BTGuard Review
User Reviews
Rating: 
BTGuard
 | Website: www.btguard.com Protection: 4/5 Software / GUI: 3/5 Features: 3/5 Speed: 3.5/5 Ease of Use: 5/5 Price: $9.95 / Month |
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Service: BTGuard comes in two flavors (and prices):-
As a Bittorrent Proxy – BTGuard’s paid proxy service ($6.95 / Month), through which you pass your download traffic, hides the IP-addresses of its users from the public and any tracking will see the BTGuard IP address rather than your own and therefore your identity effectively stays hidden from view.
As a VPN Service – BTGuard’s VPN service ($9.95 / Month), operates much like any other VPN, securing your internet connection and rendering your web browsing and other net services anonymous. The server network is limited to Canada and Germany (EU) so pick the nearest server to your location, P2P downloads should then be fast, reliable and secure.
Privacy: BTGuard does not log customer IP addresses or customer usage. See their Policy/Terms/FAQ
Our Review: Note: We have only tested the VPN service and it’s a basic, no frills affair. Set-up is easy and BTGuard works via the standard OpenVPN GUI. However, we found connecting via PPTP increased the server speeds. We also found the Canada server overloaded at times and got more consistent results connecting via the EU server.
If P2P file sharing is your thing this does the job. However, if you are looking for more, you may find the limited server network restricting (no good for US or UK online TV networks for example).
See our Best VPN for Torrents
Disclaimer: Know the laws in your country and locality. BestVPNForYou.com do not suggest, condone, or practice the violation of national or international copyright law. That being said, we do support fundamental reforms of copyright laws as proposed by the Pirate Party political and activist organizations around the world.
Click here to see our Review Disclosure Policy.
BTGuard User Reviews
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Please rate BTGuard from your own experience via the comment form below:-
BTGuard Speed Test
Below you can see our testing results for BTGuard. For more details of how we conduct our speed tests go to VPN Speed Tests.
Test PC #1 – United States – OS (Mac OSX) – ISP (Cox)
| SpeedTest.net (Chromium) | Location | Ping | Download | Upload |
| Not Using VPN | United States | 24 | 22.53 | 7.2 |
| PPTP | EU | 166 | 4.14 | 2.99 |
| PPTP | Canada | 101 | 1.24 | 1.33 |
| Download Test (Curl) | Location | File Size | Av. Speed/sec | Time/mins |
| Not Using VPN | United States | 620M | 1841K | 05:44 |
| PPTP | EU | 620M | 520K | 20:19 |
| P2P Test (Transmission) | Location | File Size | Av. Speed/sec | Time/mins |
| Not Using VPN | United States | 729.1Mb | 1.58Mb | 07:41 |
| PPTP | EU | 729.1Mb | 0.73Mb | 16:20 |
| PPTP | Canada | 729.1Mb | 0.27Mb | 45:09 |
Test PC #2 – United Kingdom – OS (Win 7) – ISP (Sky)
| SpeedTest.net (Firefox) | Location | Ping | Download | Upload |
| Not Using VPN | United Kingdom | 32 | 10.56 | 0.94 |
| OpenVPN | EU | 41 | 9.94 | 0.84 |
| Download Test (Curl) | Location | File Size | Av. Speed/sec | Time/mins |
| Not Using VPN | United Kingdom | 620M | 1241k | 09:00 |
| OpenVPN | EU | 620M | 1174k | 12:01 |
| P2P Test (uTorrent) | Location | File Size | Av. Speed/sec | Time/mins |
| Not Using VPN | United Kingdom | 695Mb | 1.1Mb | 10:22 |
| OpenVPN | EU | 695Mb | 1.0Mb | 11:05 |
Tips: If you’re having trouble with connecting, but not actually seeing your IP address change, try checking the option in your VPN settings to “use the VPN for all traffic” (or similar wording). That isn’t specified in some of the instructions and we had this trouble in a couple instances with PPTP connections. Checking that solved the problem.
As of this writing (March 2012), the Canada server seems to be under heavy load and a bit slow.
PPTP via their EU server seems to have the best and most consistent speeds, especially from the US. We found that OpenVPN seems to sacrifice performance quite a bit when connecting from the US. In Europe though, OpenVPN still seems to provide great speeds when connecting to the EU server.
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After reading how awesome is btguard i thought i should pay for a whole year since i’m lazy.
I paid 90$ and after setting it up it was slow as hell so i sent a message to customer support and they told me it would take 1-3 days to answer I was disappointed but thats not the problem the problem is that its been two weeks(14 days) since i sent the message and still no responce what so ever .
What. a. complete. pile.
This is fine for torrents with thousands in the swarm, but on small private trackers, proper connectability is a must. I’ve finicked with port forward god knows how many times, still not connectable.
I’ve only been able to fully connect to the VPN twice, and only when I have PPTP and tunnelblick both supposedly connected.
