Overplay Review

Price Range:
$4.95 to $9.95 Per Month – Visit Site

Overplay VPN is commonly brought up VPN provider among consumer reviews and forum posts. They themed their service around streaming and gaming consoles with design and by offering SmartDNS only service along with a VPN plan and dedicated gaming servers. They operate a large network of server of an impressive 48 countries and have a very cool looking website and software.

The service itself is straight forward, having the choice between SmartDNS and VPN, they don’t offer a variety of payment plans or special add-on features of any sort. The large network allowed us to test the servers extensively from one region to another and took us a long time to monitor and come to an agreed verdict. So how did they do? Let’s have a look.

Features:

Overplay VPN offers a vast server list across 48 countries, giving them some of the best coverage in the industry. They offer all 3 protocols, OpenVPN, L2TP and PPTP and the Overplay VPN software runs off OpenVPN using 128-bit Blowfish encryption. The software was easy to install and use, and offers a user friendly interface and detailed server list.

The VPN service outlines special A to B servers allowing for shorter routing distances to help increase speeds when necessary. We tested these and did find them to be generally faster when not crowded, All depending on your location, these results may vary. Along with that, they also offer dedicated gaming servers where encryption is disabled, allowing for maximum bandwidth while still unlocking any blocked or censored services.

Along with The VPN service, they have easy to follow setup guides for an extensive list of devices from smartphones to gaming consoles and AppleTV, Boxee type streaming boxes, even routers. The tutorials are well made and feature youtube videos. It shows Overplay VPN went out of their way to produce quality setup tutorials to better facilitate the sometimes difficult experience of setting up these types of services for a non-techy user.

Overplay also offers SmartDNS standalone service as an alternate choice to VPN. SmartDNS does not encrypt and protect your data, or really hide your IP for that matter, but it does change your location DNS, unblocking geo-restricted services, or censored internet websites and such. SmartDNS also aligns with their gaming audience, as gaming consoles such as Wii U, Xbox, Playstation 4 and so on, are not capable of connecting to a VPN protocol and can only be behind a VPN tunnel with the usage of a VPN router. SmartDNS can be used for the purpose of unlocking content, and another advantage is that it does not affect connection speed.

Security:

OpenVPN based software by Overplay VPN uses adequate encryption and the service is log free. L2TP and PPTP do not offer adequate encryption and we advise against them. The minimum 128-bit CBC Blowfish OpenVPN connection is highly recommended. No additional security layers are offered by Overplay VPN and we would rate the overall security as moderate. The service is definitely aimed more towards a streaming and gaming crowd.

Speed:

It took us over a week to really come to agreement on speed tests among 3 of us. Since the service is targeted at gamers, we used the VPN service behind a router on a PlayStation and Xbox and utilised both encrypted servers and unsecured gaming servers. The service ran well on both ends with periodical lag on slower servers that we would not have used for gaming in the first place.

As far as streaming video goes, it was hit or miss. For the first few days, all was great and we would only lose a small percentage of our full bandwidth but as we used the service more and more, we found ourselves having to change servers too often. This experience was split, where one of us experience fast speeds every time logged on, without much effort to find good servers.

Pricing:

Another very basic façade of Overplay VPN, is their pricing package offers. They do not have any discounts for multiple month or yearly packages and instead opted for monthly payments only. Additionally, no money back guarantee is offered, if you pay, you can cancel at any time and be allowed to use the remainder of your paid month.

SmartDNS is offered at $4.95 / Month
Overplay VPN is offered at $9.95 / Month

Customer Service:

Customer service and technical support is offered for a variety of operating systems and devices. They operate an online chat on the website 24/7 and we quickly tested it out and got a response within seconds. We never had the need to request for technical help but took the time to search forums and consumer feedback and found split opinions. Some had really negative experiences to discuss while many advised having great ongoing VPN service and had positive things to say about the customer care.

Conclusion:

Although Overplay VPN has a very large network and global coverage, we we’re not very impressed with speed and performance. Lack of information on the website about their software left us with many questions. They have a good log-free policy and seem trustworthy and while they have a good following of loyal customers, they also have their share of negative reviews. Overall we rated the service average to above average but nothing really exceptional or cutting edge to point out.