Unlimited Internet Access with Astrill (VPN Review)

Editors note: Since publishing this post, we’ve received a number of emails from Astrill users saying they’ve had problems. For this reason, we recommend you consider Freedur which is what we use personally. We’ve received e-mails about “defamation” from Astrill asking us to remove this disclosure but continue to believe that sharing this information with our readers is better than deleting the post outright. If you have any information about an interaction you had with Astrill that we should know about, positive or negative, leave a comment below.

Several days after comparing the options and publishing this guide on how to get unrestricted internet access in China, I got an e-mail from Astrill Corp who, starting in 2010, offers a VPN service similar to Freedur.

When we’re talking about accessing the huge portion of the internet that’s blocked in China, you can never have too many options. So I took a look at Astrill’s VPN and compared it to Freedur, which it bears a strong similarity to.

Astrill's control panel shows current your speed

Like Freedur, Astrill offers totally unrestricted access to everything on the internet and requires you to download a small application to your PC. Unlike Freedur, you’re ready to go as soon as you install Astrill – you won’t need to mess with any Firefox extensions, just install the tiny 2mb application on your PC and you’re good to go.

Astrill supports all modern versions of Windows (XP, Visa, and Windows 7) but unfortunately, a Mac OSX version isn’t available yet. I tested Astrill on Windows 7 and it worked just like you’d expect it to. When you launch the program you’ll immediately know if it’s active or not by the huge On/Off indicator in Astrill’s control panel window which also displays your current upload and download speed. With this feature I was able to see if Astrill was fast enough to utilize all of my bandwidth (my average China Telecom connection maxes out at 200kbps), and sure enough, it does. Youtube videos start playing immediately and websites load quickly.

Astrill desktop icon

And now the downside: if you decide to sign up for long term service, you’ll be paying a premium over Freedur. One year of service costs $80 (versus $60 for Freedur) which wouldn’t seem like too much if there wasn’t so much new competition in this space. Without big features to distinguish it from cheaper alternatives Freedur and Witopia, one can’t help but wonder why Astrill carries such a significant 25% premium.

Even with the forementioned reservation, Astrill works flawlessly and is a welcome addition to the growing cast of VPN solutions.

Astrill is currently in beta and unlike Freedur, offers a three-day trial so you can give it a shot risk free.

edit: Since publishing this article, Astrill has lowered the price for annual service to $60, which is great news. They’ve also removed the public beta so you’ll require a beta key to apply for the free trial. The following key will work for the first 100 people who use it: ASTRILL-CHARLIE-D837E-6PDX4

109 thoughts on “Unlimited Internet Access with Astrill (VPN Review)”

  1. Hey, it is now just 60USD for one year, i guess they changed the prices. I tried it and it works just great! I think Ill buy it when they go paid

    Reply
  2. Lols ….. I think astrill is fraudulent VPN service. I just bought in morning and at noon, in same day, my account was expired.
    I try to contact customer service and got nothing.

    Reply
    • Really? Have you still heard nothing? If so, I will delete this post.

      edit: I recommend checking out Freedur. They are 100% trustworthy and their service is great. There’s a link in the sidebar on every page on Chengdu Living and if you use our discount code you can save 50%!

      Reply
    • We apologize to hear that your service was not extended or there might be some issue which our email team can check for you. We offer 24/7 Live support via Calls, Chats and Emails.We are here to assist you with all your Astrill related queries so provide us with the details of issue that you are facing and we will fix it for you. Feel free to write to us at [email protected] and our billing department can respond you regarding this.

      Reply
  3. Still not responded. I got twice “accident” from astrill, first (in early April 2010 paid with paypal) and twice (in this month paid with credit card). No return till now, they still charge.
    Dont delete this post, keep this post alive.

    Reply
    • Cara: I added a notice at the beginning of this post informing people of the troubles that a few people have had with Astrill and that we can no longer recommend them. Good luck resolving your issue with them and I recommend you use the 50% off Freedur coupon if you currently don’t have a working VPN. Take care-

      Reply
    • We apologize to hear that your service was not extended or there might be some issue which our email team can check for you. We offer 24/7 Live support via Calls, Chats and Emails.We are here to assist you with all your Astrill related queries so provide us with the details of issue that you are facing and we will fix it for you. Feel free to write to us at [email protected] and our billing department can respond you regarding this.

      Reply
  4. Thanks for adding the note at the beginning of this post, Charlie. I came here to post that I too had a bad experience with Astrill.

