Reviews
AVG VPN: Should You Trust it? Pros, Cons, and Complete Review
If you’re looking for a VPN, AVG’s reputation might seem attractive. Check out our comprehensive review of their services to find out all you need to know.
At our site, you’ll only find unbiased reviews. However, we do earn profit from our affiliate links.
If you’ve ever heard of AVG – Anti Virus Guard – then it was probably because you’ve heard of their anti-malware and firewall programs. They’ve earned themselves quite the reputation for providing solid protection for computers around the world. Now, AVG has decided to expand their products and has a virtual private network available. We’re here to tell you if the AVG VPN is worth your time and money or if you should skip out and look for another service.
Overview
The AVG VPN seems to be aimed at beginners or moderately experienced users. It has a fair price point cheaper than most VPNs and doesn’t have a complex UI or too many advanced settings. Odds are AVG is banking on the hopes that their firewall fan base will hear about VPNs and decide to stick with the same company.
This is made clear by the fact that the AVG VPN provides a free 30 day trial that requires no payment information and no promise of a future subscription. It’s a simple and quick download that simply shuts down after one month. We really appreciated how easy AVG made it to download this free trial and we wish more VPN companies would take notice of this.
Prices
As mentioned earlier, AVG offers some very competitive prices for their VPN. This is great for folks who are still new to VPNs but want to try out a cheap and reliable option.
AVG VPN offers three different payment plans. First is a one year plan for $3.99 a month ($47.88 per year). The second is a two year plan for $2.99 a month ($71.76 in total, $35.88 per year) and appears to be AVG’s most popular option as it is the one recommended by them, themselves. The final option is a three year plan that costs $2.49 per month ($89.64 in total, $29.88 per year).
No matter which plan you pick it is undeniable that AVG offers very cheap prices. Paying only thirty dollars a year for a VPN is impressive.
Now we just have to find out if the prices really are worth it.
Privacy and Security
The bread and butter of any VPN is whether it can truly mask and protect your ID and your information as you are online. Unfortunately for AVG, their VPN is far from being the best in this category.
When it comes to encryption, it’s solid. They use the standard AES-256 bit protection that is featured in just about any good and reliable VPN. They don’t have many other options besides this but honestly, AES-256 is all you need 99% of the time, if not 100%.
What gets iffy is their policies. The most responsible thing to do would be to recommend a VPN that has a strict no-logs policy. This means that the VPN company you use does not record or monitor your online activity. You want protection and privacy from everyone, including VPNs themselves.
While AVG does not monitor you when using their VPN, they have nothing in their privacy policy about no-logs. As it turns out, AVG records some of your personal information. This includes your IP address, your e-mail and phone number, your SIM Card number and your geographic location.
Ultimately, none of this is good news. A far more ideal scenario would be that AVG VPN would never bother to record any of this info. This means that there is a chance that they could reveal your personal information with a third party somewhere down the line.
Servers and Locations
The more servers a VPN has, the more useful it is when moving around the world. More importantly, it gives you more options when it comes to accessing different servers to access different content.
Disappointingly, AVG VPN only has servers in 21 countries. This pales in comparison to the selection available in other VPN services. It would probably be adequate for someone just looking for the most basic functions out of a VPN. However, this would absolutely not satisfy someone who wants a VPN that is working at full potential.
Speed and Performance
AVG’s VPN starts to pick up some of its own slack in this category. It’s by no means the fastest VPN, but it offers some reasonable speed rates.
Generally, VPNs will always make your internet speeds and ping slower – the question is whether or not they are noticeable. With AVG they are sometimes but it shouldn’t be enough to have an impact on regular browsing.
We doubt AVG VPN’s capacity would be a very steady choice for Netflix marathons or torrenting tons of files. Results differ based on what country or server you pick but your upload and download speeds and your ping can either go down a little bit or drastically suffer. It’s fine for most internet activities, but anyone looking for a VPN that can handle more heavy duty transfer rates will probably have to look elsewhere.
Extra Features
Fortunately, it seems that AVG VPN does work well with a variety of streaming services. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime all work well like with many other VPNs. BBC Player seems to be what fails the test despite AVG having servers in the United Kingdom.
Other than compatibility with streaming services, there really aren’t any other major bonus functions included with the AVG VPN. There is an auto-connect feature whenever you access pubic wi-fi hotspots but this seems like a very minor convenience that isn’t anything to write home about.
Pros
- Very cheap prices
- Great and simple user interface
- Works with Netflix and Hulu
- Standard AES-256 encryption
- 30 day free trial
- 30 day money back guarantee
Cons
- Records a fair amount of your information
- Very limited server locations
- Below average customer support
- Speeds only good for regular browsing
However, if you are someone looking for a VPN that offers better than average performance, privacy and features then you will be disappointed by AVG. We know it costs very little money but the AVG VPN seems to be a classic example of “you get what you pay for,” and the fact is you don’t get very much here. If you need more out of your VPN experience then you would be better off paying more per year to get something that would really knock your socks off.
Thanks for reading our review of the AVG VPN. Don’t forget that you can always try out their free one month trial to test drive their service for yourself.
