CyberGhost VPN Full Review
Anyone who wants to secure his/her online life should think about using a VPN service because it is an enormously robust and powerful tool to do just that.
Generally speaking, VPN services fall into a total of two categories.
There are those VPN services that take powerful tools and trade them off with usability.
Then there are those other VPN services that emphasize more on ease of use and intuitiveness over some arcane and complex security options.
The reason why Top VPN Software and many others consider CyberGhost as one of the best VPN service around is that, CyberGhost has proven itself as an expert at threading a path between the two above-mentioned extremes.
CyberGhost, as a VPN company was founded in the year 2011 by Robert Knapp and Oana Dima.
That’s about seven years ago.
So it isn’t a young company by any means especially when we consider the fact that it has over 3.7 million users.
Currently, its headquarters are in Bucharest, Romania.
Romania being a non-US country gives CyberGhost some distinct advantages.
In simpler terms, CyberGhost is able to mix powerful features, unique tools, and usability very efficiently.
It also offers a privacy policy which is designed to protect its customers and not itself.
We are confident in the sense that users won’t waste their money with CyberGhost.
Why Do I Need a VPN? What Is a VPN?
The answer to that question could not be simpler.
Whenever a user switches on a given VPN service, all of the user’s internet traffic gets routed through the VPN service’s encrypted tunnel.
From the encrypted tunnel, the user’s internet traffic goes to the VPN server that the VPN company is operating.
This effectively blocks anyone and everyone on the same WiFi (or otherwise) network from spying on the user or intercept the user’s data.
VPN services are also great because they help to hide the user’s identity.
The way that works is that since the user’s network traffic exists to the wider world of the internet from the VPN server’s location rather than the user’s computer itself.
Modern online consumers need a good VPN service because VPN services are incredibly powerful and robust encryption technology and privacy providers.
Political dissidents and journalists operating in various countries that have restrictive and oppressive internet policies have used VPN services to do their work for years now.
Signing up for a VPN service and then using the VPN service also prevents the fairly not-so-friendly neighborhood internet service providers from intercepting the user’s private data and then selling anonymized versions of that data to marketing companies.
Yes.
They do it.
And it is perfectly legal.
We can all thank the US Congress for that.
This is why we recommend that users should complain to their respective representatives and senators whenever they get the chance to do so.
Now, because the user’s internet traffic appears to be coming from the company’s VPN server, any online player who is watching the data would see the actual IP address of the company’s VPN server rather than the user’s original IP address.
Such an arrangement is really helpful when one wants to hide his/her identity.
However, a VPN service doesn’t just hide the user’s identity, it also hides the location of the user.
Many readers still don’t seem to know that IP addresses are generally distributed based on the actual geographic location of the machine.
If one thinks about it hard enough, this is the very same ability that users can utilize in order to spoof their location by simply forming a connection with a VPN server which is located a long way away from where the user is actually located.
This setup assists users in a number of different ways.
But the most important of those ways is that it enables users to have access to region-locked HD content on various streaming websites.
To take an example, there is BBC iPlayer.
This streaming service has no problems in streaming HD content for people living in the UK.
However, it doesn’t do the same for red-blooded Americans.
If a person living in the United States of America makes use of a VPN service and then connects to a server that is located in the United Kingdom, then that same American user can actually watch BBC iPlayer from America without any problems.
We are aware of the fact that there may be some readers who have never used a VPN service before.
If that is indeed the case for you, then there is no cause for worry.
In this review, we will talk about each and everything that beginner users need to know about CyberGhost VPN.
Price
Like the majority of good VPN service providers, CyberGhost VPN offers users pretty much the same slate of security features for each of its packages.
However, it does bill users differently based on the interval they have signed up for.
Users who sign up for the CyberGhost VPN for a longer period of time have to pay more upfront but would definitely save a lot of money overall.
The latest packages include a 1-year plan, a 2-year plan, and 1-month plan.
Currently, the 18-month plan costs around $2.75 per month.
The 6 month plan costs just $4.99 per month.
We feel that the 18 month plan is definitely worth it since it comes with a 45-day official money-back guarantee.
The monthly plan has CyberGhost VPN charging $11.99 per month making the monthly plan price a little high, especially when you think of it that if you keep it for longer than 4 months then it is WAY more cost effective to get eh 18 month deal.
However, other elite VPN service providers such as NordVPN also charge users the same as CyberGhost VPN.
Of course, it goes without saying that a lot of VPN service providers charge users well below the industry average cost.
Moreover, there is also Private Internet Access which offers all its services including a simple but robust VPN client (a bit spartan really) for only $6.95 each month.
There is also KeepSolid VPN Unlimited which has made a name for itself by offering users a wide variety of subscription plans based on different pricing models.
This company offers users a pretty ultra economical plan on a weekly basis.