    I’m shooting for your Freedur giveaway but if I don’t win I’ll still sign up. Thanks again.

    Reply
    • We apologize to hear that you faced issues while using Astrill VPN services. We offer 24/7 Live support via Calls, Chats and Emails.We are here to assist you with all your Astrill related queries so provide us with the details of issue that you are facing and we will fix it for you. Feel free to write to us at [email protected] and our billing department can respond you regarding this.

      Reply
  5. Regarding Astril, I have been using it for the past i dont know 4-5 months at least, its great, super quick, and you can sign up for a short period. Regarding the bad comments, I noticed that on every review anywhere, and it appears it is often the freedur team behind that (for those that for some weird reason followed the whole skydur vs freedur rage, astrill is skydur)

    Anyway, works like a charm, and works on mobile phones 🙂

    Cheers,
    Hans

    Reply
  6. I’m a total nob for computers, I tried a few VPNs already Witopia – it was always slow for me and their support wasn’t able to fix it. The second one I tried was Freedur. It worked sometimes, usually not – their L2TP VPN is terrible, I was having problems with them always. My account with them has expired and a friend of mine recommended Astrill. It works great for me, I’m using it on my phone and Mac laptop at the same time with one account. If you are staying in China for a long time, I highly recommend Astrill.
    Also they will be soon releasing PPTP VPN which is great. i invested $10 and i am proud that they were worth it 😀

    Reply
  7. Hans and Arqam are highly likely Astrill staff disguising themselves as customers. They have been hiding behind anonymity bad mouthing Freedur for a long time and continues to do so. You can usually tell it’s them by their Nigerian-scam-like English.

    Reply
    • We apologize to hear that you faced issues while using Astrill VPN services. We offer 24/7 Live support via Calls, Chats and Emails.We are here to assist you with all your Astrill related queries so provide us with the details of issue that you are facing and we will fix it for you. Feel free to write to us at [email protected] and our billing department can respond you regarding this.

      Reply
    • We apologize for the inconvenience.We offer 24/7 Live support via Calls, Chats and Emails. We request you to please contact our Technical support team so that they can check the issue. If you are facing issues on desktop device we can provide you remote desktop assistance and try to fix the issue from our end. We are here to assist you with all your Astrill related queries so provide us with the details of issue that you are facing and we will fix it for you. Feel free to write to us at [email protected].

      Reply
  8. Once I installed the update, I could no longer log into skype of MSN once Astrill is running. If I log out of Astrill to log into Skype – then the internet won’t load anything – just a blank “non-responding” screen even if I am signed back into Astrill. The only way I have found to fix it is to Unistall Astrill. restart. Reinstall Astrill. Log into Sykpe. Shutdown. Turn back on with both automatically logging in on the same time.

    I hope this makes sense. And I could maybe get some help – I have had to uninstall and reinstall twice today. Its so flakey. I emailled them both times and have had no reply. I do hope they are good with refunds.

    Reply
    • We are sorry to hear that Skype did not work fine with Astrill. You can contact us and we will provide you with alternative methods to connect so that you can use all apps without any issue with Astrill VPN service.
      We are always here to assist you with all your Astrill related queries.

      Reply
  9. In addition whenever I double click on Astrill to see whether it is actually working – everytime it will ask me if I want to let an unknown programme make changes to my computer..

    uninstalling – reinstalling take 3.

    Reply
    • We apologize to hear that you were facing issues with Astrill application.You just need to click on Yes and it should work fine.If that happens again you can always contact us as we offer 24/7 Live support via Calls, Chats and Emails. We request you to please contact our Technical support team so that they can check the issue. If you are facing issues on desktop device we can provide you remote desktop assistance and try to fix the issue from our end. We are here to assist you with all your Astrill related queries so provide us with the details of issue that you are facing and we will fix it for you. Feel free to write to us at [email protected].

      Reply
  10. Got Astrill on recommendation of a few friends who had been using it for a while. Did a bit of researching first and found it had generally good reviews, so I gave it a go. It’s given me absolutely no issues whatsoever.

    Reply
  11. I found this review googling for Astrill reviews before I signed up with them… I read the comments and after trying them thought I’d come back to give my 2 cents.

    I started off using the 7 day trial that only gives you access to US servers, I then managed to google and find a 1 month full account trial code.

