Pros
- Speed: The user can experience high-speed internet on this application from most of the locations. It is the speed on this service that has attracted so many users to this application.
- Jurisdiction: The company is based in Singapore, and the country has strict privacy laws in place to keep the user’s information safe
Cons
- Few Servers: There are only six server locations in the VPN network which is not enough if the service has such a huge user base.
- Unnecessary Permissions: The application asks for a lot of permissions which have nothing to do with providing a VPN service. The permissions are so many that it is equivalent to allowing the application to take charge of your Android device.
Overview
SuperVPN is a giant on the Play Store with more than 50 million installs.
This small sized app of only 4.1 MB requires Android 4.0.3 or up to run the current version of the app which is 2.1.0.
The popularity of this mobile application can be guessed by the fact that it has an average rating of 4.3 stars out of 5 after more than 600k users have rated it. The app is available only on the Play Store.
This app is the property of SuperSoftTech which is a company based out of Singapore. Singapore is not among the 14-Eyes countries and aids individual privacy as well.
It is tough to state if the application is a VPN service or only a proxy service. There is no information provided about the technical specifications of the product.
The reviews rated as most useful, however, do not portray the application in a very positive light.
In this review, we will explore all the technical, legal, and functional aspects of this application. We will evaluate the safety of the user’s data and try to gauge the performance of the application.
Servers
Servers are the basic building block of a VPN. The number of servers and the location of the servers have a crucial role in determining the quality of service available on a VPN network.
More number of servers ensure that the servers don’t experience high-density internet traffic, and the users get better connectivity on the network over more extended periods.
Servers locations are essential in a VPN service as the proximity of the user from a VPN server has a role to play in the speeds that the user gets on his/her device. It helps a lot if a VPN server is in the vicinity of the user.
Sadly, the server network of SuperVPN comprises only of a handful of the servers. There are only six server locations on this service.
Yes! Only six server locations for a VPN application which has catered its services to more than 50 million users across the world. They have not specified the number of servers in the network.
Two of the six available servers are for the VIP customers only, that is, the ones who have subscribed to the service.
We saw a lot of the user reviews complaining about the connectivity issue on this service. They mentioned how the application takes a long time to connect to the network. One possible reason behind this issue can be the high-density internet traffic on the servers.
There was never a possibility of dedicated servers on the network for there are so few of them. Users don’t get any servers dedicated to P2P file sharing or streaming.
The server network of the service does not go well with the reputation of the application at all. We think that the service provider needs to beef up the server network so that the users can experience better connectivity.
Security
The internet traffic data in a VPN is service is transmitted through a secured protocol. There are various protocols available for the services to make a choice. Protocols differ in terms of security and speed, and the most widely used protocols are the best blend of speed and security.
A lot of the services allow multiple protocols, and the users get to choose their preferred protocol.
Apart form tunneling the data through a secured protocol, the VPN services encrypt the data as well. Encryption also comes in various sizes, and the size affects the consumption of processing power of the device and the speed of data transmission.
SuperVPN has made a lot of vague claims about the security on the product. They said that the data gets encrypted and that they employ the most secure VPN solution.
They have not specified the technical details of the security on the product such as the bit-size of the encryption or the protocol used. We tried contacting them to know more about the details, but we got no response.
As of now, there is no concrete reason for us to believe that the product is secure enough. Because of the unavailability of the information, the possibility of the service being very secure cannot be ruled out as well.
Addition security features such as kill switch are absent on the client. Kill switch automatically stops the internet traffic if the VPN connection drops.
Privacy and permissions
We already mentioned that the service is based in Singapore. The country is not among the 14 Eyes countries, and the local laws are very supportive of individual privacy.
But that does not seem to matter much in this case. The privacy policy of the service is not very convincing, and the app asks for a lot of permissions and gains access to a lot of the sections of the device.
The service provider informs that none of the user’s activity is monitored while using the service. They provided no information about the fact that if time stamps, data volume, and information about the servers to which the user got connected.
However, they have informed the users that the IP address of the user will be logged. There are many VPN services based out of Singapore, and a lot of them don’t store the user’s IP address.
If we talk about the permissions that the app seeks, then it is one of the most penetrative apps that we have come across and asks for a lot of additional access.
