VuzeVPN Review

VuzeVPN is a fairly new virtual private network service. Its name may ring a bell with torrenters, for it’s related to the popular Vuze BitTorrent.

Azureus Software, Inc., the operator, shares very little information about the history of this VPN. So, it’s unclear how long it has been on the market.

The oldest VuzeVPN review you can Google was published in 2020. Also, you’d be hard-pressed to find user-generated VuzeVPN reviews right now.

So far, there’s nothing on Trustpilot and Capterra. On G2, you can see a single VuzeVPN review posted, which rated the service 4.5 stars.

So, why should you trust a relatively unknown VPN when you could simply go with more established options?

Let’s see!

VuzeVPN Features

Although it might not be the strongest competitor on the market, VuzeVPN has strong potential.

Here’s what it can do.

Windows Support

For the time being, VuzeVPN is available as a Windows app only.

More products are in the pipeline, however. VuzeVPN for Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android may be available sooner than later.

You can also expect: 

• VuzeVPN for router 
• Apple TV 
• Amazon Fire TV
• PlayStation 
• Xbox
• Nintendo Switch. 

Support for other smart TVs and smart home devices is also under development.

We didn’t find anything about VuzeVPN Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Edge extensions.

Five Simultaneous Connections

You can connect this VPN to up to five devices at once with one account. It’s more than enough to secure all of the electronics an average American owns.

If you need more simultaneous connections on multiple devices, you’ll have to buy additional subscriptions. VuzeVPN has no family plan yet. There’s no option to buy more slots to increase the five-device limit either.

Unlimited Bandwidth

VuzeVPN doesn’t put a cap on the amount of data you can secure. If you wish, you can turn it on 24/7.

Normally, there’s no urgent need to hide your IP address and encrypt your internet traffic when connecting to your home network. After all, a VPN is most useful for protecting your device from unsafe public networks.

But using a VPN at home can conceal your online activity from your internet service provider (ISP). Surfing the Web, torrenting, streaming, and gaming without a VPN enables your ISP to monitor what you’re doing.

Services with unlimited bandwidth like VuzeVPN for Windows can help you keep snoopers at bay.

Throttling Prevention

As mentioned, VuzeVPN can hide your online activity from your ISP. That way, it can’t intentionally slow down your internet connection. 

That’s why using VuzeVPN can help you experience stable internet speed. You’ll be able to visit the sites you want, binge-watch all day, and play games as much as you want without worrying about throttling.

Kill Switch

The VuzeVPN PC app has a kill switch. This feature forces your device to go offline when it loses the connection to the VPN service. This way, you won’t accidentally leak your IP (Internet Protocol) address and DNS (Domain Name System) queries until it reconnects.

We tested the VuzeVPN kill switch to find out how effective it is in stopping traffic data leakage. When intentionally turned off our internet connection while it’s on and went back online to see how it responds.

We tried to load ipleak.net to determine if our computer could access the internet while VuzeVPN was coming back to life. If the site was able to load, we could verify whether there’s IP and DNS leakage.

But the VuzeVPN kill switch worked as intended.

The app didn’t reconnect instantly. Nevertheless, it successfully blocked internet access as it established an encrypted tunnel to the last VPN server we used.

VuzeVPN Advanced Features

Admittedly, it lacks fancy capabilities such as double VPN and split tunneling. But it does have simple (but desirable) features not all VPNs have.

Auto-Launch

You can set VuzeVPN for Windows to initialize at startup. This way, you don’t have to manually launch it every time you power on your computer.

Running this app on your own isn’t hard. But don’t expect to remember this task every single PC session. Forgetting to switch it on at least once could result in a malicious party hacking your device.

This feature is already enabled after installation and setup. But double-check it in the settings to be sure.

Background App

Using this feature, you can close the software without disconnecting it. VuzeVPN’s ability to run in the background can help declutter your screen so that you can focus on what you’re doing more easily.

If you want to turn it off, you can find it among the hidden apps on the Windows taskbar.

Auto-Minimize

You can set the app to disappear from the screen automatically once turned on. It’s not a major time-saver, but it’s convenient when having a VuzeVPN Netflix session.

Automatic Updates

At its sole discretion, Azureus Software, Inc. may initiate VuzeVPN version upgrades occasionally and automatically.

You can manually check for app updates by going to the settings. But not having to do so all the time can reduce the chances of service failure.

VuzeVPN Servers and Locations

VuzeVPN’s fleet consists of more than 200 servers across 49 countries and territories. More than half -  in Europe. Twenty-seven locations on the VuzeVPN server list are on the continent.