    The only issue I’ve had so far is that some of their servers aren’t as quick as others, or that their UK server doesn’t seem to be open to one particular game (Battefield BC2), but I get a ping of 30-ish via their France and Netherlands servers, so it’s not a problem.

    When I have contacted support they have always replied within 24 hours.

    Given the good service I’ve had so far, and my ISP’s unwillingness to unblock gaming traffic at peak times, I’ll be signing up for a paid account when my trial expires.

    If people think that the “Astrill are good” posters are all secretly Astrill employees, why not try a free trial account first, and then a 1 month for $10 account… if everything works fine then great sign up for 1 year, if you think they don’t deliver on £10 then all you’ve potentially lost is $10

    I’ve not tried freedur as they don’t seem to offer a free trial, and I am somewhat reticent to hand over money before seeing if a service can solve the issues I’ve been having with my ISP blocking gaming traffic at peak times.

    I tried several of the “free trial” accounts before finding Astrill, but I had issues with them and no response from their respective tech support.

    Of course if Freedur want to offer me a free trial, I’ll gladly do a side by side comparison 😉

    Reply
    • Nice, glad that’s working out for you Adam. Freedur does offer a free trial, just contact them through their website. If Astrill is giving you a ping in 30 range (that’s low!!) I see no reason to switch. Happy new year.

      Reply
  12. Hi All,

    Ran across this page while checking into Astrill and just wanted to add my experience so far. Emailed support on a Sunday, very close to Chinese New Year (yesterday in fact!) and got a reply very quickly. Signed up and notified them that I would like the 7 day trial, and again got a very quick response. Using the VPN as I type this.

    It’s fast, what can I say? I’ve checked out a couple of YouTube videos and I haven’t even needed to wait for it to buffer, it just streams right in. Facebook has also not been a problem.

    Those two sites are not the most important, I am more concerned about being able to use Google continuously without it ‘dying’ every three searches!

    So far, I am very pleased with the service. My girlfriend and I have tried a couple of others and this is by far the most efficient. I haven’t tried Freedur, so can’t weigh in on that, but Astrill is definitely a lot better than the average VPN here in Shanghai.

    Charlie – thanks for a good and informative site, I can see that you are doing your best to give a balanced view of things. Keep doing what you’re doing!

    Reply
    • Sounds good Al. It really seems that Astrill has picked their game up. Good for them – the more options, the better.

      After a year and a half of using a VPN every day now, I would never want to go back to not having one!

      Reply
  13. Just signed up for this today during a short business trip to China, excellent and prompt support with the online support capability and a swift and efficient service. Cant fault it (yet)

    Reply
  14. Astrill seems like a good VPN company but, I doubt they have genuine intentions for their customers.

    First of all, I have issues giving out my phone number to strangers, especially online. Astrill asks for phone verification before you can open your account. I have a problem with this and contacted their support department via live chat and the person (Dieter Oberarzbacher) I spoke with told me they request phone numbers for security purposes.

    I told him I will be paying with my CashU account, which is cash and not credit card but, he insisted on phone verification. I suggested email verification (which other companies do) but, he said it is not possible.

    When I insisted on knowing why, he cut off the chat. We are not talking about a financial/bank account here, just a VPN account. CAN ASTRILL TELL US WHY THEY NEED OUR PHONE NUMBERS TO VERIFY A VPN (NOT BANK/FINANCIAL) ACCOUNT???

    Secondly, I ran their astrill-setup-win.exe on VirusTotal and it came back positive with a trojan (Trojan/Win32.OnlineGameHack).
    The details of our chat after I connected the second time you can read below.

    I advise to stay away from this company, they might have a nice website and list of servers but, their intentions are questionable. I won’t trust them one bit.

    I called my friend who sent me the link to their site and told him the issues I found and he deleted their astrill-setup-win.exe from his computer and is cancelling his account.

    THE SECOND CHAT AFTER HE CUT OFF THE FIRST CHAT:

    System is getting started. [viernes, 11 de marzo de 2011 4:05:53]
    A representative will be connected, please be patient.

    Dieter Oberarzbacher enters the chatroom.

    Dieter Oberarzbacher 4:06:22
    Hello Joe, my name is Dieter Oberarzbacher, how may I help you?

    Joe 4:06:47
    I was talking with you earlier but, it seems you cut off the chat. Concerning ordering.

