SwitchVPN in China
SwitchVPN is a lesser known VPN, but still worth checking out. I have not tried this VPN so cannot vouch for it's reliability or speed. But there are a few things I can see from checking out their site.
1. Not a lot of choice. +1 -1
This is good, and bad. For one, it makes things simple. Lots of sites like to have EVERYTHING available which is a lot to take in for new users. Considering users in China can't use PPTP or L2TP this makes things much easier. You can ignore pretty much all of their plans but the SSL plan which is 12 dollars a month.
2. Live Support +1
3. Unlimited Bandwidth +1
3. Downloading Torrents OK +1 (some sites don't allow this)
4. Windows/Mac/Linux +1
5. 48 hour Money Back Guarantee -1
There are plenty of services out there that offer 7 day money back guarantees.
6. Site Design +1
I used to Knock their site for bad design and presentation. They've recently improved it, and it looks much better – more like a service I can trust.
7. Price +0
Not the cheapest, Not the most expensive.
8. Not Affected by March 2011 VPN crisis in china +2
9. Still Not Blocked in China +2
10, Site connection speed +1
11. Servers in Multiple Locations +1 (US, UK, Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Malaysia)
12. Free Server Switching +1
All in all, it looks like a decent VPN service. One thing that really impresses me about SwitchVPN in China is that I've never had issues connecting to their site. Even some of my favorite VPN sites like StrongVPN and 12VPN have from time to time been inaccessible or a couple days. If you find that some of the links on my site get timed out, SwitchVPN is a cool service to check out.
Or check out my PureVPN in China Review
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One is that it's a bit more difficult to install. On my first time around I almost gave up. I'm a real idiot when it comes to computers and as soon as they asked me to create folders and unzip files into them I set it aside for a day before I came back to it. I also didn't have a file unzipper which I had to find and download. My second time around I had an idea of what to do and paid closer attention to the instructions the provided(they have everything laid out pretty clearly). It wasn't so bad, but compared to 12VPN which it just "click, click, finished", some people may have trouble with it.
But they've only got 5 sever locations, which when compared to services like Hide My Ass and 12VPN which have upwards of 10 or 20 locations, 5 is a pretty small number. HOWEVER, most of the time this doesn't matter for users in China. We're trying to get OUT OF CHINA, not get into anywhere else. 1 VPN server is enough to do that, so what do you need 20 for? Do you really need to browse the Internet from a server in Siberia? No.
The biggest deciding point for most people is the cost. Their cost plan is pretty straightforward, especially for users in China. Because PPTP and L2TP are blocked in most places, that means that there's only the monthly SSL/OpenVPN plan available. At 20 dollars a month, it's a bit more expensive than others, not by much, but it is. For any decent VPN service you can expect to pay 10 to 20 dollars a month, but 20 is pretty much the top of the scale..png)
I haven't been able to connect to the StrongVPN site for the past week. I'm living in Fujian – I don't know what the rest of the country is like. I contacted StrongVPN and they maintain that "some areas are having connectivity issues", but I'd like to know how you guys are doing. Of course, if you've already got the VPN downloaded, you shouldn't have any problems. The problem is that the main site is blocked – so you'll find that the links here to the StrongVPN site aren't working.
I've just complete quite a few site updates. After that crazy period when vpn companies were dropping like flies I did a lot of quick-fix site changes including putting big signs in bold and crossing out prices and stuff like that. Ugly.