X-VPN review: Overpriced and underperforming (2024)

X-VPN is an overpriced and underperforming VPN service with limited device connectivity and poor streaming capabilities.

It offers questionable privacy policies and lacks transparency in server types. Despite passing basic security tests, it suffers from significantly slower speeds and inadequate global server coverage.

Customer support is also subpar, making it a less desirable choice in the competitive VPN market.

Price

When evaluating the value of a VPN, there’s a lot more to look at than just price. Other aspects to consider are the subscription length, how many devices you can use simultaneously, how many servers the VPN offers and if it comes with any addons or extra features.

It’s important to know that X-VPN has a very limited free version. It only gives you access to one server (which does not specify its location) and limited speeds. It also comes with intrusive ads. For this review, we’re only considering the premium paid options.

Premium X-VPN has three payment options: $6.66/month for a 12-month plan, $9.99/month for a 6-month plan and $11.99/month for a single-month subscription. This is expensive. Our findings from an evaluation of 21 VPNs show that the average price for a 2-year subscription is $4.67.

You can pay for X-VPN using any major credit card, PayPal and Bitcoin.

A subscription doesn’t include any extra addons or features; you’re solely paying for the VPN.

Devices/Availability

An X-VPN subscription allows you to use the software on a maximum of 5 devices simultaneously. For VPNs that limit the amount of device connections, this is below the average of 7 devices. It is worth knowing that some VPNs like Private Internet Access, Surfshark, and Windscribe offer unlimited simultaneous connections.

X-VPN is available on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, Chrome, Router, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, PS4, PS5 and Nintendo Switch.

Streaming Performance

Popular streaming services have been developing and implementing measures to prevent VPNs from accessing their platforms for a while. They do this because of copyright and licensing agreements with their content partners.

These blocks can be difficult for VPNs to get around. The best VPNs shouldn’t have any problem with them, though.

To test X-VPNs’ streaming performance, we used it to connect to US Netflix, Hulu, MAX, and BBC iPlayer from New Zealand. We performed these tests over a month, and the results weren’t great.

Hulu instantly recognised we were using a VPN and prevented us from accessing its platform, and so too did BBC iPlayer.

While X-VPN allowed us to access US Netflix and MAX from New Zealand, the speeds were so slow that we constantly ran into buffering issues and slowdowns.

Changing to a different VPN like ExpressVPN or NordVPN instantly allowed us to access all four streaming services, so the issue wasn’t on our end. X-VPN simply struggles to get around streaming service blocks, and when it does, it isn’t fast enough to provide a seamless streaming experience.

How secure is X-VPN?

To measure how secure X-VPN is, we ran it through several DNS leak tests:

A DNS leak test is a way to check if your online activity is being exposed to your internet provider, even when you’re using a VPN for privacy.

When you visit a website, your computer asks for its address using DNS. Normally, if you’re using a VPN, these requests are hidden. But sometimes, due to a DNS leak, these requests can be seen by your internet provider, revealing the sites you visit.

The DNS leak test checks if these requests are being seen by your provider or staying hidden inside the VPN, ensuring your online activity is private.

To conduct these tests, we used dnsleaktest.com and found that X-VPN was secure. There were no DNS leaks, meaning the websites and online platforms we were visiting remained hidden.

Privacy Policy

X-VPN has a poor track record when it comes to its privacy policy. Initially, it wasn’t very transparent about what information it was logging and what it wasn’t.

X-VPN has tried to remedy this by explaining what information it keeps and what information it doesn’t keep when you sign up for the VPN service. This simply reiterates what’s in the privacy policy:

“To enhance user experience, we may collect certain device system information and country-level location data. However, please note that we absolutely do not track or record users’ IP addresses or any other sensitive information.

We do record users’ email addresses when users choose to create a X-VPN account and registration time to allow them to use a VIP account across multiple devices simultaneously. However, it’s important to remember that X-VPN does not require a real email address, and users can choose to provide a fake address if desired.