It moves on from there to offer users a lifetime VPN subscription plan.
Users have the option of purchasing any given plan either with traditional and established payment methods such as PayPal and/or credit card or with anonymous payment methods such as Bitcoin.
There are some VPN service providers that offer users to make use of prepaid gift cards for payment.
Most of the time, these gift cards would have to come from shops such as Starbucks and/or Best Buy.
These are also pretty much anonymous options.
Our research shows that cost isn’t really a hurdle when we’re talking about online security.
Why?
Because there are a ton of free VPN services available to users these days.
They aren’t ideal.
Some are not even good.
A handful of them don’t even work.
But it is what it is.
Is there a money back guarantee?
Yes. All packages come with a 45 day official money-back guarantee.
Does CyberGhost offer a free trial?
Yes.
CyberGhost VPN offer a 24 hour free trial version.
Features
As far as the number of simultaneous devices goes, CyberGhost VPN offers users a total of seven.
That is, with each subscription package, users can protect up to seven devices.
This makes CyberGhost VPN a great value for money VPN service.
Just a single subscription package can cover the whole household that has a good number of internet-connected devices.
Comparing that ‘seven’ number with the industry average, and it is a bit higher.
In other words, the current industry average is around five devices.
Some elite VPN service providers such as NordVPN offer users a total of six simultaneous connections.
There are also other options such as VyprVPN and others, that do not offer users a total of five VPN connections as far as their base-level VPN offerings are concerned.
If the user is willing to pay some more money to them, then they can increase that number to the industry average.
Users who are a big fan of engaging in BitTorrent activities should know that CyberGhost is perhaps one of the few elite VPN service providers that allow users to engage in P2P file sharing and BitTorrent via its VPN service.
There are some other VPN companies that require the user to limit the BitTorrent activity on a specific set of their servers.
Of course, the majority of VPN service providers consider BitTorrent activities as a breach of service.
If we’re talking about CyberGhost VPN however, the company does a good job of marking the servers which users can use to engage in torrenting.
Users should consult their CyberGhost VPN for more information.
Apart from the BitTorrent-friendly VPN servers, CyberGhost VPN also offers VPN servers which are built up from the ground up for activities such as streaming.
That is, without a doubt, a great initiative.
We are finally entering an era where more and more VPN services are starting to offer users VPN servers made specifically for streaming and nothing else.
VPN services should, in fact, make sure that their customers are able to access all of their favorite streaming and otherwise, services on the internet without having this need to switch the VPN protection off while trying to.
Apart from NordVPN, we don’t know of many VPN services that offer Double Encryption.
CyberGhost offers users the Double Encryption feature.
With the help of this feature, the VPN service is able to encrypt its authentication data as well the actual VPN data.
This adds more security to the whole VPN connection.
However, CyberGhost VPN has not made it clear if it offers this feature on all of its servers or just some of its servers.
It has also not indicated when and where this feature is available to users.
VPN Protocols
The thing readers need to understand here is that there are several ways in which they can create a connection with a VPN server.
Here at Top VPN Software we always recommend that users should go with the OpenVPN method.
Why?
Because OpenVPN is fast.
And it is also reliable.
Moreover, it is open-source.
And that means, many security experts and researchers have picked its code apart for any and all security vulnerabilities.
The good thing about CyberGhost VPN is that it supports protocols such as OpenVPN.
It even does that on its official Android VPN client.
Other VPN clients which support the OpenVPN protocol in the case of CyberGhost VPN are on platforms such as Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Apart from that, CyberGhost also offers its users the IKEv2 VPN protocol on platforms such as Windows, Linux, and iOS.
Not only that, it also offers users some older VPN protocols such as L2TP on both Linux and Windows.
Users should also note that because companies such as Apple place far too many requirements on the apps that may use the OpenVPN protocol, there aren’t a lot of VPN services that tend to offer users OpenVPN on the iOS platform.
Servers
And of course, server locations.
Whenever we take a look at a given VPN service, we always give attention to the total number of VPN servers that the given VPN service offers.
For Top VPN Software, that is as important a differentiator as any.
There is little doubt about the fact that VPN services that have more VPN servers tend to offer a more robust VPN service.
We are also aware that the user is more likely to form a connection with a VPN server that is not overburdened with the load of too many users, if the VPN service has a huge VPN server network.
The simple fact is, if the user has more servers to choose from, then he/she has access to servers that have a little load on them at any given time.
Following from that, CyberGhost offers users around 3000 servers worldwide in over 60 countries.
That is a lot of servers.
Of course, the company has made a bit of a habit out of changing the exact number of VPN servers that it actually has.
That is why it keeps on changing the number from time to time.
However, the fact that it has a robust VPN network does not change.