    Dieter Oberarzbacher 4:07:23
    no, i am here, probably you got disconnected

    Joe 4:07:29
    Okay. I like your website and it seems you guys have good VPN service but, I am not ready to verify a VPN account with my phone number. I know a lot of people won’t either. Is there no way to verify without giving out my phone?

    Dieter Oberarzbacher 4:08:59
    thank you for the comments..
    those are the company´s policies.. you can read more about our privacy policy here https://www.astrill.com/privacypolicy.php

    Joe 4:09:38
    Okay one more thing

    Dieter Oberarzbacher 4:09:55
    sure

    Joe 4:10:27
    I tested your VPN software on virus total and it had a trojan. See here: http://www.virustotal.com/file-scan/report.html?id=16e3228167b1dcc93ef35fc9b23c0be25acb5600845a0b6527d0a3343775ed7d-1299811719
    what do you have to say about it?

    Dieter Oberarzbacher 4:11:54
    please send that information to our support email here and someone will look into it [email protected] thank you

    Joe 4:13:39
    It is a security issue, why don’t you forward it to your support dept. is it my duty to do that??? In the meantime, I am signing up with another VPN company. Thank you. And posting the trojan issue in the open forums.

    Dieter Oberarzbacher 4:15:49
    ok, I will forward this to the development department. Thank you

    Reply
    • We apologize if it seems inconvenient but we require this information for the security of your own Astrill account. It is for security reasons that you need to register an active number so that when you become a paid member and want to change login details, we will send a code to registered phone so we can verify if you are the owner of the account. We do not send code to email because email can be hacked.We also allow users to provide landline number incase they do not have mobile numbers.So, we require all the information for verification purposes only, so that we can provide legitimate users the service they deserve and keep away the hackers at bay.
      Regarding logging,you can enjoy total privacy.
      Thank you for reporting this issue with Astrill setup file. We always look forward to your feedback and if such issues are detected we resolve them asap so that our customers can enjoy virus free service.

      Reply
  15. Scam! Stay away from this company! I got a great offer, 40% discount, 39$ for a year. I signed up, and then just as I was about to pay… the price changed! It almost doubled! Suddenly I had to pay 59$! What happened to my 40% discount???

    I contacted support and they said they have no discount offers on their site. Then I sent them the link with the ad proving it was on their site, and in addition a screenshot of it. They then claimed I had signed up with another affiliate… which is not the case at all… why would I? Now they deleted the discount page on their site, and won’t give me the discount I have proved that I was offered. It is just a scam!

    Be careful people! These guys refuse to register you unless you give them your mobil phone number. Why? What do they want your mobile phone number for? Why do they refuse to register you any other way? When do you start to receive ads on your mobile? There have also been reports about their program is a trojan. And they give you fake discounts and then try to charge you twice the amount. Stay away! There are a lot of other VPN services that are serious and are not trying to scam you. Go with one of them. Thats what I am going to do. Never Astrill again!

    Reply
    • We offer different discount deals from time to time. You can see all such offers from our Facebook or twitter page.
      Astrill Facebook page : https://www.astrill.com/facebook
      Astrill Twitter page : https://twitter.com/astrill
      We apologize if it seems inconvenient but we require this information for the security of your own Astrill account. It is for security reasons that you need to register an active number so that when you become a paid member and want to change login details, we will send a code to registered phone so we can verify if you are the owner of the account. We do not send code to email because email can be hacked.We also allow users to provide landline number incase they do not have mobile numbers.So, we require all the information for verification purposes only, so that we can provide legitimate users the service they deserve and keep away the hackers at bay.
      Regarding logging,you can enjoy total privacy.

      Reply
  16. I signed up for trial offer , suddenly the software said my trial offer is expired . This is complete scam , How can a trial offer expire in just few minutes . Then I tried this code chengduliving for some discount , but the most amazing thing to watch was ,the pay Now button wouldnt work or go further ,then i removed the code and it works.This means they have no intentions to honour the coupon codes they offer. Complete scam .Stay away from this .

    Reply
    • We are sorry to hear that free trial did not work fine for you. If that happens, you can contact our Live Support chat and they can immediately activate the free trial from their end as we offer free trial for 7 days so that our customers can experience our service prior to purchase.
      Similarly, you can contact us if discount coupon code does not work fine for you so that we may check what is the exact issue and can provide you assistance regarding applying coupon code to your invoice.
      We are here to assist you with all your Astrill related queries so provide us with the details of issue that you are facing and we will fix it for you. Feel free to write to us at [email protected].

