I am sure Astrill are technically good and can support my issues. However, I felt with the random problems i was getting with my chrome browser since installing it, that this service was not suitable.
They would not give me a refund when i explained my issue and tried troubleshooting it with them. So, as I had paid with paypal, I went through them . So far they have cancelled my subscription but am chasing the refund. A good VPN service should not make you jump through hoops to get a refund during a trial period. That's my 2 cents worth.
astril is a budget vpn, expect budget customer service. if you want pro vpn then expect to pay pro prices.but these are designed for hight traffic like bizness users need
vyper vpn, tunnelbear, bluevpn, safervpn are all good vpns also. i change every month usually to get promo prices.
I use a mix of breakwall VPN which I paid for on taobao, and free methods like Tor browser and Freegate proxy. I am also looking at a SSH tunnel at the moment, which has unlimited bandwidth and only costs $2/year payable in bitcoin.
No one from China uses the tunnel yet according to the owner, so it should work, and their main website isn't blocked. I will set it up and let you all know if it works. If it doesn't it is only 12 kuai lost.
ExpressVPN always gives me a list of about ten that are very fast, I just do the speed test first thing and thats me set for the day. Always use a different server each day, never have no disconnection issues with this either I've just had it on 24 hrs non stop uploading vids....
if youre good at googling, you can get free openvpn configs from almost every country. they are hard to find since the website can only be found through temp mirror links so its never on the first page.
Well I got the SSH tunnel up and running, after much difficulty. It is quite complicated, but it works in China. Only thing is it is slow depending on the time of day. I have a 8MB connection and it can drop as low as 2MB/s but I have had it up to 6MB/s. It is a Canadian server, so I guess it all depends on the time of the day that you use the server. But at 12RMB a year, it is cheap, so worth it.
Wow, so just 24 hours to have the IP address of the server used for the SSH tunnel to be blocked.
So I found a project been run by a university in Japan with volunteers all around the world creating servers for vpns. There are tons of servers in Japan and South Korea which are low ping and high bandwidth. I have played around with it and have got it to work for free. In fact I find it to be better than my current paid VPN.It is called softether VPN. With so many servers and new servers coming up all the time, you are almost guaranteed to find a connection that works.
I've used strongvpn.com (strongvpn.cc, strongvpn.asia) for four years. I've installed it in three locations. It provides the best service for $55/year, 365/24/7 support, can dial into your machine and set it up for you, clients available for all devices (win/mac/iOS/androids) and you can put the key in your router to cover all your devices for the one price. Best service bar none.
...dave
