Avast SecureLine VPN review

Avast SecureLine VPN is a VPN service provided by Avast, a company that doesn’t really need an introduction thanks to its massively popular antivirus software. You can get Avast SecureLine VPN as part of the Avast subscription bundle or as a separate product.

Avast SecureLine VPN offers standard market features, such as high download speeds, unbreakable encryption, as well as unblocking sites and streaming capabilities. Yet, it isn’t the most powerful VPN for streaming and doesn’t come with many features. And if you're privacy-focused, it's better to think twice before purchase, as Avast VPN is known to gather users' data.

Alternatively, if you want to try out a more privacy-oriented and feature-loaded VPN service that is great for streaming, we suggest trying out some better options in the market, such as NordVPN.

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So, how does Avast SecureLine VPN hold up in comparison to other VPN services? Is it secure, how good are its speeds, does it work with Netflix and other streaming services? Let's take a deeper look into this product and answer these questions on this Avast SecureLine VPN review.

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Avast SecureLine VPN pros and cons

Is Avast SecureLine VPN safe?

Avast SecureLine VPN is a safe VPN provider. It uses military-grade AES-256 encryption, as well as the OpenVPN tunneling protocol, which is known for its security and stability. The VPN also has a decent no-logs policy. However, it hasn’t received a third-party audit yet, so such audited services as NordVPN are more trustworthy when it comes to data handling practices.

Tunneling protocols

Avast’s selection of tunneling protocols is not the biggest one. Depending on what kind of device you use, you’ll either get to choose from two protocols, or be given a single protocol that you won’t be able to change.

Here are the ones that are available on the applications of Avast SecureLine VPN:

• OpenVPN. While there are two versions of OpenVPN, Avast uses its faster variation - OpenVPN UDP. It’s not as stable as OpenVPN TCP, but it offers pretty good speeds.
• Avast Mimic. This is a proprietary protocol created from scratch by the Avast developers.
• IPSec. Available on the macOS and iOS applications, this protocol works best with Apple devices.
• WireGuard. This protocol is available on Windows and Android apps and offers faster speeds.

Logging policy

The no-logs policy of Avast SecureLine VPN is pretty straightforward. The provider doesn’t collect private data including your original IP address, DNS queries, browsing history, and transferred data. However, keep in mind that your connection timestamps are collected and stored for 35 days.

As for the country of origin, Avast VPN is based in the Czech Republic. It is a privacy-friendly country that doesn’t belong to the 14-Eyes intelligence alliance.

Kill switch

Avast SecureLine VPN has a functional kill switch that will shut down your internet if the VPN connection crashes. This is done in order to protect your privacy by preventing IP leaks. However, if it was the VPN application that crashed, the kill switch would not kick in.

Plans and pricing

Avast SecureLine VPN is neither expensive nor cheap - it falls right in the middle when it comes to the prices of Virtual Private Networks.

Weirdly, there’s no way of buying the service for only one month, which isn’t the case with the vast majority of other VPN services. You can either get a one-year ($59.88) or a two-year subscription ($95.76). Purchasing the longer plan is cheaper, as you’ll pay $4.39 per month instead of $4.59 per month.

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Both plans of Avast VPN offer a 30-day money-back guarantee that will give you enough time to make up your mind about the service.

When it comes to payment methods, you can use a credit card, a debit card, or PayPal. Avast SecureLine VPN subscription covers 10 simultaneous devices, which is pretty generous - lots of other providers offer only 5 or 6 connections.

Does Avast SecureLine VPN have a free version?

It’s pretty neat that Avast SecureLine VPN offers a free trial (there’s no unlimited free version, though).

Keep in mind that Avast’s app and the website display different information on the free trial. The page advertises a 7-day free version that doesn’t require any credit card details.

Meanwhile, the app allows you to get a 60-day free trial; however, you have to enter your banking information. Which means you’ll need to cancel the subscription before the trial period ends if you don’t want to pay for the app.

Speed performance: how fast is Avast SecureLine VPN?

When you use a VPN, your internet speed is bound to decrease from your baseline – speed without a VPN turned on. This decline varies from service to service, as some VPNs offer better speeds than others. Let’s take a look at how Avast SecureLine VPN performs here.

• Baseline (without VPN): 1 ms/294 Mbps download/304 Mbps upload

When using OpenVPN, the results are pretty decent - but only if you look at the download speed, which decreases only by a few percent. Meanwhile, the upload speed of Avast isn’t that great, slowing down the connection by 77% at the best of times, and leaving only 1.5% of your original speed in the worst cases.

I also tested Avast Mimic, a proprietary tunneling protocol developed by Avast:

It performed a little bit worse than OpenVPN, but still managed to bring some pretty decent speeds when connected to servers that were not that far from my original location. For example, when using a server in the UK, I managed to maintain nearly 98% of my download speed and almost 77% of my upload speed.

Unfortunately, the results weren’t consistent, as the download speed suffered a lot in some situations. But that might change in the future because Avast Mimic is still presented as a beta feature.

Now, let's take a look at the Avast VPN speeds compared to other providers:

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Keep in mind, though, that you might experience some lagging when connected to Avast SecureLines VPN, especially when using streaming services.

Servers and locations

Avast SecureLine VPN has around 700 servers located in 35 different countries. This is not an impressive collection, as most other VPNs offer more servers as well as locations.

