If you’ve looked at lists of top-tier VPNs, you’ll certainly have encountered CyberGhost.
CyberGhost is not the largest or most popular VPN, but it is certainly one of the most acclaimed.
CyberGhost has surprisingly only been around since 2011. CyberGhost has maintained a strong sense of identity as a promoter of internet privacy and freedom.
Yeah, all VPNs say that, I know. Well, CyberGhost was the first VPN company to publish a transparency report, and the entire company is less than a decade old.
So, it might be more than just show with CyberGhost.
And despite not being the most popular VPN in the world, it does support over 20 million users, so surely something is going right.
But hey, you can’t judge off what CyberGhost says about itself. Luckily, I have been using CyberGhost for a little while by now, and I can give you a full rundown of the good, the bad, and the awesome. Let’s get started.
Pros
I’ll begin with the good news. Frankly, there’s a lot of it, so I’ll try to keep it short.
First, CyberGhost has reasonable pricing. Some people will find better deals with other companies, but for those who want a fully-featured, high-performing VPN, CyberGhost is one of the best deals out there.
Secondly, CyberGhost has a lot of features.
In particular, CyberGhost has a lot of strengths where its servers are concerned, and a lot of tools that give users control of their own experience.
One of the impressive things about this is that CyberGhost manages to do all this while being easy to use. The user interface is very friendly and a total beginner could optimize their CyberGhost settings (or leave them alone, if they so desired).
Finally, CyberGhost has generally solid performance. In my experience, CyberGhost has been one of the fastest VPNs around, but there are hiccups here and there (and I’m not sure to what extent it’s just my internet).
Nonetheless, CyberGhost is very high performing.
All in all, CyberGhost does very well in most aspects and this has made it one of the most attractive VPNs on the market.
Cons
This is one of the shortest “cons” list I’ve done in a while. The clearest weakness is in customer support.
Although CyberGhost has a live chat and ticketing system, they lack phone support. This isn’t a major issue, and a lot of VPNs don’t have phone support, but it would be nice nonetheless.
Additionally, while the representatives are okay, the knowledge base/informational material is a little lackluster.
There’s nothing wrong with it per se, but it could use some more content.
Aside from that, I wish there was more of an in-app link to customer support. You can make a feedback or bug-reporting dialogue pop up, but that’s not the same.
Now, aside from that, I’ve got to say I don’t think CyberGhost has too many flaws worth taking note of.
I will say, however, that while the prices are good for what’s being offered, CyberGhost’s packages will still be a bit too much for some people.
For those who don’t mind forsaking some features and servers, you can definitely go cheaper than CyberGhost.
Especially if you only need a simple VPN, CyberGhost might be a little much for you in what it offers.
If you do want a fully-featured VPN though, I don’t think there’s too much going wrong with CyberGhost. But hey, let’s get into the specifics first.
Pricing and Features
Before we jump into everything CyberGhost offers, let’s look briefly at price.
First off, a lot of famous VPNs offer free services along with paid options. CyberGhost is not one of them, I’m sorry to say. CyberGhost only offers paid plans—but that’s not totally a bad thing.
This is because free VPNs sometimes run the risk of having questionable privacy practices. It’s not a risk you want to take if your goal is internet anonymity. In a sense, CyberGhost is being honest with its users: if you want top-tier privacy, you gotta pay.
Anyway, what’s more disappointing to me is that CyberGhost doesn’t offer a longer trial period. CyberGhost only offers a 24-hour free trial, and then you have to choose.
It’s better than nothing, but not enough time to make a fully-informed choice. However, plans have a 45-day money-back guarantee, so you don’t have to make a huge risk.
As for the prices themselves, CyberGhost is like most VPNs in offering lower prices for longer commitments. I would say that CyberGhost’s prices are pretty normal for VPN plans, if slightly on the higher side.
Emphasis on slightly. I understand that many VPN users are not businesses, but individuals from all walks of life who may be interested in protecting their anonymity at a lower cost.
Fair enough, but in my opinion CyberGhost’s prices are very good for the quality of features CyberGhost offers.
And in any case, some of CyberGhost’s promotional options are pretty affordable even by VPN standards.
As far as payment goes, CyberGhost is pretty typical in accepting cards, PayPal, or Bitcoin (no other Coins, sorry!).
Now, for making those prices go to work: CyberGhost can work on up to 7 devices simultaneously. Some VPNs offer more, but 5-10 is pretty typical and I think 7 devices is pretty solid especially at those prices.
Once you’re using it on one of those devices, you’ll find that CyberGhost’s servers are one of its strengths. If you’re worried CyberGhost, primarily operated in central Europe, would lack servers in your area, you’ll probably wrong.
CyberGhost has over 3000 servers in 60 countries. Of course some countries have a larger share of these servers than others, but it’s still a really good amount of servers per country, so you get a tremendous level of choice.
Here’s one of my favorite things about CyberGhost: CyberGhost makes it as easy as possible to switch to the best servers.
It’s common for VPNs to highlight a few servers, but CyberGhost does a ton of work for you by selecting a long list of the best servers for torrenting and streaming.
For streaming, CyberGhost even tells you which servers are best for streaming from which services. You can also bookmark servers and even manage them under categories. It’s very extensive.
In addition to being able to switch between servers, you can switch between VPN protocols. As is the case with most VPNs, OpenVPN is the default, but you can also jump to L2TP-IPsec or IKEv2 protocols.
Some VPNs offer extra tools in addition to the basics of VPN tech. CyberGhost is one of these. Most prominently,
CyberGhost has an ad-block built in, as well as a malware-blocker and DNS/IP leak protection.
Additionally, CyberGhost has an automatic kill switch. This isn’t present in every VPN, and I’d be lying if I said I really had to make use of these, but it’s still a nifty feature.