Even if CyberGhost offers anything near 3000 VPN servers, that puts CyberGhost VPN on part with some a lot of the greatest names in the VPN industry/business.
For example, there is NordVPN.
NordVPN is an elite VPN service provider that costs users exactly the same as CyberGhost but offers around 3400 VPN servers.
There is also Private Internet Access.
This VPN service charges users around half of what users have to pay to CyberGhost per month.
Private Internet Access provides users with a total of 3275 VPN servers to connect to.
And let’s not forget TorGuard that has recently expanded its total number of servers and has raised the actual number to around 3000 VPN servers.
There is little doubt about the fact that the actual geographic distribution of a given set of VPN servers is also critical.
The more a VPN service varies the distribution of its servers, the more options its users will have when they want to spoof their location.
If a VPN service offers users a strong variety in terms of geographic diversity, then that also means that they are more likely to connect to a VPN server that is physically nearby even when they are traveling.
This is very important.
Why?
Because when a VPN server is physically located close to the user then the user can get better performance in terms of speed from the VPN server that is located nearby.
A distant server is more likely to give less speed to the user.
As far as server locations are concerned, CyberGhost VPN offers users a total of 90 different locations.
The company spreads these 90 different locations to 60 plus countries.
Our research shows that it is probably a good mix.
In terms of having servers in Africa, CyberGhost VPN performs better than the average.
We still don’t know the reason why VPN companies tend to completely ignore the continent the size of Africa.
On that point, let’s also talk about Hide My Ass.
Hide My Ass is the king when it comes to having a large network of VPN servers.
In other words, it has the most number of locations for its servers even though it doesn’t have the largest number of VPN servers.
At the time of writing this review, Hide My Ass successfully covered a total of 286 locations which were located in a total of 220 countries.
As for CyberGhost, it is a rare VPN service in the sense that it also offers users a VPN server in Hong Kong.
However, CyberGhost does itself no favors by not offering VPN servers in places such as Russia and/or Turkey.
Places such as Russia do have rather repressive internet rules and regulations for certain people and VPN services that do not offer servers in these countries are simply losing business.
Now, our research shows that there is an increasing number of people on the internet who are concerned about VPN services making use of virtual servers.
Let’s talk about that for a minute.
What are virtual servers?
We want users to think about virtual servers as software-defined VPN servers.
In other words, whenever a VPN service uses virtual servers, it is actually using a single unit/piece of VPN server hardware.
That hardware has the ability to run a multiple number of virtual servers.
VPN services have the means to individually configure virtual servers so that they give the appearances of being physically present in another country.
Or at least, in a different country from the country of the physical hardware behind the VPN server.
So what is the issue with virtual servers?
The issue that users have with virtual servers is that, they do not know where their data might head to.
If the data goes to a place that is not the one which the user choice, then that means a different set of laws would apply to that data.
This is something that a lot of users find disturbing.
As for CyberGhost, its representatives would tell you that the company actually rents VPN servers in each and every location that it offers as a part of its VPN service.
However, the company has also stated in the past that it has around 340 of its VPN servers as virtual servers.
But that isn’t a problem in the case of CyberGhost because the company ensures that the location of any given virtual server is pretty much the same as the actual location of the physical server.
Our research shows that this setup is pretty reasonable.
Not only that, we know a couple of great VPN service providers that engage in this practice as well.
Then there is Private Internet Access.
It also utilizes technologies such as virtual servers.
However, NordVPN which is an elite VPN service has told the media in the past that the company does not make use of virtual servers and in fact, each and every one of its VPN servers are full dedicated VPN servers.
CyberGhost Privacy
Whenever a user signs up for any privacy or security software application, the user has to have trust in the developer of that software application.
The user has little option but to trust that the developer’s product does exactly what the product says on the label or marketing material.
Moreover, the user also has to trust that by using that security product, he/she would have protection against any online danger.
Any exposure to the internet without proper protection would mean that the user would lose his/her privacy.
So trust is something that is very important for VPN services.
Why?
Because the nature of a given VPN service’s work is that the company behind the VPN service could pretty much have the same level of access and insight to the user’s data as the user’s internet service provider.
Yes.
It isn’t exactly news that not only Facebook and Google but internet service providers all over the world monitor their users amongst other stuff.
Moreover, the sole reason that any user makes use of a VPN service is to protect his/her online activities.
This is actually the key reason for any user to pay for a VPN service.
As it turns out, this is also the reason when we research VPN service, we always give due consideration to the company’s privacy policy.
We also research the developers that are behind the VPN services and also look at their privacy practices.
Our research shows that the privacy policy that CyberGhost offers to users is not the greatest in the world.
Don’t get us wrong.
It is actually fairly thorough.
Moreover, it gives users lots of small details.
It is also length.
Our research shows that the majority of online consumers would find it very difficult to actually parse the documents and understand it.
