Kepard

It might be a small VPN, however Moldova-based Kepard's web site makes some massive claims, particularly that it provides the ‘greatest free premium VPN’ for Home windows, iOS and Android.

Might this be true? A fast inspection suggests no, not likely: there are solely 9 places (USA, Canada and Europe), P2P is just obtainable on a single server, the free account limits you to 400MB bandwidth a day, you're allowed a most of two connections, and there are shoppers for Home windows and Android solely.

However wait – there are plusses, too. OpenVPN, L2TP and PPTP help means you'll be able to arrange the VPN on absolutely anything. There's a built-in NAT firewall, a premium function on different methods if they've it in any respect. And the 2 connection restrict is predicated on IP addresses, so if a type of is a router, you'll be able to join as many units as you want.

Shifting to the business plan will get you limitless bandwidth for a really affordable worth. A single month subscription prices $7 (£5.60, AU$9.30), however paying for a full yr cuts that to an efficient $2.92 month-to-month (£2.32, AU$three.88).

If that's not sufficient you possibly can earn a month's free entry to the service for referring a good friend (as much as a most of six months). That is nonetheless a really great distance from the most effective specified VPN, however we have been starting to see the attraction.

Privateness

Kepard's logging coverage appears affordable. The corporate solely retains session connection occasions and bandwidth used, however that's as you'd anticipate for a supplier which has restricted accounts, and even these logs are solely stored for 3 days.

Any private knowledge you present isn't shared with associates, bought for advertising or anything. The one obvious exception can be a "subpoena, a courtroom order or complaints from Moldovan official authorities relating to a felony or/and civil investigation", and we'd hazard a guess that doesn't occur typically.

Kepard's ‘affordable utilization coverage’ isn't as clear, warning that "any shopper who raises irrational purposes upon the service could be dropped..."; if a member "is just not in a position to make use of the service rationally" the corporate might cease providing it, we're advised. 

As this can be a truthful utilization clause we assume it means ‘don't use an excessive amount of bandwidth’, however there's nothing right here to outline that, and actually Kepard reserves the correct to set the definition itself: "It's inside Kepard discretion to state what an irrational use of the service is." Uh, okay. 

The refund coverage caught our eye, too: "There won't be given any refunds beneath any occurrences." It's stricter than most corporations, however to be truthful you do get a free 400MB/day to check the service, and that ought to be sufficient time to see if it's best for you.

Efficiency

Kepard gives two shoppers of its personal – one for Home windows, one for Android – and primary tutorials that will help you arrange different units.

We created a free account by offering our e-mail handle and a password, then downloaded and put in the Home windows shopper. This can be utilized for testing instantly beneath the corporate's free plan, topic to the 400MB day by day bandwidth restrict.

The shopper is just a little unusual. It's making an attempt to breed the choose-a-flag-then-click-connect-type ease of use you'll see elsewhere, however this doesn't fairly work. Whereas different shoppers permit choosing nations and servers from a single listing, as an example, Kepard supplies two separate methods to entry the nations alone, hiding the servers behind a separate Change IP button.

May the shopper attraction to superior customers, no less than? We clicked Settings, then OpenVPN Parameters, hoping to see a useful choice of checkboxes and lists. However no: there's only a textual content field to enter additional OpenVPN parameters, with an instance of – http-proxy IP PORT. That's going to be meaningless to anybody however OpenVPN specialists, who we suspect will in all probability be utilizing the common OpenVPN software program anyway.

For all its design flaws, Kepard's shopper acquired us on-line in a couple of moments, and our real-world expertise with the VPN was usually very constructive. In our checks*, latencies have been decrease than common, add speeds acceptable, UK-UK obtain speeds a superb 25-30Mbps, with UK-US speeds decrease however nonetheless 15-20Mbps.

What concerning the wider community? We checked a couple of European servers with very comparable outcomes. Torrents are solely allowed on the Netherlands servers, so perhaps they'd be sluggish? No, simply the other – we obtained even quicker downloads than the UK server at 35Mbps, a powerful method to wind up our testing.

Ultimate verdict

Kepard might not have something like the most effective web site or shoppers, however the underlying service appears dependable, delivering usually above-average speeds for lower than half the worth of many rivals (on the yearly plan). If worth is your prime precedence, take the free trial for a spin and see the way it works for you.

*Our testing included evaluating common efficiency (searching, streaming video). We additionally used speedtest.internet to measure latency, add and obtain speeds, after which examined instantly once more with the VPN turned off, to examine for any distinction (over a number of rounds of testing). We then in contrast these outcomes to different VPN providers we've reviewed. In fact, do observe that VPN efficiency is troublesome to measure as there are such a lot of variables.



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