Let us first have a look at the necessary permissions that every VPN service provider needs to get to provide the service on Android devices.
The VPN apps require full network access, modify system settings, read Google service configuration and the permission to view network connections to route the user’s internet traffic through the VPN network. These permissions are imperative for a VPN service to work.
Even though these permissions give the service provider a lot of control on user’s internet data, it will be impossible to run a VPN app without these permissions.
A VPN service does not need to get any other permission to route the user’s traffic through the VPN network, but this service asks for much more than that.
They want access to app data, information about accounts on the device, the location of the user, phone status, phone storage, media storage, and similar other items as well.
We don’t understand why the service needs access to almost all of the sections of the user’s device. Granting the app all these permissions is like handling your device to another person and allowing him to do whatever he wants to do on the device.
They have not mentioned any reason as to why they want to get so deep into the user’s device.
The user may also get annoyed a lot by the ads as well. But these ads pay for the service to keep running, so we won’t complain a lot about it. The users can subscribe to the service if they want to get rid of the ads.
Users should bear in mind that this app allows third parties to store cookie data in the user’s device
The service has not been very transparent, and they don’t seem to care much about the customer reviews as well. We hardly saw any reply from the service on any of the user’s review.
They don’t even have an official website where the customer can know more about the organization or reach out to them.
We are not sure about the safekeep of the user’s data and privacy on this application. It is a big ask to trust such an opaque service with all the sensitive information on a user’s device.
Speed
By this time, we had found no reason which would explain the popularity of the product. Our only guess was that it is probably the speed on the network which has drawn in so many people to the service.
We did the speed tests and found that the service was able to yield more than 80% of the original speed on a consistent basis.
The speed is very good but not amazing or impressive if we compare it to the speeds that the other VPN applications are generating. Many VPN apps have output speeds on the similar lines as SuperVPN.
We should also mention that it is was not easy to connect to the service at all. It may take you several attempts to connect to the network. We guess that this issue might be because of high density traffic through the servers.
Keeping in mind the fact that the service provides such speeds for free, we think that this might be the only reason that so many people have preferred this app. But the user does get ads as well in the bargain.
User interface and Experience
Generally, mobile applications are very intuitive, and the services keep looking for ways to make the user interface as interesting as possible.
But the makers of SuperVPN seem to have a different way of thinking. The user interface of the app does not gives any indication that it was designed to enhance the user’s experience.
One noticeable thing about the user interface is that most of its space has been dedicated to the ad providers. On the home-screen, the users get nothing but a connect button.
For options, the user is served with nothing but the ability to choose one of the few server options available. The other items in the options menu are not very useful to customize the app.
But one cannot expect much from such a small sized app. The minimalistic design might suit the taste of a lot of the users as well.
However, the fact remains that the app does not provide the user with many options. All that the user can do is either connect to the network or change the server.
Pricing
It is one of the apps where we would recommend the user to keep using the service for free if they are not from Japan or the UK. Let us try to explain to you the logic behind such reasoning.
First of all, you can subscribe to the service for rates ranging from 5 USD to 4.33 USD depending upon the duration of your subscription.
The difference in the monthly and the yearly subscription rates are not very much, and the service does not give much to the customers who are in for the long haul.
The benefits of being a subscribed user are that you will not receive any ads and get access to only two exclusive servers. The users who have not subscribed to the service will have access to all the servers but two, which the VIP customers can use.
The exclusive servers are in Japan and England. So, if you are not near one of these countries, you might not be using these servers very much.
Therefore, we feel that the service does not provide many privileges to the subscribed users, and there is no point paying so much for so little.
Conclusion
By now you must have got an idea about all the sections where the service can improve. We feel that it needs to improve everything but speed.
The privacy policy needs to be a lot more detailed so that the users have a fair idea of what kind of service they are going to use. The service also needs to provide a lot more details about the specifications of the product.
The server network is very small and poor connection quality is a recurring theme on the service.
The speeds that the users get on the service are impressive, and we feel that this is the USP of the product.
However, they need to seek fewer permissions as most of the other VPN applications also don’t ask for such extensice control of the user’s device.
We don’t rate this application as one of the best ones available, but it still a satisfactory service.