There is also TorGuard VPN that probably has the more direct and shortest privacy policy of all time.
If CyberGhost wants to compete with the best in the business then it is going to have to come to terms with its less-than-perfect privacy policy.
This way the company would attract more customers since they would better understand the actual terms of service.
The fortunate thing about CyberGhost current privacy policy document is that the company does not have any hidden traps.
Or deliberate loopholes.
At least, we couldn’t find them during our research.
This indicates that the company is clearly committed to NOT engage in gathering user data about what their customers do in the online world while they have connected to the company’s VPN service.
Also in the privacy policy document, users can find the official explanation from the company that it does not monitor, record, log or store the user’s various traffic data such as data content, search preferences, traffic destination, and browsing history.
CyberGhost also mentions that the company does not store any connection logs either.
What does that mean for the end user?
For the end user, it means that CyberGhost does not have access to any type of logs which the company has tied to the user’s IP address.
It also does not have any information on the user’s session duration and/or connection timestamp.
The official CyberGhost privacy policy also mentions that the company does not have any systems to gather the user’s DNS queries and/or search preferences.
This may not sound like a lot to some readers.
We get that.
However, it is definitely beyond what other VPN services have to offer.
The thing readers need to understand here is that some VPN companies, despite offering their customers strong privacy policy documents, tend to retain a bit of information about the user’s VPN connection.
On the other hand, CyberGhost VPN does not keep any record of the user’s original IP address or even the IP address of the VPN server that the user has connected to.
It also has no information about the time at which any of its customers connect to its VPN service.
CyberGhost does not anything about any of the user’s accessed online services.
All of this, as readers can probably tell, is excellent.
Readers should note here that CyberGhost does gather some information which is related to its billing activities.
In other words, for the purposes of the company’s billing procedures and maintaining its VPN server network, it has to record some information.
The privacy policy clearly mentions or rather outlines several situations where the company may transfer that information to third-party companies.
Who are these third-party companies?
Well, these are the companies that process payments from the customers.
However, CyberGhost stresses the point that the personal information that the user provides is not really associated with the user’s online activities.
With that said, the company also makes it clear that it could disclose that personal information to authorities as a part of a potential investigation into a breach of the company’s official terms and conditions of service or crime.
CyberGhost also makes it clear that it would have no problems in disclosing personal information if the company believed that the option of disclosure had become necessary in order to protect the company’s rights or/and the company had to comply with any binding judicial proceeding.
Furthermore, the company also makes it clear that it would also cooperate with law enforcement agencies in the case of a valid court order.
If law enforcement agencies served the VPN service’s website a legal notice, then too it would cooperate with them.
Some may question these policies but as far as the VPN industry goes, there is nothing unusual here.
There is little doubt about the fact that issues which involve VPN companies and law enforcement agencies can become tricky.
This is the reason why it is fairly important for the user to know the country in which the VPN company in question has set up its headquarters.
Such information can also give information to the user about which legal jurisdiction does the VPN company operates under.
As far as CyberGhost is concerned, this VPN company has its offices in Germany along with Tel Aviv and Manila.
However, the company’s headquarter operates out of Bucharest in Romania.
Hence, CyberGhost has to conform to Romanian law.
If a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation is to be believed then the government in Romania as well the courts in Romania recently rejected the legislation which would have made it mandatory on VPN companies to keep electronic information and/or records on all their customers.
Hats off to the government and courts in Romania because as a VPN user that is exactly what one wants to hear from the government and the courts.
That doesn’t mean some users still don’t have a problem with the country that CyberGhost is located in.
It seems like some VPN users are still not convinced of Romania either because they have a slightly negative view of the country itself or because of some of the legal issues that have risen up recently.
Our research tells us that it is not possible for anyone to judge a VPN service based solely on where the company is headquartered.
In fact, the best way of judging a company and trusting it as well is to simply look at the extent of honesty in the company’s privacy policy document and other official statements.
With that said, CyberGhost has done enough to indicate that it truly has a strong privacy policy.
Moreover, we see an intent in the company to safeguard and protect its VPN users.
The dedication with which CyberGhost VPN goes about providing security to VPN users is pretty evident in the fact that this VPN service actually went through the trouble of undergoing an audit.
Not only that, it also went through a verification process by QSCert, a certification body for the company’s information management procedures and practices.
All of that is great.
Additionally, we would like to see more and more VPN services make the same amount of error in order to maintain standards which are verifiable.
Some readers may not realize this but such efforts do actually go a long way when it comes to reassuring VPN service reviewers like at Top VPN Software and online consumers such as readers of this article that the company is doing its best to operate as honestly as possible.
CyberGhost Installation And User Interface
Our research shows that users should have no trouble in downloading and then installing the official CyberGhost Windows application on their laptops.