      Reply
  17. PLEASE READ THIS:

    Yes this looks a lot similar to Freedur, that’s because a group of employees hijacked the code for Freedur and ran off and started their own “company”. They are not legitimate, the are not a licensed company, they started in 2010 because they keep popping up all over the place with new names then get themselves shut down for illegal practices. They will steal your money and you’ll never hear from them again. It’s no coincidence so many people have e-mailed the author of this article.

    DO NOT USE THEM. IF YOU WANT THE SERVICE USE FREEDUR.

    Reply
  18. I will not talk bad of other services I have used as they have all helped at particular times … currently I use Astrill and have been satisfied with their service … I value good communications with my family and in my work overseas … no complaints, will continue to use this service.

    Reply
  19. Very satisfied with Astril 30 days in.
    (Signed up for one year at discount)

    Works great with Linux- Android, & Ubuntu.

    Beats my old provider by a mile.

    Don’t live in China without a good VPN. PPTP ain’t secure BTW!
    Don’t settle for that.

    Cleans up the network problems and puts me on the REAL INTERNET.

    Indispensable.

    Reply
  20. I have had nothing but trouble with Astrill. Their support team is very rude, and like other users here, I have been outright ignored.

    They’ve gone down in price recently, but I would pay double what they charge for a friendly support team.

    It’s now 2011 and it seems like things haven’t changed over the year – I see some of these posts dating back from 2010

    Reply
    • We would like to apologize on behalf of our customer support if they were rude.We are here to assist you with all your Astrill related queries so provide us with the details of issue that you are facing and we will fix it for you. Feel free to write to us at [email protected].

      Reply
  21. I’ve had non-stop problems with Astrill over the past few months. It worked well for five months and now it is essentially worthless. Their tech support is equally worthless, and since they only respond via email once a day to one small aspect of the inquiry it could take a week to resolve a problem (if it get’s resolved. I’m finding they just start to ignore you if their “solutions” don’t yield results). While it was good before, like all VPNs in China this one is past its prime and needs to be replaced with one that actually works.

    Reply
    • We apologize to hear that our service didn’t worked fine for you. We offer 24/7 Live support via Calls, Chats and Emails. We request you to please contact our Technical support team so that they can check the issue. If you are facing issues on desktop device we could provide you remote desktop assistance and would fix the issue from our end. We are here to assist you with all your Astrill related queries so provide us with the details of issue that you are facing and we will fix it for you. Feel free to write to us at [email protected].

      Reply
  22. Just bought the 3 months period with Astrill VPN today. From what I`ve experienced with 8ish hours of trying to get it to work, is that the speed come and go. Youtube works perfectly sometimes, other times the front page hardly works. What is even more strange is that going in to google takes forever a lot of times. What is the total data required to download to access that page? 10 kb? You have to click many times on a link to get Astrill to react. I don`t know what cause this, but I have tried a lot of servers and they all pretty much work the same way.

    What is the most negative with Astrill is that my normal connection, the non Astrill connection I use to access internet when I shut down Astrill have become reaaaaaally slow. Plus something is taking up a lot of resources since my CPU works all the time now. And that is after I closed Astrill…

    Never used VPN before, but I really hope this changes the next days :/

    To Astrill`s defence, it could be that I haven`t discovered the right settings yet, or found the correct server, but I have a bad feeling. Will report back with a new report if I am wrong

    Reply
    • We are sorry to hear that you faced issues with Astrill VPN services.These issues may occur due to various reasons. Please send an email at [email protected] and our technical department can assist you with this issue.You can ask for immediate assistance via Live Chat support also from Astrill website.

      Reply
  23. Living in China, a vpn is a must. I was with witopia until last year when we starting having nasty connection issues. I made the switch to Astrill and installed in on a router (effectively a Cloakbox[tm]) on the cheap. Speeds vary greatly. Many portals don’t work from here. But a number do. And having a vpn network and a non-vpn network: priceless.