About a quarter of all of VuzeVPN’s servers are in the Asia-Pacific. As for the Americas, the service is available in only six countries.

Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and are the least represented regions with only one and three VPN servers, respectively.

VuzeVPN Speed

VuzeVPN claims to deliver amazing speed. It didn’t disappoint.

When we tested the app’s speed for this VuzeVPN review, we got the following results:

Check out how these figures changed after connecting to VuzeVPN servers in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Australia

The UK

The US

Overall, the VuzeVPN PC app hardly affected our internet connection.

On average, we noticed a decrease of 2.53% in download speed. VuzeVPN drove down our upload speed by as much as 25%. It increased our base ping by up to a factor of 16, though.

VuzeVPN Privacy and Jurisdiction

We couldn’t find any evidence that VuzeVPN shares Vuze’s HQ in San Mateo, California.

So, we’re going to assume it shares an office with Azureus Software, Inc. office in Incline Village, Nevada.

Either way, VuzeVPN is under the jurisdiction of the US. It’s among the pioneers of extensive government surveillance.

The US is a member of the Fourteen Eyes Alliance. This group of 14 Western nations has been known to spy on their citizens and compare notes with one another.

In addition, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Israel have been suspected of exchanging intelligence with the Fourteen Eyes Alliance.

All of the 18 countries above house VuzeVPN servers. So, if Uncle Sam manages to get a hold of VuzeVPN’s databases, you can reasonably assume that the governments of the other 17 nations would get a copy.

Further, VuzeVPN operates in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Russia.

The UAE doesn’t ban VPN usage outright. But it has no qualms about punishing users who challenge its internet censorship initiatives.

Turkey and Russia welcome VPN vendors. But these repressive regimes have been unkind to the providers that refuse to play ball with them.

Although you can’t connect to any VuzeVPN server in China at the moment, Hong Kong is part of the vendor’s network.

The laws in mainland China may not directly apply to this former British territory. But the Chinese Communist Party has been encroaching on Hong Kong’s autonomy. After all, it’s technically part of China.

Despite the dangers controlling governments present, you can normally safeguard your internet privacy by using a VPN that has a no-log policy.

Does VuzeVPN offer such protection?

Azureus Software, Inc. may not monitor the online activity of VuzeVPN users. But it keeps a record of personally identifiable information like IP addresses or geographic locations of customers.

Likewise, it stores information about your devices and browsers. It tracks browser events like landing page views too.

VuzeVPN may share its data logs with third parties for various reasons, including fraud prevention, police investigation, and marketing.

Why Azureus Software, Inc. helps advertisers and publishers engage with its customers is beyond us.

VuzeVPN isn’t free. Normally, vendors that make money through subscription fees don't sell user data to third parties.

Maybe Azureus Software, Inc. would cut ties with advertisers and publishers when VuzeVPN becomes profitable enough.

VuzeVPN Security and Protocols

VuzeVPN uses AES 256-bit and 128-bit encryption. Either is unbreakable by today’s brute force computing capabilities.

In terms of tunneling protocols, VuzeVPN OpenVPN is the only option.

OpenVPN is the most popular protocol out there because of its versatility. It may no longer be the best at everything, but it’s a solid tunneling protocol for: 

• torrenting 
• streaming
• private web browsing

When Azureus Software, Inc. rolls out its other Vuze apps, this won’t be the sole option for its users.

Other tunneling protocols are more suitable for mobile operating systems. We bet IKEv2 (Internet Key Exchange v2) will be part of the selection when the company releases its VuzeVPN iOS and Android apps.

VuzeVPN Leak Test Results

Our VuzeVPN free license passed all of the IP and DNS leak tests we ran.

Before our IP and DNS leak test:

After our IP and DNS leak test:

We did these tests on Google Chrome. The results indicated that VuzeVPN for Windows had detected no data leakage from our browser.

VuzeVPN and Streaming Services

This VPN can help you maximize streaming services by getting around geo-restrictions and accessing blocked content libraries.

The VuzeVPN PC app  can unblock:

• Hulu 
• Amazon Prime 
• HBO Go 
• BBC iPlayer 
• NFL Game Pass 
• MLB.tv 

And more.

Our tests proved that this VPN was robust enough to stream the American and British Netflix versions.

How Good Is VuzeVPN for Torrenting?

VuzeVPN’s entire network of servers supports P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing. That’s why you won’t see a dedicated VuzeVPN P2P server list.

Our test revealed that this service successfully hid our real IP address from the network.