Windows 10 users should also know that CyberGhost has full compatibility with Windows 10, even its latest version.
With that said, users should note that if they ever lose their login information, then the app will prompt for an official special key which the company sends to each user in his/her activation email.
In a case where the user has managed to lose that one as well then the user will have no other option but to restore his/her account through CleverBridge which is the payment processor that CyberGhost uses to process user payments.
As far as the app itself is concerned, our research shows that it is responsive and slick.
Even though it does not offer the same level of friendliness as, say, ExpressVPN’s does and it is certainly not as a smart, in terms of design, as the official NordVPN app, but it manages to be simple enough for all VPN users.
The new CyberGhost VPN interface has changed a lot from its previous iterations.
Gone are the six huge tiles that came on the main menu as soon as the user logged in to the Windows VPN client.
Replacing that is a much slimmer and modern-looking user interface where the center of the main screen consists of a big connect button that users can use to connect to the best server nearby in an instant.
The main screen also comes with two icons in the top left corner of the screen.
One of them opens up the contact form for users who want to chat about something with the company.
And the other one opens up the settings menu by sliding open a new window to the left of the main screen window.
The latest CyberGhost VPN client offers users a ton of options.
Some of the options even include the ones which customers demanded after using the last version of CyberGhost VPN Windows client.
That tells us that the company listens to what users are saying.
The settings menu has a total of six main options which come in the form of a left-sided bar menu.
And they are,
- Favorites
- All servers
- For torrenting
- For streaming
- Connection features
- Smart Rules
The Favorites option
This option is for users who have already selected their favorite servers by clicking the star which exists in front of each given server in the server list.
Users can further divide the servers into categories such as,
- For streaming
- All servers
The thing is, even though the main interface has changed, the overall theme remains the same.
At least, function wise it does.
CyberGhost still offers a function-specific Windows VPN client where it provides users with different connection options based on what they want to do rather than just give them a single list of VPN servers available (although it does that as well).
The All Servers option
The second option on the left-sided bar menu lists out all the servers that the company offers to users for any purpose they like.
In order to connect to any of the servers, all that the user has to do is to select a country and then CyberGhost VPN would move forward to route all of the user’s internet traffic through its exclusive encrypted VPN tunnel.
Though CyberGhost doesn’t have any servers in China it does offer VPN servers in Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Taiwan.
The All Servers settings page should the name of the server in terms of its region and the number of users on it.
Then it shows the actual physical distance the server is located from the user’s original location.
Along with that, it also shows the load percentage on the server so that users are able to differentiate between servers that are overloaded and the ones which are underloaded.
Lastly, it shows a star icon in front of each VPN server on the list in order to allow users to have the opportunity to save their favorite servers.
The complete list of VPN servers goes like this,
- Albania
- Argentina
- Australia
- Austria
- Belarus
- Belgium
- Bosnia
- Brazil
- Bulgaria
- Canada
- Chile
- Colombia
- Costa Rica
- Croatia
- Cyprus
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Greece
- Hong Kong
- Hungary
- Iceland
- India
- Indonesia
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italy
- Japan
- Kenya
- Korea
- Latvia
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Macedonia
- Malaysia
- Moldova
- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Norway
- Pakistan
- Poland
- Portugal
- Romania
- Serbia
- Singapore
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- South Africa
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Taiwan
- Thailand
- Ukraine
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Vietnam
The For Torrenting option
This settings page lists out all the servers on which the company allows users to engage in torrenting.
So for heavy torrent users, this is the page they would want to be at.
The For Streaming option
As the title suggests, this page lists out all the servers that users can use to stream content from different streaming services.
The Connection features option
This is the page which offers lots of features regarding their VPN connection.
These are basically the options that users can enable in order to have extra layers of protection and privacy.
Available options here include,
- Block ads
- Block malicious websites
- Block Online tracking
- Automated HTTPS redirect
- Data compression
The block ads option stops all those annoying and intrusive video ads, pop-ups, banners and all sorts of things.
There is also the Block Malicious Websites which allows users to block and filter malicious and harmful content along with websites associated with such content before they can reach the user and cause damage.
Then there is the Block Online Tracking option which, as the VPN client explains, users can turn on in order to block any and all attempts from hackers to track and store the user’s digital and behavior footprint on the wider world of the internet.
Other options include Automated HTTPS Redirect and Data compression options.
As their names suggest, the Automated HTTPS Redirect option forces the user’s connections to HTTPS in order to make sure that the user only browses the most secure version of any given website.
And the Data Compression option is there for users who want to keep their data costs under a certain level.
CyberGhost VPN has the ability to compress images and various other things on a given website in order to reduce the user’s internet usage.
The Smart Rules option
This is the option for users who want to customize how CyberGhost VPN goes about protecting their WiFi connections.
