BTGuard Feature:
– $9.95/Month For VPN
– $6.95/Month For Proxy
– Made For Bittoren, P2P Traffic
– Proxy and VPN Available
– OpenVPN & PPTP
BTGuard Review
There are more reasons than ever before to secure and anonymize your torrent connection. Regardless of what you are downloading, most internet service providers will throttle your connection as soon as they see that you are using a torrent program. If you are downloading copyrighted material, however, things may soon get a lot worse for you. A number of prominent torrent and pirate sites have been taken down this year, leaving many torrent users wondering if they will be the next to be carted off to federal prison. BTGuard is one program designed especially for those people who want to make sure that their torrenting remains anonymous. This BTGuard review will examine a number of important aspects of the program. Whether or not you find BTGuard to be worthwhile, however, is up to you.
Price
BTGuard offers two separate packages. The first is aimed at people who are just looking to secure their torrent connection without worrying about the rest of their online activity. The basic price for BTGuard’s Bittorent Proxy is an affordable $6.95 per month. If you order more than a month of service, however, it becomes even more affordable. When you order 3 months, you will get 5% off the monthly price. 6 months will get you a 15% discount. If you order a whole year, you will get a 25% discount. The second package provides you with full VPN services, including email protection, web browsing anonymity and bittorent proxy. The basic monthly cost is $9.95, with 5%, 15% and 25% discounts when you order longer periods of service.
Countries Supported
BTGuard hosts servers in both Canada and Germany, and uses these servers to proxy your torrent connection. You do not, however, have to live in one of these countries in order to use their services. If you have access to a Paypal account or a major credit card, it should not matter where you live. BTGuard will send your signal through one of their servers so that anyone spying will think that you are using their servers in Canada or Germany.
Protocol
The Bittorent proxy includes proxy services that are compatible with both uTorrent and Vuze, as well as 256-bit AES encryption. The VPN service includes the same proxy and 256-bit AES encryption, but adds OpenVPN and PPTP protocols. Although neither service has as many protocols as similar P2P VPN services these are the main protocols you will need to anonymize your surfing and torrenting.
Customer Support
Every BTGuard review must cover the not so good points as well as the great. In this case, the main area where BTGuard falls short is when it comes to customer support. They provide their phone number, email address and physical address on their website, but only provide support with issues regarding ordering and payment. They do, however, offer a frequently asked questions section on their website that covers all of the most common problems in detail and gives you ways to test for speed and efficacy.
Money Back
Money back is another area in which BTGuard falls a bit short. In fact, they offer no money back guarantee at all. That said, they will cancel your subscription at any time as long as you have not set up continuous payment with Paypal. If you are worried that you might not like the service, your best bet is to sign up for just one month at first. This way, if you do wish to discontinue your service, you will only be out $6.95. Once you have established that you like the service, you can sign up for a longer period of service.
Traffic and Bandwidth
BTGuard promises an unlimited amount of bandwidth usage with both of their packages. This is one of their best features, as many similar P2P proxy services put limits on the amount of bandwidth that you can use. That said, while they hide what you are doing with your torrent program, they do not hide your bandwidth usage from your ISP. IF your ISP caps your monthly bandwidth, their caps still apply.
Speed
Once again, BTGuard will never limit your speed. You will have access to the full speed of your internet connection, whether you are using BTGuard or not. That said, your download and upload speed are still limited by the service offered by your ISP. If you want a faster connection, your ISP will probably make you pay for it.
Supported Devices
At the moment, BTGuard only supports home computers and, while you can use it on as many computers as you like, the service is restricted to the one internet signal and is intended for use by one person. If BTGuard detects that you are using it in multiple locations, they may terminate your service. Additionally, the P2P proxy service is available only for use with uTorrent and Vuze torrent clients. As both of these clients are free, and considered the best in the business, you should have no problem downloading and using them.
Supported OS
BTGuard supports use on both Windows and Mac operating systems. That said, it is designed to work best on Windows. While uTorrent can be run on a Mac, the Mac version of the torrent client does not support proxy servers, which means that BTGuard’s proxy service cannot be used with uTorrent on a computer running the Mac OS. It works great with Vuze, however, on any operating system. The VPN client also runs great on both Mac and Windows computers. It is also important to note that the easy install feature is only designed to work on Widows. Advanced Vuze Install must be used on a Mac.
Free Trial
BTGuard does not offer a vpn for free trial at this time. With such a low monthly price, however, trying it for a month does not require a huge investment.
Final Thoughts
Overall, BTGuard is a solid product that can help you anonymize both your bittorent usage and your entire web usage. Although the company has a few administrative issues to work out, such as offering customer support, money back guarantees and, perhaps, a free trial, the VPN and P2P proxy services are top notch and are very reasonably priced. Of course, you should never take a BTGuard review at face value. Give the program a try and decide for yourself.
I would not buy this service again. I paid them for a one year plan, and 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.
Michael is bang on. I signed up for one year on BTG after reading one positive review on lifehacker: big mistake. Simple truth is torrent clients need port-forwarding, which btg does not do. AirVPN does, for one, and torrenting works just fine. Doesn’t look I’ll see my money back either. 🙁
btguard vpn has no support, is more expensive and doesn’t have inbound port forwarding which makes it pretty much useless for bittorrent.