I'm a webmaster. Ever since I came to China I stuck with terrible Internet connection. Now I found a solution for my DSL problem, it's Strong VPN, a paid VPN service located in USA and Europe. Here is my review.
Pricing:
Strong VPN is not cheap at the price of $15/month. A normal web hosting only charge $6/month. However, not facing financial loss of not being able to connect, is priceless. So as long as of my concern, Strong VPN is inexpensive.
Usage:
I'm not using Strong VPN just in China, but also in Vietnam. For some reasons, the connection here also not so good to International sites. And I believe, as long as I have money to pay for Strong VPN, I will keep using the service as far as I go and whenever I need.
Advantages:
There are 5 main advantages of Strong VPN in comparison with the previous services I used:
1/ It has American IP. Perhaps this is the reason why I got through when the normal connection could not. So that's it's unblocked. Most of the time when I am stuck, I use Strong VPN to unblock it :-)
2/ It has multiple servers. At first attempt I failed to connect. After testing all the server I found out the vpn-in1 is the fastest, then I used it. For other people it maybe different server though.
3/ It has lighting fast support. I got difficulty at first tries, and when I got on to the Live Support, I was surprise each time I got through in just 1 minute. Even in the middle of the US night, or at US day time, they are still there to help.
4/ It's easy to connect. Just a single click from the start menu, I got connected to Strong VPN. The initial VPN setup is straight forward too.
5/ It takes Paypal. It was really hard for me to find a VPN that accepts PayPal. Strong VPN really saves me with this. Many VPN services only take other e-money that cost me a lot if I have to buy those currency.
Disadvantages:
Life is like that, always there are things to be complained about. Especially it's me, the critics guy. There are 4 disadvantages of Strong VPN, namely:
1/ First attempt didn't work. The assigned me a server that I could not connect to. I freaked out and had to chat with their live-support immediately.
2/ No automatic fast server assignment. With so many servers available, they could make a software to assign new users to the fastest connection automatically based on user IP.
3/ No server comparisons. They have the speed test, but I'd preferred those test be done on one page instead of making so many clicks. I had to spend over 2 hours just to open and close the pages. So hard to note down the speed.
4/ High monthly fee. The pricing for VPN as general is around $15 nowadays. For me that's very high because hosting only cost me $5/month, domain $10/year.
Recommendations:
I never thought about paying that much for a VPN server just to connect to the US sites. But since I'm making a decent amount of money online, that cost is minimal compare to what VPN brings me.
If you face the same or similar problem I'm facing, I suggest you try Strong VPN. I'm trying it out for 3 months. If it still works as it is right now, I will keep using it for longer.
Strong VPN review – 164