Best part is, instead of being able to use the server a mere 500 miles away from me, on both occasions i’ve connected to one in the netherlands. speeds suck, 4 megs down, 1.2 up.
Support is non-existant, there’s no forums, there’s no suitable FAQ, complete waste of money, just unsubbed from my paypal account, stoked to give these charlatans a boot and try someone else. I have no problem giving my money to someone else who deserves it. f you btguard.
I had zero problem getting this installed and running with uTorrent, after following the Advanced Install directions and some advice on Lifehacker. I tested, retested, and then tested again and I am being routed through Germany, the Netherlands, and Canada. I think it is a hell of a deal.
1 star for Price, If I was able to I’d give a -10 for Support as I got None! Stars for, Speed, Reliability & Protection I can’t give Any! As I was Never able to get logged in and Never got to try it out! My short time with BTGuard what I paid for did Not work! After reading the reviews here and a few other sites about BTGuard I went to my PayPal and canceled the monthly subscription. Signed up April 14th, after many hours threw that night. Going to bed, getting up the next day. Trying a few more hours still Not getting Anything. I went to my PayPal and canceled the month to month payments! Now it’s just a matter of getting my money back! I seen this site in my search results, looking for BTGaurd’s website. Like a fool I went straight to their site and spent $9.95 for NOTHING!
I have received TWO, read ‘em TWO, copyright infringement notices while allegedly being protected by BTGuard. BTGuard Support’s first response to problems was a circular argument merely directing me back to their website for answers. They have failed to respond to any other communication since then. Protection for all intents and purposes is non-existent; it frequently disconnected without notice; internet access speed dropped to a crawl; as mentioned, Support SUCKS Bigtime; and charging for protection they fail to provide is asinine. If I could give them less then 1 Star they would get it. I wouldn’t recommend this service to anyone.
Check out our Extra VPN Security Tips on how you can disable programs in the event of a VPN disconnection.
The speed is bearable, and protection is, from what I’ve read, so-so. Better than not using it, most likely.
Unfortunately, their support is terrible. I made a mistake or renewing a service after few month of not using it (I got a free month trial some time ago). I paid for a year, a second mistake. It took them almost two weeks to start it up. And now, that a month has passed – they turned it off, saying I missed a monthly payment (I paid for a year!). So far, not a single email I sent to their customer service got me a reply, both during the first incident, and now.
Perhaps they’ll turn my service back on in a week or two. But such lengthy and common interruptions due to abysmal customer support/database on their end are something that I am unlikely to tolerate again; BG is not going to get my $$ ever again.
I tried, uTorrent, BitTorrent BitComet and could not get any of these working w/BTGuard — even after finding the setup screens on their web site. There are many other people out there that cannot get BTGuard to work with these programs, so I don’t feel so bad. I was about to give up on the FIFTH day of wasting time, but I decided to try a couple more things. I actually stumbled onto a combination of settings that worked. Trial and Error my friends. Too bad there is absolutely no support from the web site.
It would get top marks across the board if it didn’t constantly drop it’s service all the time without notification. It gives a false sense of security.
Like you I found the default set-up slowing lately but followed your advice and setup a PPTP connection to the EU server, speeds up to 1mb for P2p good enough for me
After signing up for and paying for a whole year’s use [big mistake], I soon found that I could get no connection using the protocol of my choice. Furthermore, my outgoing SMTP email from Thunderbird was blocked. To enable outgoing email meant turning off BTGuard. Except that there was no apparent way to turn it off – not anywhere except using Task Manager. Even then, outgoing email was still disabled until a reboot.
Having searched the FAQs and finding no answers, I put these problems to their support line. Two days later I received an email with nothing more than “For answers to personal technical support please visit: http://btguard.com/support”. This was their FAQ page and the place where you fill in the support request form. I replied that I had already done this and the relevant answers were not in the FAQs. Another two days later I received exactly the same reply. I told them that their replies were not technical support and that I was asking for a resolution to my problems otherwise I would be seeking a refund. No reply.
I then put my case for a refund to Paypal. Within a few hours I received an email from BTGuard telling me that my monthly subscription payment had not been received, and that my account had been locked out. Remember – I had already paid a year up front. Anyway, a week later I received notification from Paypal that my money had been returned. As much as people complain about Paypal, I have to say, their performance here was outstanding.
I think that it’s obvious here that I recommend people stay away from this service. Well away.
@MichaelEvans Thanks for the review.
General Note to users: To completely turn off any VPN client or the OpenVPN Gui locate the icon in the taskbar (bottom right of desktop), right click and select quit or exit. Often the icon will be hidden so click the Show hidden icons button (small up arrow) on the taskbar to locate it and quit from there.
With respect, do you think that I don’t know this and didn’t try it? I’m not a newbie at finding my way round a PC. I know about hidden icons. The tray icon did not respond to mouse clicks. Not right. Not left. Not double. Nothing.
Michael, your experience *exactly* mirrors mine, except that I never even received any email at all from BTGuard. Thank goodness for Paypal having good customer service policies.