Basically it means if your connection drops, certain applications will be automatically blocked from accessing your device. It’s a quick shield.
For the most basic things, which I almost don’t find worth mentioning because you can kind of assume them for most paid options: CyberGhost has a no-logs policy, and unlimited bandwidth.
I’ll cover the performance and security soon, but to put it briefly: yes, it’s fast, and yes, it’s secure.
Now overall, I’ve got to say—CyberGhost is as well featured as the best VPNs and it has very reasonable prices to boot. You get plenty of tools, and best of all, full control of those tools. Heck, half the tools are about giving you control over your experience.
For that reason, I would argue that CyberGhost is one of the best VPNs around right now, and on top of that, has some of the best prices.
Ease of Use
Okay, that all sounds great—lots of customizability and features. Woohoo! But, can’t that be a bit overbearing?
For a first-time user, it might be a little bit. However, I think most people, even novices, could onboard within the hour (maximum).
Setting up an account is pretty straightforward. I’ve encountered some older reviews that said CyberGhost used to be a bit more confusing in its registration process, but I think that’s no longer an issue, as currently it can be done within minutes.
By minutes, I mean the whole process of downloading the software, registering an account, paying, and beginning to use the VPN. And once you start using the VPN, the design is extremely user-friendly.
Let me show you what I mean. This is what CyberGhost normally looks like on a PC.
If you click that little arrow next to the dropdown server menu, this will pop up.
This is the impressive server management that I was telling you about earlier. You can expand it a little more from here. And there you go, that’s your full-fledged window:
And then you just click that arrow again, and it’ll go back to the original size, where you only have to toggle one button or two. And as I’ve said, CyberGhost is very helpful in identifying which servers are ideal.
Account management and toggling other settings is about as usable as everything else shown thus far.
I only have one complaint: sometimes when I open my CyberGhost window, it’s too big for my screen. I have to resize the screen manually to get it to fit every time, which is annoying, but not a huge deal.
All in all, CyberGhost is pretty easy. The difference between CyberGhost and the simplest VPNs out there is really only a few clicks.
So true, CyberGhost technically isn’t the easiest VPN around, but that’s because it’s not the simplest VPN around.
And I can’t imagine complaining about that, considering CyberGhost makes it as easy as possible to have such a customized VPN experience.
Customer Support
Ah—but what about the customer service? Things can always go wrong, and good customer support is therefore essential.
CyberGhost offers a little bit of a knowledge base. Primarily its support page offers a few guides, some troubleshooting articles, and some FAQ articles. It’s nothing huge, but it’s very appropriate for the scope of a VPN.
As far as directly contacting representatives goes, you can reach out to them via a ticketing system or via live chat.
Yep, no phone support, but at least you can still contact a rep directly with live chat.
I’ve found the reps pretty helpful, but I’ve also not had deep problems with CyberGhost, so I can’t say I’ve fully tested representatives with a more challenging question yet. Nonetheless, CyberGhost’s live chat and ticketing system can by and large do the trick.
So in all, there isn’t much to say about the customer support. It’s pretty simple—not bad, but not exactly stellar.
At the same time, I think CyberGhost performs well enough that the need for solid customer support is somewhat reduced. Which leads me to my next point…
Security and Reliability
Here lies the answer you’ve been waiting for—how does the VPN actually perform?
I saved the best news for last, ladies and gents. Because CyberGhost performs excellently. Some VPNs offer different speeds in their pricing tiers, but with CyberGhost any contract will get you a good speed.
Now, I’m gonna have to qualify that: my speed test with CyberGhost wasn’t too hot.
Here’s a speed test with CyberGhost OFF.
And here’s a speed test with CyberGhost ON.
So there you go. Obviously, things were a lot slower for download speed. To be honest, it didn’t feel very accurate. My internet can sometimes be spotty, so I tried a second time after a few minutes.
So maybe it’s just me and my spotty internet, or maybe CyberGhost is just unstable. In my experience (and in the experience of most of its users) this isn’t the case.
Anyway, I’d say that overall CyberGhost has very solid performance in terms of stability and has overall good speeds.
As you can see, in the second test, the download speed was very close to my download speed without this VPN. I can’t say it’s like that all the time, but it usually feels fast anyway.
As far as security goes, CyberGhost offers the industry-standard 256-bit AES encryption. It also offers the option of toggling between VPN protocols and has the DNS leak protection option, as I mentioned. And of course, that’s all next to the ad-block and malware-site-block.
You can also block websites from tracking you, and automatically redirect to HTTPs connections. These tools are excellent security add-ons, especially because you can control the degree to which you want to secure your internet usage.
In sum, I’d say CyberGhost is one of the best performing VPNs out there. Its security tools offer you some nice extra protection if you want it, and it’s security protocols are solid. Plus, I generally find the speeds to be pretty solid, and most of the time, it’s one of the fastest VPNs around.
Do I recommend CyberGhost VPN?
I’m sure you can guess the answer, but what’s the verdict on CyberGhost?
To put it simply, it’s a well-priced VPN that is well-featured and has solid performance. Users get excellent control over their VPN experience, with servers and security add-ons being two main areas where users can do as they please.
What’s more, all this is extremely easy to learn and manage. Yeah, the customer support could be a little better, but it’s enough and in any case, I doubt you’ll need it much.
Once again, I can’t tell you conclusively how good the speeds are. They feel good to me, and when I test them, I get different answers, which is most likely because of my own funky WiFi.
I would say CyberGhost is at least on the better side of speeds, to be safe, but is most often one of the fastest VPNs.
All in all, it’s not for everyone. People who just want simple, cheap VPNs should look into other options. But everyone else should strongly consider CyberGhost—it’s one of the best VPNs around.
