

ZoogVPN has servers in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and France. You can also use servers in Australia, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, Hong Kong, India, Israel, and Russia. Most countries have just 1 server location except for the US, UK, Singapore, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and Germany.

ZoogVPN has dedicated servers for specific functions, such as streaming, P2P file sharing, and using sophisticated obfuscation methods to avoid censorship. You can learn everything there is to know about each server, including which streaming services it supports, on the ZoogVPN website. You can use this data to zero in on the best possible server to meet your requirements. The free version of ZoogVPN, like many others, does not have servers that can unblock geo-restricted content.

While ZoogVPN’s website does feature ping and server load information for each server, these details aren’t reflected in the apps themselves. Finding the ideal server on the website and using the app to locate it is difficult and time-consuming.

I was blown away to learn that ZoogVPN runs exclusively on bare-metal (physical) servers. This gives ZoogVPN complete hardware autonomy, allowing for the provision of secure, high-performance servers.

The average time to connect is 11 seconds, but I experienced connection issues with some servers. In comparison to OpenVPN, which consistently failed to establish a connection during my testing, the IKEv2 protocol was a breeze to use when connecting to a server on my Windows PC. On the other hand, connecting through OpenVPN on my Android wasn’t all that difficult.

Security — Offers Military-Grade Security

While there aren’t a ton of advanced security options, ZoogVPN has you covered on the essentials. But if you need more sophisticated features like multi-hop, a stealth protocol, or split tunneling, you’ll need to look elsewhere.

Highlighted below are several of ZoogVPN’s security features:

• AES 256 encryption – It uses military-grade AES 256-bit encryption and a 2048-bit hash key to protect your sensitive data from hackers, snoopers, and other threats. If you’re connecting to the free servers, you’ll only have access to the AES 128-bit encryption.
• Strong Encryption Protocols – ZoogVPN works with many different protocols, including L2TP/IPsec, PPTP, IKEv2, and OpenVPN over TCP/UDP. IKEv2 and OpenVPN are the only protocols that are pre-configured on the ZoogVPN app. ZoogVPN also offers a SOCKS5 proxy, which can improve download speeds when torrenting.
• Shadowing function – This feature helps you gain access to otherwise inaccessible content by hiding your digital footprint. China and Iran, two of the world’s most repressive regimes, use deep packet inspection (DPI) to detect VPN traffic and then block it. ZoogVPN Shadowing allows you to avoid this check by masking your VPN traffic as common HTTPS traffic.
• Kill switch – The Windows and Mac programs for ZoogVPN include a kill switch that, if activated, will prevent data leaks from occurring in the event of an unexpected VPN connection drop. Unfortunately, this feature is disabled by default and must be activated via the settings menu.
• Auto-reconnect – This feature will quickly reconnect you to the internet if the software cuts off your connection unexpectedly.
• DNS leak protection – All ZoogVPN client applications have built-in DNS leak protection to ensure that your data remains private. To ensure this feature worked as intended, I checked for IP and DNS leaks on several servers and found none.

ZoogVPN makes use of third-party DNS servers. During my tests, I found out that it uses Cisco’s OpenDNS, which offers fast domain name resolution speeds and keeps your traffic secure from suspicious websites.

One thing that ZoogVPN lacks is a split-tunneling feature. A split-tunneling feature helps exclude certain apps from the VPN tunnel. It provides the flexibility that allows you to browse local websites faster and securely while conserving bandwidth.

Privacy — Zero-Logs Policy

ZoogVPN meets requirements for protecting your online privacy by strictly enforcing a no-logs policy that guarantees it won’t log your user activity, IP addresses, log-in/log-out sessions, or connection timestamps.

Although the service does not record any personally identifiable information, it does store your email and password so that it can provide better service, keep your account secure, and respond to any questions or concerns you may have. If you are concerned about giving out your real email address, the VPN suggests using a disposable one. To ensure the best possible service, it also compiles statistics on how much data users upload and download overall.

ZoogVPN is incorporated in Greece, a privacy-friendly jurisdiction. Unlike other countries in the 5/9/14 Eyes data-sharing alliance, Greece does not require VPN service providers to disclose their customers’ personal information. As a member state of the EU, Greece is subject to the General Data Protection Regulation, which mandates that any EU-based service provider must inform you of any data request.

No external audit of ZoogVPN’s security has been performed as of yet. However, customer service told me that the VPN plans to implement one as soon as it finds a dependable and trusted partner. For the time being, you’ll have to take ZoogVPN at its word that it doesn’t keep logs.

Torrenting — Supports P2P, but Speeds Are Slow

ZoogVPN supports torrenting on some servers indicated as P2P on the server drop-down menu. These servers are located in Austria, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Hong Kong, Israel, Singapore, Australia, the UK, and the US.

Most of the P2P servers are in Europe. So, you could experience slow speeds if you’re far from the server location and can’t connect with a P2P server close to you. It took almost a day to download a 700MB public domain torrent file during my tests.

I didn’t get fast speeds while connected to the ZoogVPN torrent-friendly server in Poland

ZoogVPN is safe for torrenting. It has a zero-logs policy, automatic kill switch, and DNS leak protection. So, you could easily download torrents and carry out P2P file-sharing safely without any malware or virus infecting your computer as long as you’re willing to endure long download times.

Keep in mind that my team and I don’t condone illegal torrenting, so be sure to check the rules and regulations in your country and make sure the torrents you download are copyright-free.

Does ZoogVPN Work in China? Yes!

ZoogVPN works in China but requires a technical setup. Since I don’t live in China, I couldn’t personally test the VPN there. However, customer support confirmed that the VPN works there and sent me a guide on configuring the VPN to work in China.

ZoogVPN has an obfuscation feature called ZoogShadowing that allows you to use the VPN in censorship-heavy countries like China, Qatar, UAE, Iran, Turkey, and others. These servers are marked with a mask symbol in the server drop-down menu. The VPN uses obfuscated servers that make your traffic appear as normal HTTPS traffic, making it less likely to be blocked or detected as a VPN connection. ZoogVPN also uses manual IP resolution that makes it possible to access the VPN apps/websites unrestricted even if censorship-prone countries blocked it.

Keep in mind that using a non-government-approved VPN is illegal in China. However, there haven’t been any cases of tourists being penalized for using a VPN. Instead, the country uses tools that technologically block many VPNs from working over there.

Customer support from ZoogVPN is prompt and efficient. The provider offers email, live chat, online ticketing, phone, and even email support in addition to a knowledge base with frequently asked questions (FAQs) and instructions for configuring the service.

I used live chat a few times and was always connected to a representative in less than 3 minutes. Given the effectiveness of live chat as a customer service tool, I queried whether or not their claim that no user information is stored had been independently verified. Although I had no luck reaching anyone via phone, I did get responses within 10 minutes via the ticketing system and email. All of my questions were answered, and the representatives even went out of their way to provide additional information when it was needed.

While the setup guides and FAQs are both well-written and helpful, I still needed to get in touch with customer support to get answers to the majority of my questions. If you prefer to interact with companies through social media, you can find ZoogVPN on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.