cactusvpn-square
  • Speed 84% 84%
  • Servers 78% 78%
  • User Experience 80% 80%
  • Support 85% 85%
  • Pricing 85% 85%

Overall Rating: 4.1 / 5

Official Information

Based in Moldova
support@cactusvpn.com

About CactusVPN

CactusVPN is a VPN provider from CactusVPN Ltd, based in Moldova, a former Soviet Republic and an Eastern European country that was founded back in 2011 as a “family business” but now has customers around the globe. It’s one of the lesser-known VPNs, which comes with plenty of promises. If you go through their website, you’ll see that they promise to bring full protection of your private data, which is true as Moldova is away from 5/9/14 Eyes alliances.

Though on the plus side it is based in a privacy-friendly place, it does come with a certain downside. For instance, it has a small server network, which may make the user think twice before purchasing a subscription plan. Let’s get into the CactusVPN review and decide whether it’s worth the purchase like other popular VPN providers or not.

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Table of Contents

What Are the Features of CactusVPN?

In our CactusVPN review, we went through some of the features, which are as below:

  • Offers shared static IP address
  • Customer support has several options to select from and their response time is also fast
  • Offers no-logs policy
  • Offers six different VPN protocols, PPTP, SSTP, SoftEther, IKEv2, OpenVPN and L2TP/IPSec
  • Compatible with many devices like, Amazon Fire TV, Linux Ubuntu Routers, Game Consoles, Apple, Samsung, and Chromebooks
  • Provides advanced functionalities like Internet Kill Switch, VPN Protocol Switching, and Application killer
  • Easy to use Smart DNS
  • Offers “Sort by speed” functionality to sort the servers based on speed
  • Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox VPN extensions

Pricing Structure – How Much Does CactusVPN Cost?

CactusVPN provides four different options, US VPN, UK VPN, Smart DNS, and VPN + Smart DNS. Pricing starts from $4.99/- to $6.99/– for the three different subscription plans it offers. In these, the US VPN provides 6 VPN servers and the UK VPN allows four servers. If you’re looking for P2P torrenting, then you’re left with just one option. You have to go with only one plan, the VPN + Smart DNS plan, which is costlier than all the other plans. 35% and 14% discounts are offered on the annual and quarterly plans.

Like other VPN providers, CactusVPN also allows you to pay using your favorite credit or debit cards such as MasterCard, Visa, American Express and offers third-party payment gateways like PayPal or if a user wants anonymous transactions, Bitcoin and Altcoins are also available.

1 Month

$4.99/mo

$4.99 billed every month
0% Off
Get Free Trial

1 Year

$3.25/mo
$59.88
$38.99 billed every year
35% Off
Get Free Trial

3 Months

$4.33/mo
$14.97
$12.99 billed every 3 months
14% Off
Get Free Trial

Like other VPN providers, CactusVPN also allows you to pay using your favorite credit or debit cards such as MasterCard, Visa, American Express and offers third-party payment gateways like PayPal or if a user wants anonymous transactions, Bitcoin and Altcoins are also available.

Speed & Performance – How Fast Is CactusVPN?

CactusVPN operates a small network consisting of 28 servers in 16 different countries, which is quite small compared to other VPN providers like NordVPN that has 5000+ servers or ExpressVPN, which covers around 90+ countries.

Server Ping Download Upload
The United States 142 ms 44.99 Mbps 10.21 Mbps
Europe 84ms 44.28 Mbps 18.54 Mbps
Also, by looking at the above result, you can see that there’s not much difference between the US and the EU servers, and both are slow. Most of the time, different factors can be pointed out, such as the location of the server might be a reason for poor performance. But, looking at this, anyone can notice that the speed is slow in both the continents, which makes it a company-wide problem.

Where Are CactusVPN Servers Located?

CactusVPN deals with 28 different servers across 16 countries. It’s quite less compared to other VPN providers, which goes up to 5000+ servers in more than 90 different countries. Most of CactusVPN’s servers are in Europe and some in North America and few servers in the Asia Pacific region.

united-states-of-america United States

australia Australia

canada Canada

france France

germany Germany

united-kingdom United Kingdom

japan Japan

latvia Latvia

netherlands Netherlands

poland Poland

romania Romania

singapore Singapore

south-korea South korea

spain Spain

switzerland Switzerland

CactusVPN offers physical servers that are on lease and not owned by them. Likewise, it provides a shared static IP address, which means an IP address is shared with other users, which works as an extra layer of protection because it makes it difficult to trace the activity of an individual.