Users have the freedom to define the when and how of CyberGhost VPN client.
In other words, it gives users options such as,
- Auto-connect on Startup
- New encrypted WiFi actions
- New open WiFi actions
- Known WiFi networks
Overall, we would say that CyberGhost VPN has done a good job of updating its VPN client to satisfy both its own needs as a thriving business looking to stay ahead of the competition and its users’ needs, which of course, also matter.
CyberGhost, in order to assist users, can easily automatically connect to a VPN server upon startup.
Users can also set it to never connect on its own.
Or, users can configure it to only prompt him or her for any action when he/she connects to the public WiFI networks that he/she specifies.
Our research shows that a lot of users would like this feature.
Why?
Because via these features CyberGhost allows users to configure the VPN service to automatically start working but only in a specific mode whenever the user activates a predefined app on his/her computer machine.
However, we could not find any option which allowed the user to exclude protection for traffic that is coming from a specific application.
With that said, CyberGhost does provide users with the option of adding their own Internet Protocol addresses and/or Hosts to an exceptions list.
Now, just because CyberGhost doesn’t do anything wrong doesn’t mean it is perfect.
In fact, we have found some people who have not liked the situational approach to cybersecurity and privacy that the official CyberGhost application takes.
However, it could pretty easily fix that problem (of having different protections for different situations) by placing a big enough Fast Connect button.
There is no doubt about the fact that the official app already offers users numerous powerful and helpful tools.
This is the reason why it only needs to add a small number of usability tweaks in order to bring things into proper focus and go to the next level.
Does CyberGhost VPN Work With Netflix?
We live in a world where oppressive governments of different countries are not the only entities that like to block the use of various VPN services.
Online streaming services do that as well.
But they often block various VPN services and traffic because they want to prevent online consumers from changing and/or spoofing their real location in order to gain access to these streaming service’s region-locked premium content.
With the help of a VPN service, someone living in the United States of America could, to take an example, fool everyone and make it appear as if he/she is from Canada so that he/she could stream exclusive episodes of Star Trek: Discovery.
As most of our readers here would already know that Star Trek: Discovery is available to users on Netflix outside the United States of America but demands the very expensive CBS All Access TV subscription from users who live in the United States of America (that is, domestic viewers).
There is little doubt about the fact that as far as streaming services go, Netflix is by far the most aggressive at blocking VPN services and traffic.
However, the fortunate thing, in this case, is that CyberGhost doesn’t have a problem working with various streaming services.
Our research shows that users can access Netflix with the help of a VPN server that is located in the United States of America.
We don’t expect the users to encounter any problem while doing that.
With that said, users should understand that blocking VPN services is more or less a cat-and-mouse game at this point in time.
In other words, any VPN service that is working today with US Netflix or any other version of Netflix may not work with any version of Netflix tomorrow.
One other thing that users should note here is that Netflix, in section 6C of its terms of use documents points out that the streaming service had the right to determine the user’s geographic area in its attempt to enforce all its policies.
To put it another way, the official Netflix document does not really talk about users making use of a VPN service or any other service to spoof their original location as a violation or anything.
However, given Netflix’s history, it should become clear to anyone and everyone that Netflix takes a pretty much dim view of the VPN world and its users.
There is a high probability that this view would also apply to all the other countries around the world who regional online restrictions a user may try to circumvent with the help of a VPN service.
CyberGhost have dedicated servers for Netflix France, Netflix Germany, Netflix Denmark, Netflix UK, Hulu US, YLE Finland , Sky UK.
Is CyberGhost More Than Just A VPN Service
No one can dispute the importance of security and protection that a VPN service offers.
It is absolutely the most important thing for a VPN service.
However, since the competition is so fierce in the VPN industry, companies have to offer more in order to stand out and attract more customers.
This is the reason why many elite VPN services now include various sweeteners and add-ons.
That is their way of making their subscription packages seem even more attractive.
For example, there is TorGuard.
TorGuard offers users a comprehensive and complete menu of various options.
It also allows users to purchase extra simultaneous VPN connection along with access to a separate Gigabit network and static IP addresses for a small monthly fee.
Similarly, CyberGhost offers users an ad-blocking feature via its VPN connection.
Additionally, it also offers users tracker and malware blocking features.
Apart from that, CyberGhost provides users with the option to enforce the utilization of HTTPS, this is a feature that we admire.
On the other hand, we do not think that it is wise on part of any online consumer to rely on a VPN, no matter how good, as his/her sole online antivirus security solution.
Similar to a few other good VPN service providers, CyberGhost also provides users with No-Spy VPN servers.
These are servers that CyberGhost has located on-site (where the company operates).
Moreover, the company has intended these servers for users who are extraordinarily concerned about things such as people who might have the opportunity to access the VPN service’s servers.
CyberGhost makes it clear that the company does not offer No-Spy servers to the general public.
