FlyVPN Review

Pros

• Jurisdiction: They operate within the laws of Hong Kong. Hong Kong is not among the 14-Eyes countries and supports individual privacy as well.
• Servers: FlyVPN has a huge and spread out server network. They have servers in more than 40 countries. This service is among the best ones when it comes to covering the Asian continent with their server network.
• Platform Support: The user can get this service for a variety of platforms. They also take care of gaming consoles and Smart TVs in their platform support.

Cons

• Logging: The service provider logs more information than what seems to be required, and this can be a concern for a lot of the users.
• Speed: The speed on the network is not impressive at all. It will be very tough to stream content or do online gaming when connected to the network.
• Lack of Security Features: There are no additional security features on the service such as IPv6 support, kill switch, DNS leak protection, etc. The absence of these features makes the user vulnerable on the network.

Overview

FlyVPN is a Hong Kong based VPN service with a noticeable huge server network. The Hong Kong jurisdiction gives them the potential to be a privacy friendly service.

The service provider has made a long list of advantages of having FlyVPN on the official website. Most of these claims are related to circumventing the geo restrictions and provide the user with access to a lot of the online content.

We also hope that they are able to stay true to those claims when we put the service through some rigorous testing.

We will also asses the situation of security on the service and inform you about any loopholes that we find in the security.

Speed will naturally undergo some scrutiny as well, as good speeds are always in demand for a great online experience.

We hope that FlyVPN will pass all our tests with ‘flying’ colors and if not then we assure that you will end up knowing what to look for when you consider the next VPN service to use.

Servers

VPN services place servers in many locations to use them as a node in the network, and that helps them to mask the IP address of the user with the IP address of their VPN.

If the VPN service has got servers in a lot of locations around the world, then it not only makes their network vast but also gives the user a lot of options to bypass the geo restrictions.

One important factor which decides the final speed on the network is the user’s physical distance from the server location. If one of the VPN servers is in the proximity of the user, then he/she is bound to get better speeds.

Thus, a vast and spread out server network makes sure that most of the users have a VPN server in their proximity.

The bandwidth available for each server location depends on the bandwidth available on individual servers and the number of servers present on a single location.

Higher bandwidth capacity ensures that users get proper services even if a lot of them connect to a single server location.

So, now we know that it is good for a VPN service to have a lot of servers in the network which are ideally spread out across the globe.

Let us now examine if FlyVPN’s server network has any of the qualities mentioned above.

They have servers across more than 40 countries. The number of server locations is so impressive that it shames a lot of the mainstream VPN services.

The server locations are evenly spread out across all the continents. FlyVPN must be the VPN service with the highest number of servers in Asia.

Most of the VPN services have a dense server network in Europe and only a few servers in the rest of the world. But in FlyVPN, the server distribution seems homogenous.

They have a lot of servers in the American and the European continent as well. The service has also got two server locations on the African continent.

With such a huge server list, comes the responsibility of sorting these servers neatly to make it easy for the user to go through the server list.

FlyVPN has sorted servers according to regions and countries. They have an abundance of servers in the USA, China, Korea, and Hong Kong. These four countries get their own categories in the server list.

Rest of the servers are sorted by the name of the continent and region. So, the rest of the categories are Asia, Europe, Oceania, America, and Africa.

There is one more server category, and it showcases all the free servers to the users. The client also carries out latency test for all the servers and displays the results in front of the servers.

This makes life so much easier for the user when it comes to choosing the server.

However, there was one more thing which could have made the life a lot easier for the user, and that is the automatic connection option.

We missed an automatic server connection option on such a big list of servers.

Other things that FlyVPN could have included were dedicated servers. By dedicated server, we mean servers which are focused on satisfying specific needs of the user such as streaming and P2P file sharing.

Addition of such servers in the network makes the client a lot more user friendly. Different tasks such as gaming, streaming, P2P file sharing have different needs.

For instance, P2P file sharing would require the server location to support P2P file sharing, streaming would ask for servers with high speeds and suitable physical location to circumvent geo restrictions if any, and for gaming, the user needs a server with minimum latency.

Having prescribed servers for such tasks will make it so much easy for the user to navigate through a large number of servers available on the client.

However, the server network on the client is still very impressive, and all the prescribed changes will only make it better.

Privacy Policy

FlyVPN is yet another country which operates from Hong Kong. Hong Kong has become a business hub as it has got rules which favor businesses and enterprises.

The region also respects individual privacy, and therefore, the companies are not bound to keep a record of personal information of the users.

