BTGuard
Overall User Rating – (Jump to user reviews)
Website: www.btguard.com
Price: $9.95 / Month
Our Rating: – 65%
Protection: 4/5
Software / GUI: 3/5
Features: 3/5
Speed: 2.5/5
Ease of Use: 5/5
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Service Overview and Reviews
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, Netherlands(EU) and Singapore so pick the nearest server to your location, P2P downloads should then be at least reliable and secure.
Privacy: BTGuard does not log customer IP addresses or customer usage. See their Policy/Terms/FAQ
Our Thoughts: We tested the VPN service (not the proxy 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 instead slightly increased the server speeds. We also found the Canada server very overloaded and slow at times and experienced more consistent results connecting via the EU server.
If only occasional/light P2P file sharing is your thing the EU server should work ok. However, if you are looking for more, you may find the limited server network restricting (For example, it’s no good for US or UK online TV network streaming).
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.
BTGuard User Reviews
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Please rate BTGuard from your own experience via the form at the bottom of this page.
BTGuard Speed Test Results
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.
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.
Note: The handshake protocol (MSCHAP_V2) used by many PPTP connections has been cracked and therefore PPTP could now be considered unencrypted. For maximum security use OpenVPN or L2TP.
nice post
I find the speed absolutely horrible. If you have high speed internet don’t use this, especially their proxy service. If you submit a ticket to them, within a month you will not get a response.
The worst part is that the upload connections are almost non-existent. I could approach my bandwidth for downloading if I have about 20 – 30 DLs going at the same time, but for each individual DL they would start to ramp up to maybe 1/5 my speed and then it would drop after a few seconds. Once the DL is done, it takes days to seed. Absolute TRASH
The service is fast, I’ve had no issues come up as far as privacy is concerned and I was achieving must faster speeds using the OpenVPN connection. I am currently in the southeastern united states and am on a 100mbps fiber connection. I have had no issues maxing out my bandwidth using btguard. People complain about tech support yet if you know what you’re doing you’ll likely never need it. If it’s a real issue you’re having everyone will likely have the same issue and BTGuard will inform you. They’re not going to help you with your own network configuration woes. I have used it on all corners of the country on all types of connections (even mobile) and I have zero complaints about available bandwidth. I demand a lot for what I do and I dedicate much activity through BTGuard and it has yet to fail me. I feel that they could afford to bring the price down a little bit but considering the security and privacy you get through BTGuard I’m comfortable with paying the $9.99 monthly fee. I cannot attest to the proxy service as I have only used the VPN portion. Cancellation is easy. Just log into your account and cancel…. I see some complaining about how you’re locked into a reoccurring billing cycle. Laziness to click a button when you’re finished doesn’t justify a complaint.
I would not buy this service again. I tried to contact them TWICE many months ago with a legitimate support question, and they completely ignored me. I refuse to do business with a company that has blatant disrespect for the people that pay them. If they can’t even ACKNOWLEDGE A SUPPORT QUESTION, regardless whether they can help with it, then they are simply a faceless ripoff company and I would NEVER pay them again for such ignorance.
Do NOT buy from these people. They are claiming to provide support but do not have any. They are just taking people’s money and leaving them to fend for themselves. When I pay for something I expect at least an acknowledgement when I need to open a support ticket. Their support does not exist at all.
I don’t get it I have been using BTGuard VPN for the last two months and its rock solid hasn’t crashed once, it never goes down and is safe. It’s cheap, short money for a great product and great protection. Speed wise its not the fastest, I get about 3Mbs most of the time. I got a six month license but will be renewing for an entire year, again BTGuard VPN is a great product at a great price.
I had BTGuard for 6 months. Three months it did not work at all, nomather what i tried. Their helpdesk is shit. …What helpdesk??? I – and many users whit me (check Google) – send emails to their helpdesk and never get a response.
To all the people complaining about slow speeds in the US, you may want to upgrade your ISP speeds or you may have already been throttled for being an idiot.. I always max out my bandwidth on downloads. I sit anywhere from 1mbs to 2mbs when Dling torrents while on or off the VPN service. Have never tried their support line as I have never needed it. Protection is perfect. Reliability – have only had it d/c once on me. I will be checking out a few other VPN services before I decide on one for a full year. So far BTguard is on my top 3 list.
When I am not connected to the BTGaurd VPN I am speedtesting at 55mbps. When I connect to it i get about 2mbps… Do you know why?
Yeah they ain’t the fastest Jess. See our speed test comparisons