    Reply
  24. Stay away from this horrible, devious company. Twice they have accused me of fraud, once when I bought the VPN via Paylpal which in their defence may have been my fault as my PP account is a UK one and I live in China so it may have appeared odd in some way. The 2nd time however takes away some of that defence as after finally managing to purchase Astrill and using it for nearly the 12 months I tried to log in and got an error code telling me one of my computers was connected to their limited accounts. They fixed this twice and when it happened again they emailed me to tell me they had terminated my account as it was connected with fraud. No details of which computer (MAC address) was responsible. No times dates or anything else just their vague word.
    I have pleaded with them to explain what is going on, emailed them the MAC addresses of the two laptops I use with their vpn to see if it matches the one on their records and they have chosen to ignore me.
    I have lost 4 months service due to this so I will be reporting them for fraud to which ever body is responsible in Australia where I believe their offices are based. If it is fraud then they should be refunding the 40$ paid.
    Personally I think they just dont want to give me the 3 free months I earned using their invite a friend system, especially as they cant even send me any proof or details regarding the alleged fraud!
    For the last few months Astrill has been crap anyway. 2.7 seemed promising but as far as I am concerned they are not that great a service to worry about having my account terminated, they have done me a favor pushing me elsewhere. I read manyomments which relate to the same issues I have had with it so I know my problems are not an isolated incident.

    Reply
    • We are sorry for the inconvenience caused.
      If accounts are suspended due to such reasons. We always provide you with proper procedure which you can follow in order to re activate your account and to continue using our service without any issues.You can send an email at [email protected] for such issues and also contact us via Live Chat Support to inquire regarding your Ticket’s status.We are here for you 24/7 so that your Astrill related concerns can be addressed timely.

      Reply
  25. @ Robinson,

    Same here dude. Last night they suspended my account because as they say :

    Your account has been automatically suspended, because you have logged on from a computer connected with one of the accounts involved in a fraud scheme. The computer you kept logging on from is connected to over 112 other accounts, this is considered account sharing and is against Astrill Terms of Service.

    Your account has been terminated due to Astrill Terms of Service violation, under section 5. Use of the Services by you.

    I used Astrill only on brand new MAC at work with is only used by me and one PC at home. I didn’t get any answer after this email. I will probably switch to other VPN.

    2 days ago i would recommend Astrill to a friend, but now its different story.

    Shout out from Shanghai.

    Reply
    • For security reasons, we do not provide additional information regarding MAC address. You can send us an email and our technical team will check the account and will fix the issue for you timely.We apologize for the inconvenience caused.

      Reply
  26. Astrill is a scam. Period. They have canceled my account for no reason and cheated me out of two months I had already paid for. No refund, no explanation, all emails ignored. Don’t sign up for this VPN unless you enjoy losing money.

    Reply
    • “Astrill VPN ‏ @astrill
      We had a technical issues with our main web server which caused a short downtime. This issue is fixed. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

      From their Twitter today. i use Moca, which works fine. This tweet shows they at least have some sort of ability to respond …

      Reply
    • We are sorry for the trouble caused.
      Please send an email to [email protected] and you will be responded regarding the reason of suspending account and we also provide you with procedure to reinstate account. So always contact us so that we may check the issue and assist you accordingly as we respond to all our customers 24/7.

      Reply
  27. It’s been about 3 months since I moved to Shanghai. I quickly realized a VPN is a necessity here. Signed up for the annual service with Astrill. Speeds were inconsistent but I was satisfied until today. Client keeps giving me database error / connection timed out error. It seems their website is not accessible at the moment either. I can’t even email support.

    So what’s the best VPN for us expats living in China?

    Reply
    • If You are face issues with Astrill VPN services and Astrill website is inaccessible as well, you can always call us on our contact numbers so that we may inform you if there is certain issue with our service at the moment.

      Reply
  28. Never buy this VPN, I pay for 6 months and after 1 month they hold my account. Support no answer 10 days. If you don’t want lost money never buy it!!!

    Reply
    • We are sorry if you did not get timely reply from our email team.You can always contact us again via call or live chat also.We always respond our customers as soon as possible but if the issue is with security department or other concerned departments minor delay may occur so you can always inquire about it via call or live chat and the process will be fasten.
      We hope you will understand and cooperate.

      Reply
  29. Hey Guys,

    It’s kinda weird all these bad coms, maybe some pure trollin’. Any roads, I’ve been using Astrill for a while now and I’ve been 100% satisfied. I had troubles with setting up my VPN on a dd-wrt router and they were with me all the way through (it took a good two hours). I’m kind of a newbie when it comes to VPN service and a dude was very very helpfull, using remote service (they control your computer for you). Astrill doesn’t come cheap, I’ll tell you that much, but I’ve tried other services like VPNinja and others and it never really worked and I could never get help with it. I’m no Astrill fan, I live in China and I need a way around this lousy greatfirewall and Astrill has proven very efficient in helping me doing that.

