Surfshark is a VPN provider based in British Virgin Islands, launched in early 2018, it’s a relatively new provider of VPN service. Despite being a newcomer, its VPN has become increasingly popular in a short time.
User Experience
Nowadays the use of VPN has become very easy, users no longer need to manually select security protocols, input the server IP and port, etc., Surfshark VPN is one of such easy-to-use VPN, it has dedicated applications for PC and mobile devices that greatly simplify the process of setting up the VPN connection, the applications will automatically select a best security protocol to use and connect to a server that would bring the user the fastest experience.
To use Surfshark VPN, all what you need to do is open the app and click or tap the blue “Connect” button shown in the lower area of the app, and your device will be connected to VPN in a few seconds. (If it’s the first time you use Surfshark VPN service on that device you need to log in within the app with your user details you provided when you subscribed the service)
By default the app will detect your physical location and select a server location that is nearest to you to connect, in most cases that server will bring you the fastest connection speed, but occasionally it can become slower if the server has lots of users connected to it, in this case you can select another server location. It’s very easy to select a server location, a list of server locations can be found by clicking on the “Locations” tab in the vertical bar on the left of the interface, there are 50 locations, so it will always have one or more locations that are not far from you.
You can also click “Settings” tab in the vertical bar to adjust other settings like Kill Switch (more detail in Security section of this article) and VPN protocol, though the app will automatically choose a best protocol for you. By default, Surfshark will start itself when your operating system is started, so that it can protect your privacy at any time, even if you don’t remember to turn on it, but if you don’t need this feature you can disable it at the app’s Settings panel.
Speed
The speed and reliability of connection is one of the most important things to consider when choose a VPN service, a slow VPN will significantly slow down streaming speed and increase loading times when you browse the internet.
More or less, all VPNs will slow down your internet connection speed, this is true in most cases, as your internet traffic will travel through an additional server, the exception is when you are accessing internet in a country with internet censorship, in that case, VPN will increase your speed of connection to blocked websites, because without a VPN lots of data will be blocked by the firewall used for blocking, VPN can bypass the block and improve the speed of connection (only to sites that are affected by the firewall), though the actual overall internet connection speed is slowed down by VPN.
A fast VPN will not significantly slow down your internet connection speed, the speed drop rates is usually less than 50 percent, but a slow VPN can greatly impact your connection speed, the speed can drop 80 to 90 percent.
I did a test for speed of Surfshark in Shanghai, China. In my test, the starting download speed of the internet connection was about 10M/s, then the Surfshark app connected to a Hong Kong server that is automatically selected by the app, and the download speed drops to 5M/s, that’s a 50 percent drop rate, not bad, then I manually selected another server to connect, sometimes the server selected by the app is not always the fastest, I selected a server in Japan, which is located very close to Shanghai, this time the download speed is faster at 5.5M/s, the speed drop rates is only 45 percent, this speed is on the fast side, with this speed Surfshark can be considered as one of the fastest VPNs. It’s worth to note that the test is done in a country with internet censorship, where the firewall being used to filter web content can significantly slow down the speed of VPN. If you are in a country with free internet, then the speed will not drop that much.
And I tried to watch YouTube with Surfshark VPN connected, the video can be played at 1080P definition, and interruption only occurred one time in the first few seconds after the video first started playing, there’s no interruptions after that.
Note: The speed from my test is only for reference, the speed can be different for a variety of reasons, such as the server location you choose, the physical location you are in, whether you are behind a firewall, so it’s recommended to try the service yourself, if the speed doesn’t meet what you expected, you can have your money back at anytime within 30 days after the purchase.
Platforms & Devices
Surfshark VPN can be used on most major devices and operating systems. Dedicated apps are offered for MacOS, Windows, iOS, and Android, for Linux system, the VPN can be manually installed and set up by reading the tutorial on the website of Surfshark, and there are also many tutorials for setting up VPN on other systems, though you may never need them as it’s generally very easy to set up the VPN on other systems for which dedicated apps are offered.
If you want to set up VPN on your router (so that every device that connects to the router will be automatically connected to VPN), you can also read the tutorial to do it, though there’s no app helps you do it, it’s not very hard to manually set up VPN on router if you can follow the steps on the tutorial. And in fact you may not need to set up VPN on your router, because Surfshark allows a single VPN account to connect an unlimited number of devices at a same time, so if you have a large family that has a lot of members, they can use the VPN without subscribing to a new Surfshark account, it’s totally fine for them to just use your account, even if you are not disconnected from the VPN, all of them can use the VPN service simultaneously.
