Surfshark VPN review | ZDNET

Surfshark takes the standard approach to its pricing with one-month, one-year, and two-year plans. You'll make a lump-sum upfront payment for the longer plans, but it works out to a dramatically lower average monthly cost.

Also: The best cheap VPNs

The Black Friday deal for two free months with the two-year plan drops the average monthly price down to $2.05.  The usual price for a two-year plan is $2.30 per month, so this is an 11% discount.

With all of the Surfshark VPN plans, you can add on the Surfshark One bundle for $1.49 per month (paid in full upfront for one-year and two-year plans). This package gives you access to Surfshark's antivirus software, safe search (search ad and tracker blocking), and data breach monitoring.

There is a 30-day money-back guarantee for all plans, giving you plenty of time to test out the services and see what's right for you. If you'd prefer a free trial, you may be able to get a seven-day free trial offer to appear if you subscribe via mobile or MacOS. I was able to get the free trial offer on mobile, but keep in mind that after the free trial is over you may be enrolled in the annual plan, which is more expensive than the two-year subscription. 

You can pay for Surfshark VPN with a credit card, debit card, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, or cryptocurrency.

In ZDNET's most recent tests, Surfshark's speed was middle of the road, cutting download speeds by an average of 54%. Over two days we compared download speeds without a VPN and with Surfshark's VPN running. We also measured speeds across 10 different Surfshark server locations around the world.  

This is a drop in performance from our previous tests where Surfshark only reduce download speeds by 28%. There are so many factors that can impact speed that this isn't necessarily a deal breaker, but you should test out the performance for yourself. It's a good idea to see how it performs on your devices, and with your internet connection.

Surfshark did connect quickly to the servers and the connection was strong and reliable.

All of Surfshark VPN's servers support P2P file sharing. However, to get the best performance you'll want to connect through a P2P-optimized server.

It can be a little confusing to find these servers because they aren't labeled in the app. If you search “P2P” in the server locations search bar, the P2P-optimized servers will populate the search results.

When it comes to getting questions answered quickly and accurately, I prefer using the live chat feature. The chat starts off with a bot providing links to support pages that may answer your question, but it's easy to get connected with a real person. I always had the option to connect directly with a live agent with the push of a button.

Surfshark also has a help center with useful guides and FAQs. It doesn't have a phone support option, but I haven't come across a VPN that does. Even if phone support was available I'd prefer the live chat feature, which was much faster and more convenient than navigating a phone tree.

Overall, Surfshark is a solid deal if you're willing to make a longer commitment to lock in the lowest price. I suggest taking advantage of the 30-day money-back guarantee to test it out and make sure that it's going to perform well for you and meet all your needs.

Surfshark VPN has all of the standard features most people will want in a VPN and in our speed tests it performed well. It's hard to complain about a service that generally performs as well as the competition at one-third the price of the most expensive VPN services.

Here are a few comparable VPN services worth considering if you don't think Surfshark is the right one for you.