The VuzeVPN P2P sharing address detection test result didn’t surprise us at all.

Azureus Software, Inc. specializes in torrenting. So, VuzeVPN and uTorrent (or any other BitTorrent client for that matter) should work properly together.

Can VuzeVPN Bypass Geoblocks?

Our VuzeVPN free license was able to circumvent geo-restrictions.

Here’s the evidence, with unblocking Disney+:

If you intend to visit a country that bans VPN downloading within its borders, install VuzeVPN on your device before you go.

Ease of Use

VuzeVPN doesn't have the prettiest user interface. Although it conforms with the universal design of VPN clients, its aesthetics look outdated.

The VuzeVPN server list is a bit all over the place. The order of options isn’t alphabetical, nor is it displayed based on proximity. There isn’t any icon for speed either. There’s no way of knowing which VPN servers are the fastest at the time of connection.

Also, you can only choose VPN servers by country. You won’t be able to pick one that’s hosted in a city whose time zone is relevant to the restricted content you wish to unblock.

Nevertheless, the server list has a highly responsive search engine. You don’t have to type in the entire country or territory name to get quality results.

In terms of app setup, it’s painless and straightforward. The VuzeVPN client will be up and running in about a minute or two.

VuzeVPN can fulfill its job description admirably—but the app is buggy.

We were able to do unlimited server switching. But we couldn’t do so in one session.

When we changed locations, our masked IP and DNS addresses remained the same. We had to relaunch the VuzeVPN client every time we wanted to connect to servers in a new location.

We can imagine this software glitch to be the biggest complaint in future VuzeVPN reviews.

Customer Support

VuzeVPN Support is accessible by a form on the site only. You don’t have to sign up for the VuzeVPN trial or any paid plan to get a reply from them.

Its customer support team has been forthcoming about its response time of 1 to 2 business days. But a representative was able to get back to us in about 24 hours when we emailed them the first time.

Unfortunately, we had to send more questions and wait more or less a day for an answer every time. We wouldn’t have touched base with VuzeVPN on multiple occasions if its site’s content had everything one needed.

In fairness, the VuzeVPN Blog is a promising knowledge base. It has how-to articles, guides, and other interesting reads.

At the time of writing this VuzeVPN review, the blog has 15 entries. But we expect this content library to grow. The first post was published in December 2020. And at least four more were added in May 2021 alone.

When the vendor’s support team answers enough emails, the company may create a FAQ page. It can make life easier for new users.

VuzeVPN Price

This VPN service has no free edition. But you can take advantage of the VuzeVPN free trial.

The VuzeVPN trial is good for seven days with no billing information required. When it expires, there’s no risk of getting charged if you want to discontinue the service.

This policy may change in the future. Azureus Software, Inc. may do an about-face and ask for payment credentials upfront. If it happens, the VuzeVPN free trial will automatically convert into a premium subscription.

You just have to provide an email address, which will serve as your user name. The vendor automatically generates the password.

Officially, the name of the plan is VuzeVPN Unlimited. It’s available in three billing options: monthly, semi-annual, and annual.

So, how much does VuzeVPN cost? As follows are the VuzeVPN Unlimited prices.

• 1 month: $11.95
• 12 months: $59.00 ($4.92/month)
• 24 months: $89.00 ($3.30/month)

When you’re ready to activate VuzeVPN Unlimited, you may pay with your credit card, debit card, or your PayPal account. The number of steps in the checkout process depends on where you live. But the whole procedure is simple and intuitive.

Every paid plan is subject to auto-renewal. They come with a 30-day money-back guarantee too.

If you cancel your VPN service after 30 days from the date of your subscription, you won’t be eligible for a refund.

If Azureus Software, Inc. terminates your account after violating any of its terms, you may be able to request a partial refund.

VuzeVPN Review - Verdict

We have mixed feelings about VuzeVPN.

On one hand, this VPN consistently spoofed our location while P2P sharing and streaming. Plus, it never allowed any traffic data leakage under its watch. Its kill switch was the real deal too.

On the other, it's a bummer that it is currently available for Windows only. Also, it would have made us more comfortable if Azureus Software, Inc. collected no personal information other than users' email addresses.

We wish to see more customer support options, too. At the time of writing this VuzeVPN review, there is only the online form. The site’s content created more questions than it provided answers to basic concerns.

When it comes to utility, VuzeVPN was impressive. But its developers must iron out the kinks in order for serious users who are searching for the best VPN service to view it as a viable long-term subscription. 

Keep an eye out for more VuzeVPN reviews - there are new things in store!