However, it does provide them to exclusive partners.
NordVPN, another elite VPN service, goes one step further.
It offers users specialized VPN servers for an increased amount of anonymity and enhanced video streaming.
Users have the option of, for example, using NordVPN in order to connect to the official Tor network (an anonymization network).
The Tor network is the best tool for users who want to bounce around their traffic even more than a VPN service.
With the help of a Tor and a VPN, it becomes even more difficult for anyone to intercept and then track user data or online activities.
In addition to the presets for good video streaming options, CyberGhost now has also introduced a page which is specifically directed towards an app which users can take advantage to securely access cryptocurrency wallets and sites.
Pretty similar to streaming services, users have the option of easily adding sites that CyberGhost has not already included in its own list.
As is the case with baking activities over a VPN service, carrying out important cryptocurrency activities and sending related information over the internet without VPN protection is pretty risky.
By making use of a VPN service, users can actually add a layer of extra security and anonymity when they are in the process of making an online cryptocurrency transaction.
Speed
By far the greatest reason why a lot of folks still do not make use of a VPN service is that they think using a VPN service will actually bring down their internet connection speed down to a crawl.
In other words, they would not be able to browse the web with any ease.
We sympathize with them because it is an understandable concern.
The reason why we say that is because it is highly like that an average online consumer would come across a VPN service that gives him/her a bad experience.
What does bad experience mean here exactly?
It means increased latency rates as well as a decrease in the download and upload speeds when the user is making use of a VPN service.
VPN services, by their nature, tend to decrease internet speed.
That happens because VPN services aren’t exactly offering users to get their internet traffic data to its destination in the most efficient way possible.
Instead of doing that, a VPN service has to make the data jump through a lot of hoops so that it can properly secure it for the user.
Following from that, the best way to actually get a sense of the total negative impact that the VPN’s extra steps may or may not have caused is to simply run a series of different but comparative speed tests with the help of some speed test tools.
Our research shows that the best tools to measure the speed of a VPN service are the ones available at speedtest.net and speedof.me.
Speedtest.net basically offers speed testing tools provided to it by Ookla.
Ookla carries out tests that measure download speeds, upload speeds, and latency.
Since it does that, it makes sense that we also make use of these numbers to differentiate between different VPN services.
The best way to measure a given VPN service’s speed is to run a total of five VPN speed tests.
In fact, the actual number of tests may increase since one should run about five-speed tests with a VPN service and then five more without any VPN service.
Then one must discard the bottom and top VPN speed results.
After that, one has to average out the remaining results.
When that is done, one needs to actually compare the performance of an internet connection with a VPN service to the same internet connection without a VPN service in place.
The difference can help the reviewer or the user to find out the percentage change in speed.
For even more accurate results one should do the above procedure twice.
But not in the same way.
The first time, the user or the reviewers must perform all of the steps above while connected to a VPN server which is located nearest to the user’s own physical location.
Most of the time the VPN app would itself choose this VPN server.
But in case the official app does not do that then the user himself/herself has to choose the server.
Similarly, the first time around the user should allow Ookla to choose whichever test server that it wants to choose.
However, the second time around, the user must perform all of the tests mentioned above again by connecting to a VPN server that is far away from one’s location.
For example, if the user is located in the United States of America, then the user should connect to a server which is located in Australia.
Moreover, the user should also make use of an Ookla test server which is based further away in a location such as Anchorage, Alaska.
This would ensure that the distance is extreme and hence the whole test would actually become a sort of stress test.
Such a step is necessary if one wants to simulate a situation where the VPN service might have to perform really well when the user wants to spoof his/her location to a locale that is far-flung.
With that said, it is also true that internet works can become finicky little things very quickly.
That is the reason why we do not consider such tests as the final words as far as the performance of a given VPN service is concerned.
Instead of thinking about speed tests like that, we usually recommend user to think of these speed tests as snapshots for easy comparison between different VPN services.
It also means that each user’s mileage with a given VPN service would vary.
As far as domestic latency rates go, our research shows that CyberGhost is more or less lackluster.
In other words, it increases latency rates by a total of 216 percent.
Now for comparison’s sake, our research also shows that TorGuard (of all VPN services) actually reduced latency rates by a total of six percent.
As far as international stress tests were concerned, we found that CyberGhost performed better.
In other words, CyberGhost only increased latency rates by a total of 270 percent.
That is not the best score by a VPN service in the business.
Our research shows that CyberGhost is far more competent at beating the competition when it comes to domestic download speed tests.
And we consider domestic download speeds more important than anything else.
Our research shows that CyberGhost only reduced download speeds by a mere 5 percent.
This isn’t that bad nor that far from the best in the business which is TorGuard.
TorGuard, on average, reduced download speeds by just 3 percent.