The service provider claimed that FlyVPN has a no logs policy, but we find it tough to concur with them.

Let us now look at the information which they collect from us.

The data collection which should concern you the most is that they collect the IP address of the user along with the GPS location of the user.

They have not specified the duration for which data remains in their systems, and that is even more concerning.

We don’t know why a VPN service would want to know the GPS address of the users, but one thing we know for sure is that it compromises the privacy of the user.

They also collect information about the user’s network, information about ISP, timestamps, device information, etc.

Most of this data collection can be attributed to troubleshooting, but some of it such as the storage of IP address and GPS location is bound to raise some brows.

The user needs to provide them with information such as name, email address, phone number, etc. to create an account for the service.

They also store transaction details and information related to the payment method if the user decides to subscribe to the service. However, such information is necessary to run a business, and there is nothing new in a VPN service collecting such data.

Their official website stores some cookies in the user’s device as well. Though, the user always has the option to delete or block such cookies.

They have not mentioned the use of analytics service on their website, but they also haven’t denied using it. So, we are not sure if there will be any third-party cookies involved when you visit their website.

The privacy policy of FlyVPN is not among most detailed privacy policies. They could have been a lot more precise on a lot of the relevant topics.

The fact that they have not mentioned the duration for which the user’s personal information will remain in their system is something which they should address immediately.

The way in which the service presents it Privacy Policy is an indication of their seriousness towards individual privacy. It is also unable to qualify them as a transparent service as well.

Connection Time Analysis

Trial No.	Time to establish a connection (seconds)
1	3.94
2	1.6
3	1.74
4	1.47
5	3.52
6	1.55
7	1.73
8	1.32
9	6.84
10	6.43
Avg. Time In Seconds	3.014

Connection time analysis gives an idea about the swiftness of the client. A quick connection enhances the user experience for sure, whereas it is always annoying for the user to comes across VPN clients which take a long time to connect to the network.

We did the connection time analysis for FlyVPN, and the results were inspiring. The service took around 3 seconds on an average to establish a connection with the network.

However, the crest and troughs had a lot of margin between them in this performance. The client took only one and a half seconds to connect to the network on a few tries.

There were also a few occasions in which the client took almost 7 seconds to connect to the network.

This indicated that the client is not going to be the most reliable one, and it can be a bumpy ride when it comes to the performance of the client.

Speed Test

The service provider has listed a lot of benefits of using FlyVPN. Some of these benefits are streaming by bypassing a lot of geo restrictions, access to a lot of blocked online gaming content, etc.

We are sure that the large server network of the service helps them to circumvent a lot of the restrictions to access this streaming and gaming content.

But once the service bypasses the geo restrictions, it all boils down to the speed on the service which will decide if the user will get to see some high definition content or be able to game without any lags.

The chances of the user having a good experience while streaming and gaming seem very slim to us.

We are saying this because of what we saw in the speed test results.

Let us first mention at the outset that we used the free version the service. Even though the service provider did not mention it, we do realize that the speed on the free servers would be a little less than what we would get on the premium servers.

Let us now asses the test results.

We first connected to the Hong Kong server. The download speed reduced to only 5.9% of the original speed. The upload speed plummeted down, and the ping rate sky rocketed upwards.

The output speed after the connection was so poor that we got a latency error a few times while doing the speed test.

We then connected to the US server. The results for this server were also very disheartening to see — this time the download speed after the connection was only 6.1% of the initial speed.

We then tried the Thailand server as well. It was the same result here again as well. The download speed after the connection was only 5.27% of the initial rate.

The upload speeds and the ping rate took a similar punch in both the cases.

The service provider mentioned that there is no bandwidth capping on the free servers. So, we don’t see any drastic jump in speeds for the premium servers as well.

The kind of speeds which we got don’t promise a very satisfying internet experience.

Security

There is no such thing as too much security when it comes to VPN service.

Users don’t mind if the VPN service has too many security features as long as it does not affect the performance of the client.

The VPN services are also leaving no stone unturned to make sure that the client has as many security features as possible.

However, the security parameters of FlyVPN seem a lot different from the rest of the VPN world.

They way they described the security on the service was very unusual.

Let us start with the encryption on the service. They employ SSL based 256/2048-bit encryption.

It is virtually impossible to breach this encryption, and thus the user can expect that his/her data will not get compromised easily while using the service.

Talking of protocols, they use OpenVPN(TCP/UDP), PPTP and L2TP over IPSec. Multiple protocols are always a good thing, but things got a bit foggy once we got to know that there are multiple protocols on the service.