Many people also take this advantage to share Surfshark VPN with their friends and workmates, as Surfshark’s simultaneous connection number has no limit, currently it’s the only VPN provider that allows unlimited simultaneous connection, by contrast, the industry’s standard number is 5, before Surfshark, the highest number of simultaneous connection offered by a top VPN provider was Cyberghost’s 7, followed by NordVPN‘s 6.
Surfshark is a relatively new VPN provider, its unlimited simultaneous connection policy might be temporary, a limit will be possibly introduced in the future when it has a solid users base. So it’s the best time for now to subscribe a plan of Surfshark.
Server Locations
Surfshark has more than 3,200 servers around world as of 2023, this is slightly lower compared to some other top VPN providers (by comparison, NordVPN has 5,700 servers), but the amount of its servers has been increasing drastically in the past few years, as when Surfshark was first launched in early 2018, it had only about 100 servers, and about 800 servers in 2019.
The servers of Surfshark covers more than 50 countries, and server locations in many countries can be selected on city-level.
Pricing
The price of Surfshark VPN service is based on the length of subscription, there are three plans to choose from:
– 1 Month plan: $11.95/month
– 12 Month plan: $5.99/month
– 24 Month plan: $1.99/month
All three plans offer the same features.
The price of 1 Month plan is not much cheaper than that of other top VPN providers, but as the duration of the subscription increases, the price drops down sharply, the two-year plan is extremely cheap compared to almost all the other VPN providers on the market. So if you need to use VPN for a long time, it’s much better to subscribe a 24 Month plan. Many people think it’s risky to subscribe a long term plan without having tried it before, Surfshark has no free trial (same as most other VPN providers), but it offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, if you find their VPN service is not as excellent as you expected, you can get your money back in the 30-day period after the purchase.
Security
Surfshark protects its users’ private online data with 256-bit AES encryption, which is almost uncrackable. Security protocols used by Surfshark are OpenVPN (TCP and UDP) and IKEv2, and for Windows app, there’s an additional protocol called Shadowsocks, it’s a new protocol originated from the same-name proxy software, which is widely used by Chinese programmers to bypass the internet censorship in China.
And Surfshark provides many additional useful security features, including Kill switch, Whitelister, and Multi hop.
Kill switch feature is disabled in the app by default, users can enable it in the settings, with this feature activated, when your VPN is accidentally disconnected for some reasons, the app can stop your internet connection, so your real IP and private information will not be exposed.
Whitelister is used for split tunneling, with this feature you can choose to allow traffic of some apps or websites to bypass VPN, so their speed will not be affected by VPN, these apps or websites usually don’t collect sensitive private information, or are not blocked in the country with censorship, so it’s not necessary to use a VPN to access or use them, in the same time your traffic of apps and website that are not in whitelist will still be protected by VPN.
The Multi hop feature allows you to encrypt you online data with two VPN servers in the same time, your internet data will first travel through the first server, and then the second server, and only after then the data will access your destination. This feature adds an extra layer of protection and can make third parties more difficult to figure out your real identity.
As Surfshark is operated in British Virgin Islands, which is outside the jurisdiction of the 14-eyes surveillance alliance, so foreign governments or other third parties can’t require user information from the company of Surfshark, unless in the events serious crimes occurred, but even in some cases the company is forced to hand over the users data, Surfshark users will still be safe, because Surfshark doesn’t keep traffic logs of users that can be used to identify an individual.
Streaming & Torrenting
Want to watch the US version of Netflix outside of the US? Many streaming sites like Netflix ban VPN users from accessing the geographical restricted content, Surfshark can disguise its users’ VPN traffic so the users will not be detected being using VPN. With Surfshark you can connect to a server location in the US to access US version Netflix with no problem.
P2P file sharing is allowed on all servers of Surfshark, and most of those servers are optimized for torrenting, they are categorized and can be found in the ‘P2P’ tab of the server list panel in the app. And with the earlier mentioned fact that the company of Surfshark doesn’t keep users traffic log, it’s very safe to do P2P sharing with Surfshark.
Bypass Censorship in China
China has a very sophisticated web filtering system called Great Firewall to keep anyone inside the country or anyone using its network system away from the blocked web content, what differentiates it from firewalls used by other countries with censorship is that it does a good job to detect and block VPN traffic, so even users have VPN enabled on their device they may still can’t bypass the block.
Many top VPN providers can’t make their services work in China, including Cyberghost, which has a huge users base and has 3000+ servers around world.
Only a few VPNs can work in China now, and fortunately Surfshark is one of them, with Surfshark VPN you can stream YouTube videos in high definition in China, and also be able to access all the other blocked sites. In my tests, connection dropped a few times, but is not common, in most time it won’t happen, and even it dropped, it will re-connect automatically within a short time, so in general it will not affect on your web browsing experience.