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.
Don’t bother e-mailing them they will not answer. At least one of the servers is always down. I too bought the year service and have subscribed to their BTguard. When it runs out I certainly will not do business with them again.
I bought a full years worth of the torrent protection. 3 days later BTguard sent me an email saying I had a bill overdue, and my service had been terminated. I had paid them the full $60 first thing. I’ve sent 2 emails and 1 message on their site with no response. I tried calling their number, but it just says “we don’t give service over the phone”. Biggest scam ever, I’m calling my bank to report them.
At the first look the price deceives you. But the customer service is terrible and it doesn’t give refunds unlike many other VPN providers.
I bought it two weeks ago and I sent them several emails but no answer. they get the money and run away! it keeps disconnecting but when it connects (for less than a minute!!) the speed is good!
I would say don’t buy a VPN that does not give you refund
all i can say is i have no problems with speed but the support is rubbish and the price isnt great but it makesme feel better using it
After reading how awesome is btguard i thought i should pay for a whole year since i’m lazy.
I paid 90$ and after setting it up it was slow as hell so i sent a message to customer support and they told me it would take 1-3 days to answer I was disappointed but thats not the problem the problem is that its been two weeks(14 days) since i sent the message and still no responce what so ever .
What. a. complete. pile.
This is fine for torrents with thousands in the swarm, but on small private trackers, proper connectability is a must. I’ve finicked with port forward god knows how many times, still not connectable.
I’ve only been able to fully connect to the VPN twice, and only when I have PPTP and tunnelblick both supposedly connected.
Best part is, instead of being able to use the server a mere 500 miles away from me, on both occasions i’ve connected to one in the netherlands. speeds suck, 4 megs down, 1.2 up.
Support is non-existant, there’s no forums, there’s no suitable FAQ, complete waste of money, just unsubbed from my paypal account, stoked to give these charlatans a boot and try someone else. I have no problem giving my money to someone else who deserves it. f you btguard.
I had zero problem getting this installed and running with uTorrent, after following the Advanced Install directions and some advice on Lifehacker. I tested, retested, and then tested again and I am being routed through Germany, the Netherlands, and Canada. I think it is a hell of a deal.
1 star for Price, If I was able to I’d give a -10 for Support as I got None! Stars for, Speed, Reliability & Protection I can’t give Any! As I was Never able to get logged in and Never got to try it out! My short time with BTGuard what I paid for did Not work! After reading the reviews here and a few other sites about BTGuard I went to my PayPal and canceled the monthly subscription. Signed up April 14th, after many hours threw that night. Going to bed, getting up the next day. Trying a few more hours still Not getting Anything. I went to my PayPal and canceled the month to month payments! Now it’s just a matter of getting my money back! I seen this site in my search results, looking for BTGaurd’s website. Like a fool I went straight to their site and spent $9.95 for NOTHING!
I have received TWO, read ’em TWO, copyright infringement notices while allegedly being protected by BTGuard. BTGuard Support’s first response to problems was a circular argument merely directing me back to their website for answers. They have failed to respond to any other communication since then. Protection for all intents and purposes is non-existent; it frequently disconnected without notice; internet access speed dropped to a crawl; as mentioned, Support SUCKS Bigtime; and charging for protection they fail to provide is asinine. If I could give them less then 1 Star they would get it. I wouldn’t recommend this service to anyone.
Check out our Extra VPN Security Tips on how you can disable programs in the event of a VPN disconnection.
The speed is bearable, and protection is, from what I’ve read, so-so. Better than not using it, most likely.
Unfortunately, their support is terrible. I made a mistake or renewing a service after few month of not using it (I got a free month trial some time ago). I paid for a year, a second mistake. It took them almost two weeks to start it up. And now, that a month has passed – they turned it off, saying I missed a monthly payment (I paid for a year!). So far, not a single email I sent to their customer service got me a reply, both during the first incident, and now.
Perhaps they’ll turn my service back on in a week or two. But such lengthy and common interruptions due to abysmal customer support/database on their end are something that I am unlikely to tolerate again; BG is not going to get my $$ ever again.