During the process of connecting to X-VPN, we may record connection timestamps, choice of protocol, network type, error reports, and app interactions. These logs are kept for LESS THAN 48 HOURS solely for the purpose of improving the quality of connections. After this period, they are automatically and permanently erased from our system. And please keep in mind we never log the server IP to which users connect, nor do we log their browsing history.”

This implies that X-VPN does log some user information, which isn’t good. Also, nothing is binding about a privacy policy. X-VPN could easily not be doing these things. It’s also strange how X-VPN promotes making a fake email when creating an account. It sends off alarm bells.

To prove their no-logs policies, many VPNs undergo third-party audits to confirm their claims. As an example, ExpressVPN was audited by Deloitte. X-VPN hasn’t had this done. It leaves a bit of doubt as to whether or not X-VPN is doing what it claims.

Speed

We connected to multiple servers to measure X-VPN’s speeds and initiated speed tests. Internet speed can be affected by numerous factors like the speed of your internet connection, so to accommodate this, we compared X-VPNs speeds to the speeds we were getting without the VPN turned on.

When performing these tests, we set the protocol to auto, meaning X-VPN would select the best protocol for what we were doing.

We performed these tests on a Windows device with a wired internet connection and a Mac device using wireless connectivity:

Windows device (wired connection)

	Download Speeds (Mbps)	Upload Speeds (Mbps)
VPN off	937.07	520.93
X-VPN US server	19.7	6.44
X-VPN UK server	13.37	0.43

Mac device (wireless connection)

	Download Speeds (Mbps)	Upload Speeds (Mbps)
VPN off	344.19	299.49
X-VPN US server	68.85	23.25
X-VPN UK server	12.69	3.65

These results are very bad. X-VPN displayed very slow connection speeds. Interestingly the Windows app was significantly slower than the Mac app. As a comparison here’s ExpressVPN’s results:

	Download Speeds (Mbps)	Upload Speeds (Mbps)
VPN off	937.07	520.93
ExpressVPN US server	824.62	6.96
ExpressVPN UK server	794.95	3.70

Servers

X-VPN states that it has over 8,000 servers on offer. This is a good amount. However, we don’t think it’s a good measure of a VPN’s potential.

We think the best way to determine a VPN and its offerings is by looking at how many countries the VPN supports. This is because a VPN could have a huge number of servers all in the same location, limiting its abilitiy for international use. To show proof of this, X-VPN has 3,000 servers in the US alone.

X-VPN has servers in 65 countries. This isn’t great. Our research shows that the average for the 20 best VPNs is 73. X-VPN is well below average in this regard.

There’s also no information disclosing how many of these servers are virtual or physical.

There are two kinds of VPN servers: physical and virtual.

Physical servers are actual machines located in a specific country. When you connect to one, the IP address you use matches the country where the server is. They’re usually faster and more reliable because they are dedicated machines.

Virtual servers, on the other hand, don’t have their own physical machine. They run on shared hardware with other servers, often in rented spaces. They tend to be slower than physical servers because they share resources. Also, fixing problems can be harder since the VPN provider doesn’t own the hardware. But, virtual servers are great for providing IP addresses in countries where setting up a physical server is difficult.

We reached out to X-VPN, but they didn’t get back to us regarding how many of their servers are virtual.

Customer support

X-VPN boasts a 24/7 chat support system and a ticketed support system in which you can email your issues and wait for them to email you back.

We used the chat support to ask a simple question, “How many of your servers are virtual servers?” and they weren’t able to answer this question. Instead, they said they’d get back to us within 24 hours… they never did. Not ideal.

Addons/Special Features

An X-VPN subscription doesn’t come with any add-ons. The only special features on offer here are a killswitch, a safety feature that automatically disconnects your device from the internet if your VPN connection drops, and split tunnelling, a feature that allows you to choose which part of your internet traffic is protected by the VPN and which part accesses the internet directly.

Verdict

X-VPN falls short in many key areas compared to its competitors. Its high price, limited device connections, poor streaming performance, and underwhelming speed significantly diminish its appeal. Despite having a large number of servers, its coverage in terms of countries is below average, and the lack of clarity about the physical versus virtual server distribution raises concerns. Additionally, its privacy policy and customer support are not up to industry standards, further detracting from its overall value as a VPN service.