    Reply
  30. you didn’t get censored Douchey, comments go to Dashboard for confirmation and this weekend i was busy sucking HUGE BALLS and didn’t get around to approving your comment.

    Reply
  31. Anyway a forum where you need to wait for the admins approval to post anything sucks balls. So pull them off your mouth and shove ’em up your arse.

    Reply
  32. Xelium – would be interested to know who you wrote to for support at VPNinja – as they (we) respond to every inquiry as quickly as possible. And considering we’re based in China – and we use our own service – it works all the time.

    Reply
  33. In December 2012 I renewed my VPN service with Astrill. At the time they had offered a service called Stealth VPN that I had used for months. Two days ago later they unilaterally insisted I pay for the stealth service. This was never made clear when I signed up. Unilaterally changing customer agreements midstream is not right. Avoid this vendor if you can.

    Reply
    • We apologize for the inconvenience.
      We do not change the invoice or expiration date of your membership or addons. It needs to be renewed when expired and for customers who need more secure browsing we suggest using StealthVPN which has double layers of encryption and makes connection more protected.
      If there are any kind of confusion, you can always contact our Live Chat support so that they can assist you and explain you in details regarding this issue.

      Reply
      • We are sorry to hear that your experience with our customer support was not good. We truly apologize on their behalf as we are here 24/7 to assist you with all your Astrill related concerns so please do not hesitate to contact us so that we may assist you with all your Astrill related queries and concerns.

        Reply
  34. I’ve been dealing with astrill for almost 6 months now also with a dedicated IP. For the first 3 months the service worked great. After renewing for an additional 3 months the service went down hill fast. I could connect for about 30 seconds after which the connection would hang. I would logoff the astrill interface and log back on only to experience the same problem.

    Regarding the dedicated IP. After renewing the subscription the same problem occurred except no access at all. After contacting them they had to change me to another dedicated IP. The new one was 80 percent slower than the first.

    Over the period of 4 months the service went from good to terrible. I have contacted their support on several occasions. The response from them was usually “The servers are undergoing routine maintenance that should be completed within 24 hours.” Within a period of 30 days their service was under maintenance for a window of 24 hours. For the past 10 years I’ve been working as an IT tech and certified novel technician (CNT). I have never heard of any downtime caused by maintenance with a window of 24 hours. You can have a dedicated fiber optic line installed in an office building in less time than it takes astrill to conduct maintenance. In a nutshell: I don’t believe them. I think they are lying and being dishonest and I have no idea why.

    I would suggest that anyone who believes they have been defrauded in any way to contact INTERPOL at:

    http://www.interpol.int

    I can’t give out specific information. However Astrill is under an active investigation for fraud and conversion. The more people who come forward the better.

    I also encourage people to report them to the assortment of online fraud reporting agencies. There are quite a few so you may want to google “report a fraudulent website”.

    If you paid them through paypal you can send them an email with a formal complaint or file a transaction dispute .

    When my subscription ends this time I won’t be renewing with them. You can be certain they will never be recommended by me to anyone.

    Reply
    • We are sorry to hear that your experience with Astrill VPN service was not as good as expected.
      Regarding the disconnection issue and Private IP issues, there could be many factors involved and the best way is to contact our live chat support so that our team can check the issue and can provide you with alternative solutions accordingly.We can also give you free trial of Private IP for 3 days so that you can test and check if it works fine for you. After that we will switch your Private IP to server which works better for you. We hope that you will let us assist you so that you can enjoy Astrill VPN services without any restriction or disconnections.

      Reply
  35. I read the comments about the terrible service of Astrill but having been a user for 18 months now I have no complaints. I remember about a year ago the government was blocking almost all other VPN’s and Astrill came up with their stealth option. Not cheap but works like a charm. I like the easy server switching compared to StrongVPN I used before. It’s fast and upto now always works.

    Reply
  36. I have been using Astrill for about 2 years now as I live and work in China. At times they did not have what I wanted or seemed to work better or worse from time to time but they have continuously in proved their service. I really want to try one of their routers. Like mentioned above when the political change in Chinese Gov. happened they came out with Stealth which works good but I believe doubled my cost which I was not happy about.

    They now have the app worked out for iPhone and iPad so that all you need to do is download the app…prior versions were not so easy for the not so techy person.

    I have recommended it several times and have several friends who also use their service.

