Seedboxes.cc VPN | TechRadar

Seedboxes.cc is primarily a provider of web hosting services, but the company also throws in a handy VPN solution with its packages, free of charge.

Price

This hosting provider has five web hosting packages you can purchase, with various different qualties, but we’ll be focusing on the VPN solution bundled with each.

The cheapest hosting package will cost you €13.45 or $16.31 per month (billed annually) if you opt for the provider’s one-year subscription.

Depending on the chosen package, you can run between 2 and 5 VPN connections at the same time.

There’s no free trial on the table, but the vendor states that you can ask for a refund at any time during the first week, for any reason. We put this claim to the test and were issued a refund almost immediately, no questions asked, which is truly commendable.

The vendor accepts payments made via credit/debit cards, PayPal and cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, Monero, Dash, and Bitcoin Cash), ensuring an additional level of privacy when paying.

(Image credit: Future)

Alternatives

Seedboxes.cc’s VPN is only a secondary feature to a hosting service, which is why it’s no match for established VPN players such as ExpressVPN, NordVPN, Surfshark, or CyberGhost.

All of them offer top-shelf VPN solutions with feature-rich native clients, support for various operating systems and devices, capabilities to unblock even the most stubborn streaming services, and provide blazing speeds toward thousands of servers all over the world.

Streaming

Although it is one of the most sought-after features in the VPN industry, Seedboxes.cc’s VPN can’t unblock the geographically restricted content on popular video-on-demand services like BBC iPlayer or Netflix.

About the company

The company is headquartered in Cyprus and its VPN allows you to connect from 10 different locations in 7 countries: the UK, France, Canada, Germany, Holland, the US, and Singapore.

Seedboxes.cc VPN

(Image credit: Future)

Privacy and encryption

This VPN solution uses SoftEtherVPN client on TCP port 445, OpenVPN client both TCP and UDP on port 1194, as well as L2TP/IPSec, on all of its servers. The apps don’t have any settings and extra features.

We analyzed the provider’s Privacy Policy to see if we could find any information on what it does and doesn’t log when you’re using its VPN service. Unfortunately, we had no luck. Therefore, it’s impossible to know whether your information is being collected while you’re connected to the service.

Support

Seedboxes.cc offers VPN apps for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS.

At the time of writings, the iOS app has a rating of 4.2 stars (out of 5), as rated by 5 users, but it was last updated over 4 years ago. The Android app has been rated by 31 people, has a score of 3.5 stars and was updated at roughly the same time as the iOS app.

Should you require it, help is available in the Community section of the website, where you’ll find a special category devoted to its VPN service. It contains instructions on setting it up and using it on different platforms, along with a comment section where users can ask questions about anything they don’t understand and get answers from someone on the team.

That said, there is less information here than you would expect from a fully fledged VPN service, but that makes sense since VPN is only an add-on.

You can also check out the company’s blog, its Facebook account (although the last post is from June 2019), and Twitter (the last post is from November 2020).

If you need direct assistance from someone on the team, you can send an email or fill the support ticket via client area on the website, from where you can also download the VPN configuration for manual installation.

Speed and experience

Due to the lack of any features to divert your attention, the Windows app was exceptionally easy to install and use. We tested its download speeds on a 45.23Mbps testing connection from a physical location in Southeast Europe.

The results were rather unimpressive, average at best. We got 8.21Mbps from the server in The Netherlands, and 12.52Mbps from another in the UK (even though the speedtest and WhatIsMyIPAddress.com showed we were connecting from France).

Surprisingly, the speeds picked up when we moved away from Europe. The service delivered 13.63Mbps via a server in the US and 10.85Mbps for Singapore, which is impressive, taking into account the testing connection and distance of the servers from our physical location.

Verdict

Since this VPN is only a complementary part of a wider service, it performs about as well as can be expected. The providers users with online anonymity and the apps are easy enough for beginners to use.

That said, if you require higher speeds, access to Netflix or BBC iPlayer, a richer feature set, as well as confirmation of the data collected by the company, an established VPN solution would be a better fit.