They provide Socks5 for proxy services as well.

The option to use PPTP and L2TP protocols are not available for all the server options. They say that both these protocols are only for the users in mainland China.

The service provider has also got a few guidelines for the use of protocols, and it educates the user about the right protocol for various online activities.

They have also got an ‘Auto’ option when it comes to protocol. The user can choose this option and leave the headache of choosing the right protocol on the client.

There are no added security measures on this service as well.

The client allows the user to switch between the servers and connect to the VPN network and that is it.

Kill switch, IP leak protection, and other such features are alien elements on FlyVPN.

A kill switch stops the internet traffic if the VPN connection drops thus saving the user’s data from reaching the internet without the safety of a VPN.

Many VPN services do not support IPV6. This sometimes leads to a situation when they interact with IPv6 requests, and there is a mismatch. This mismatch compromises the IP address of the user.

The absence of additional security features makes the client susceptible to breaches. The service provider should make a few efforts to strengthen security.

User Interface and Experience

Now coming to the user interface of the client, it has aced in certain sections and then failed miserably in a lot of others when it comes to the user experience.

Let us first discuss the things which FlyVPN did right with the user interface of the client.

The server sorting on the client catches the eye for sure. There are a lot of servers and server locations in the network, and the server sorting made it a lot easier to navigate through them.

They have categorized the servers mostly by the region, and a few countries get their own sections. The reason behind listing a few countries separately is that they had a lot of servers in them.

The inclusion of these countries in the regular region category would have made it a bit more troublesome for the user to go through the list of servers.

They have a lot of servers in China, the USA, Hong Kong, and Korea, so these countries are listed separately. The other regional categories are Asia, Europe, Oceania, America, and Africa.

There is one more server category called ‘Free,’ and it lists all the servers which are available for the non-subscribed users.

Server sorting is the only thing that seems done right on the user interface though.

There are virtually no customization options on the client. The user can switch between the protocols, which apparently are different for different users depending upon the region.

There is one ‘Auto Reconnect’ option as well which will the reconnect the device to the network in case the connection drops.

The client window displays the username and the nature of the subscription. It has got a connect button at the bottom half of the window.

There are four elements at the right side of the client, and all of them will redirect the user to the website.

The lack of features in the service is evident on the user interface as well, and the user is left searching for a few customization options.

Platforms and Devices

The service provider did well when it comes to making the service easily accessible.

FlyVPN is available for Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS, Linux, PlayStation, Xbox, and Smart TVs.

They have not availed the service for routers, and there are no extensions available for browsers as well. But that does not seem a big concern since the product can be directly used on so many platforms.

The tutorial for downloading clients for all the platforms is available on the website, and the user can take the help of these tutorials to get FlyVPN for his/her device without any hassle.

However, there are many devices which connect to the internet these days. We do realize that it is difficult to come up with clients for all these devices, but the service provider should at least try to avail the service for routers.

This way the users will have a way to provide VPN protection to all their devices.

Customer Support

Customer support is one of the essential components of a service, but often the most neglected one as well.

The user has got nothing else but the customer support to go to when he/she comes across any trouble while using the service or even when if he/she wants to know more about the product.

Quality customer support does not necessarily mean live chat support. It does help if the user gets someone to guide him/her instantly, but the support representative needs to be competent enough as well.

A support page which discusses all the relevant and important topics about the service exhaustively is better than poor live chat support.

FlyVPN does not promise a 24/7 live chat support. However, there is a high probability that you will find one of their live chat representatives when you visit the website.

Now talking about the competence, there is nothing much that the representatives have got to tell other than what is already mentioned on the website.

Language can be one of the biggest barriers though. We had a hard time communicating with the support representative.

It was pretty much clear that he was not accustomed to the English language. However, FlyVPN promises support in a lot of other languages as well.

There is no support page or help page on the website. The user will need to scan the website for information.

But, let us warn you that the website is not very informative, and there is not much discussion about the technical specifications of the product.

Conclusion

FlyVPN is a mixed bag service. It excels in a few sections and is miserable in others.

They have a vast server network, multiple protocols, strong encryption, and great platform support. All these things are features of an excellent VPN service.

On the other hand, there is data logging even though the local laws don’t require them to store so much of the user’s information. The speed on the service is also not worth boasting. The customer support has language issues.

The user interface is not very functional. The user’s privacy can be compromised because of the lack of additional security features.

The service provider has a lot of issues to deal with before the product can be classified as one of the top tier ones. We certainly cannot recommend this service to users before it addresses the issues that we mentioned and gets a lot better.