    The reason I came across this review was because lately it seems difficult to get the first connection of the day…sometimes 6-8 attempts to connect to a server…which is frustrating.

    To summarize…the service has alway been good for me but at times I get frustrated with buggy type issues.

    Astrill is not the only one out their which is why I check around frequently particularly regarding price…as long as they have the options that I need, the app is simple to use and costs do not get crazy I will stay.

    Hope the info is helpful to others searching for a VPN provider…it is hard to find real reviews from real users most of the time.

    Regards

    Reply
  37. Astrill does not work properly all the time, it crashes a lot in China. Their tech support said they can’t do anything so I asked for my money back and they said they don’t do that. Now I have a VPN that does not work and I paid for. They are full of SHIT and rude as hell!!!! Don’t trust them, go somewhere else!!!

    Reply
    • We truly apologize to hear that our service is not working fine for you.We offer 24/7 Live support via Call, Chat and Email so you are requested to please contact our Technical support team so that they can check the issue.If you are facing issues on desktop device we can provide you remote desktop assistance and will fix the issue from our end.We are here to assist you with all your Astrill related queries so provide us with the details of issue that you are facing and we will fix it for you.
      We also issue refund as per our refund policy : https://www.astrill.com/refund-policy.php

      Reply
      • At least they’ve put out a message that suggests that it is a problem with their whole service, not just the GFW upping their game.

        Hopefully, they’ll be back soon.

        Reply
    • We apologize for the inconvenience.
      Our service was down for almost 24hours and as a compensation we rewarded every customer with 2 weeks extra membership and free StealthVPN till the end of their membership.

      Reply
    • I am seeing tons of people post about this on every social network right now – Twitter, Facebook, Weixin, etc. I’m sure they’ll be working around the clock until this is fixed considering how many customers they must have.

      Reply
  38. I am very unhappy today to be honest, I am very upset.

    I decided to try Astrill as a VPN and I thought that it would be easy to install and use even though I am not technically incline.

    I had an issue with the installation therefore I contacted the online support. I spoke with Anna, Eva and Ted.

    Due to the issue with the installation, a support personnel took over my computer using a remote control.

    Upon resolving my issue with Astrill another issue arose and they did not want to take responsibility.

    I was left to deal with it on my own without any assistance. The issue was that they changed my desktop image. It was no longer there and my desktop went black. A friend installed when I live in Canada because I am not technically incline.

    I kept asking them to return my setting to the original one but they refused telling me that it was not them who did it.

    Who could have change my setting? I was not in control when they used the remote control. They were in control. I just sat and watch.

    They kept asking me many technical questions to which I was not able to answer and when I asked for the name of their supervisor, I was getting no answer, I got no where or all of a sudden they could no longer help me.

    Who change my original setting? Who?

    There were only two people involved here, Astrill and myself. I did not touch the computer because they needed access. Therefore who changed my setting?

    I am extremely displeased and upset with the way Aprill dealt with me.

    I asked several times Anna (over 20 times) for her superior and got no where. She made up excuses and even terminated our conversation with chat.

    This is not right, you do not go around and change the configuration of people’s computer while assisting them.

    At no point, was an effort made to resolve this second issue created by Astrill.

    I am extremely disappointed in the way this was handle, very unprofessional upon their part and I was the one to be blame for their error.

    Thank you,

    Reply
    • We apologize for the inconvenience.
      Our customer support representatives do not make such changes while remotely accessing customer’s device.It is due to teamviewer software, sometimes it changes the desktop wallpaper automatically and does not revert it back when session is terminated. We are sorry if you face the same issue. If you want, you can set wallpaper again on your device.

      Reply
  39. Love it!!! Astrill provides the best service I have found. I have had two other VPN providers in the past and at the time I thought their service was good but in time it always deteriated. I live in China which I know does not help the situation but I would like a service that works consistantly. So glad I found out about you! It was easy to set up and very easy to use..plus the price is excellent. Conitnue the great work 🙂

    Reply
    • Astrill has really turned it around since this article was published so many years ago. Good for them. Recently I can’t go a few days without hearing about Astrill connection problems though (and I don’t even use Astrill). So it seems like they are the largest VPN provider in China, probably by a long shot.

      Reply
  40. I’ve been using this service for years now. Experienced bad days with astrill as well but they always find a solution for me. I’m happy to stick with Astrill through the years.

    Reply

Leave a Comment