How Is the Customer Support Service of CactusVPN?

No matter how good the service is, if the customer support experience is not good, it will create a negative impression. Luckily, when we contacted the support team during our CactusVPN review, we liked their response turnaround time. Generally, a response is given after a day or two, but these guys genuinely gave us a reply within a few hours. Also, to recheck them, we contacted CactusVPN again, and still, the turnaround time was the same.

Likewise, CactusVPN offers setup tutorials which includes instructional guides to set up the VPN on the supported platforms and devices, FAQs that answer most commonly asked questions, submit a ticket option to get a solution for any query or issue, which you cannot solve or find on their website and a live chat option handled by an actual human.

What Are the Pros of CactusVPN?

  • Website and application navigation is a breeze for the noobs.
  • It offers compatibility with multiple devices and platforms like Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS.
  • Protects from DNS and WebRTC Leaks.
  • Zero logs policy.
  • It supports six different VPN protocols L2TP/IPSec, OpenVPN, IKEv2, SoftEther, PPTP, and SSTP with AES-256 Encryption.
  • It offers a Kill Switch.

What Are the Cons of CactusVPN?

  • Torrenting/P2P is allowed, but servers are limited.
  • CactusVPN has a small server network. Only 28 servers in 16 countries.
  • To make CactusVPN work in China is quite a hit or miss situation.
  • No IPv6 protection.
  • Sometimes speed goes down.

CactusVPN – Final Verdict

Looking from all the angles, CactusVPN is not something we would like to recommend. It comes with positive points and negative points, due to which it fails to pick our interest. Initially, we liked their list of protocols and compatibility that worked as advertised.

The customer support service is also excellent. It provides answers within an hour, compared to their competitors that take around 7 to 10 days. But digging further, we noticed that its speed is not up to the mark. It slows down and also the servers are minimal, P2P/torrenting also has more rules.

Let’s Compare CactusVPN v/s:

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Is CactusVPN Good for Torrenting?

If you want positive news, yes, CactusVPN does allows torrenting. But the downside is that it’s allowed on only a few selected servers. However, presently, they have torrent-friendly servers only in following countries, Germany, Romania, Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, and Latvia. Moreover, it’s only allowed on one subscription package VPN + Smart DNS and it’s a costly one.

So it’s evident that if anyone has purchased their subscription plan and wants to torrent files, they will experience slow speeds due to its limited P2P friendly servers.

Does CactusVPN Work in China?

China is quite a grey area for many VPNs. While looking into it, we found that some claim it works and some even say it doesn’t. It’s nothing new; even the top VPN players go through this situation, as the Great Firewall is not easy to bypass.

VPN itself isn’t illegal in China, but due to its substantial restriction, it does become difficult to download and install your favorite software. CactusVPN claims that users won’t face any problem while using it in China if the users are using SoftEther protocol.

Does CactusVPN Offer an AdBlocker?

No, CactusVPN does not provide an Adblocker.

Does CactusVPN come with a built-in Anti Malware tool?

No, CactusVPN does not offer any feature like Anti-Malware with its application.

Does CactusVPN work with Netflix?

Yes, it works with Netflix. In our CactusVPN review, we noticed that the Manassas server allowed us to access Netflix. Though we have seen some reviews that say it doesn’t work it worked for us when we tried using the Manassas server.

Can I Install CactusVPN on My Router?

Yes, CactusVPN offers support for many routers like DD-WRT, Asus, Mikrotik, D-Link, Tomato, Tenda, TP-Link, and Linksys. Also, they provide an instructional guide to set up the VPN on a router through the supported protocol.

Is CactusVPN Deal Available?

Yes, CactusVPN offers deals on the annual and quarterly subscription plans. For the annual plan, there is a 35% discount and for the quarterly plan, it offers up to 14% discount.

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