As far as the international download speed tests are concerned, our research shows that CyberGhost is not really as stunning as it is in domestic speed tests.
In other words, users should expect CyberGhost to reduce download speeds on international servers by as much as 78 percent.
Other elite VPN services such as AnchorFree Hotspot Shield (the elite edition) tends to decrease international download speeds by only 40 percent.
Let’s not forget domestic upload speeds either.
Our research shows that CyberGhost reducing the domestic upload speed by around 6 percent.
In this category, IPVanish is the king as it reduces domestic upload speeds by just 3 percent.
As far as the international upload speeds are concerned, most of the VPN service providers in the market today are sort of clustered together.
In other words, CyberGhost is pretty much with the rest of the pack when it comes to international upload speeds.
Our research shows that users should expect CyberGhost to lower international upload speed by a total of 100 percent.
This isn’t that bad considering that one of the best performers in this category is Private Internet Access which only reduces international upload speed by 97 percent.
Generally speaking, CyberGhost gives a solid and well-rounded performance in most speed tests.
However, it doesn’t do enough to stand out.
Of course, this just means that CyberGhost is pretty much like the rest of the competition when it comes to speed.
With that said, we would like to remind our readers again that no one should use speed as the ultimate and sole deciding factor in selecting a good VPN service.
Things such as usability, privacy, and value hold much more important than just speed.
For users who are in the VPN market looking for the fastest VPN possible, they should go for TorGuard.
And the reason is simple enough.
TorGuard offers users the best latency rates and also download speeds.
As far as all-around VPN services go, there are hardly any stronger VPN services than TorGuard.
Compatibility
As far as this review is concerned, we are only interested in the Windows version of the official CyberGhost Vpn app.
Officially, the company offers users VPN apps for platforms such as Mac OS, Android, iOS and Windows.
We will try to update this review once we have enough information about other versions of the official CyberGhost VPN.
At the time of writing this review, CyberGhost, as a company did not offer customers a dedicated VPN client for the Linux platform.
This is, at the very least, unfortunate.
Users who want to run CyberGhost on their Linux machine should try to configure their Linux machine manually in order to connect to the wider world of the internet through the official CyberGhost VPN service.
Perhaps this is a good time to mention that CyberGhost also offers users instructions on how they can actually configure a WiFi router to make use of the CyberGhost VPN service.
It is really handy to have a VPN service on one’s browser.
Why do we say that?
We say that because if the user installs a VPN service on his/her router then that essentially secures all the internet traffic for each and every single device on the same network.
A VPN router can even protect smart devices that generally do not offer users the option to configure them with a VPN service.
Some VPN services such as the TorGuard VPN service actually sell WiFi router.
TorGuard even sells streaming devices that come preconfigured to properly work with their relevant online services.
Again, that is really handy for users who have no interest in tackling a virtual Do It Yourself project.
Conclusion
CyberGhost has a clear ambition to become one of the top 3 VPN services in the world.
And we admire that.
The company seems to have set a goal where it wants to cram the breadth and technical excellence of Private Internet Access into a VPN product that is more usable than ever before.
Our research shows that CyberGhost comes close to doing that.
CyberGhost not only offers users a robust VPN network and the necessary technology but it also provides them with some unique features such as organizing all available VPN servers by the amount of load they are handling, as well as VPN servers for accessing particular online resources and streaming.
CyberGhost is one of the handfuls of companies that has a rather exhaustive, if not occasionally obtuse, official privacy policy document.
The document is long and goes to extraordinary lengths to actually explain how the company protects the users.
Practically speaking, CyberGhost does not find much success in filling the usability gap.
By that, we mean the CyberGhost official app for Windows does a good job of offering some of the most powerful VPN features that the service has to offer, but it also tends to confuse users.
Especially the new ones.
There is also the fact that Cyberghost VPN is expensive.
However, for the number of features that it offers, we think that price may be reasonable for some.
The fact that it offers a total of seven device licenses with each subscription package is also a bonus.
We have already mentioned the few caveats that readers need to watch out for when looking at CyberGhost VPN.
Apart from that, it is a fantastic VPN service.
On the other hand, we feel that user should stick with the likes of IPVanish and NordVPN for the best protection.
Pros
- A robust VPN network
- Reasonable server distribution
- Excellent privacy policy
- Unique features that actually work
- Amazon Firestick Support
- The company allows a total of seven device licenses with each VPN subscription
Cons
- Monthly plan is on the expensive side
- Free version is very limited.
Bottom Line
CyberGhost VPN can count itself among those VPN service providers that offer an excellent quality of service with some really unique and strong security features.
Some of these features are truly unique in the sense that no other reputable VPN service offers them.
That is why we think it is definitely a worthy choice for anyone who is looking to protect himself/herself with a good VPN albeit at a price.