Most of Avast’s servers are located in Europe. Other parts of the world aren’t covered that well, which means you might not always be able to unblock the content you need.

However, I like that the app of Avast VPN groups its countries by continent, allowing you to pick the server you need really quickly. You’ll also notice that some countries offer servers in a few different cities. For example, you can choose either Melbourne or Perth when connecting to Australia.

In addition, Avast SecureLine VPN offers servers dedicated to streaming and P2P connections. On the other hand, their selection is rather scarce.

Does Avast SecureLine VPN work in China?

Sadly, Avast SecureLine VPN doesn’t work in China at the time of writing this review. It simply doesn’t support any of the advanced obfuscation techniques that are required to bypass the Great Firewall.

On the other hand, its Mimic protocol uses some unusual and seemingly random ports, so it has the potential of bypassing some simple port blocks. However, it doesn’t seem to be designed with restricted networks and countries in mind.

If you truly need a VPN that works in China and other countries with internet censorship, you might want to get your hands on NordVPN or VyprVPN instead.

Streaming: Does Avast VPN work with Netflix?

Stream with Avast SecureLine VPN

Trying to unblock streaming platforms with Avast SecureLine VPN can be a hit or miss.

In my experience, the service can unblock Netflix, but it works only on certain libraries. When testing Avast VPN for this review, I got lucky and was able to unblock the US library of Netflix. However, it was a bit slow when it came to loading the site and its content (it took about 10 seconds to load). Interestingly, this didn’t affect the picture quality and I had no buffering issues.

The VPN also unblocked the Canadian region of Netflix, even though it doesn’t offer any Canadian servers that are optimized for streaming.

Now, the sad part: Avast failed to unblock Hulu, BBC iPlayer, and the UK region of Netflix. I also experienced slow loading with all of the servers I tried, even the ones that are relatively close to my location.

It’s worth mentioning that Avast SecureLine VPN offers dedicated streaming servers in the US, the UK, and Germany. Unfortunately, only the US servers were able to do anything useful.

Alternatives for unblocking streaming services

If you want a powerful VPN for streaming that would provide excellent speeds and high quality content, you can check out some of the best VPNs for streaming or choose one of the alternatives below:

• NordVPN. Powerful VPN with exclusively fast speeds, best-in-class encryption, and solid streaming capabilities. NordVPN can unblock more than 16 different Netflix libraries, Hulu, HBO Max, BBC iPlayer, and more streaming platforms. If you prefer watching shows on a bigger screen – NordVPN has a SmartPlay feature to stream anything on smart TVs or any virtual device.
• Surfshark VPN. This provider will provide exceptional speeds for streaming shows on your chosen streaming platform. It unblocks more than 30 Netflix libraries and more popular streaming platforms, such as YouTube TV, BBC iPlayer, Hulu, and more. It's also configurable on TVs, gaming consoles, and offers high-end encryption to keep you safe.
• Atlas VPN. Another great alternative for seamless streaming. Atlas VPN provide unlimited simultaneous connections, so you can stream on as many devices instantaneously as you want. Atlas VPN bypasses geo-blocks not only for Netflix but Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max, and other platforms.

Is Avast SecureLine VPN good for torrenting?

It’s nice that Avast SecureLine VPN is torrenting-friendly. The service even has dedicated P2P servers in the Czech Republic, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US. Keep in mind that the other servers don’t support torrenting at all.

When testing how the VPN handles torrenting, I noticed that the servers had some stability issues. Even though the connection speeds could get pretty fast (reaching up to 15 MB/s), the speed fluctuated a lot. On the other hand, it’s good to see that there doesn’t seem to be any throttling in place.

Keep in mind that there are no extra features for torrenting, like Surfshark’s Tor over VPN servers or NordVPN’s integrated SOCKS5 proxy.

Interface and ease of use

Avast SecureLine VPN offers applications for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. I like that the apps are easy to install and use, which means that Avast is just perfect for those who are getting a VPN for the first time.

Windows

The Windows interface of Avast SecureLine VPN is pretty solid. Everything looks sleek and responsive. However, the app seems to be designed for looks over function. For example, there is no way to quickly search for a region you want to connect to and no way to select a specific server/IP.

Also, the settings menu is hidden behind another menu filled with separate buttons for Avast’s other tools.

In fact, I accidentally clicked on one of these buttons while trying to exit the menu, and the app immediately installed another application onto my computer without asking for any additional confirmation.

macOS

The macOS application of Avast SecureLine VPN is almost identical to its Windows counterpart: there are no new or missing features, and the user interface looks the same.

There’s only one difference: instead of OpenVPN, you are getting the IPSec tunneling protocol.

Android

The Android application of Avast VPN looks and feels just great. It’s also the only version that offers the split tunneling feature, which can be quite useful when you want only certain apps to use the VPN connection. Other than that, it’s very similar to the Windows version of Avast SecureLine VPN.

iOS

As is tradition, this is the worst version of the bunch in terms of additional features: you can only alter your auto-connect settings. There isn’t even an option to change the VPN protocol, because the only choice is IPSec. In terms of design, the application is very similar to the Android app.

Avast SecureLine VPN features

Compared to most of the standalone VPN clients, Avast SecureLines VPN is pretty basic. It only offers a password leak checker, the possibility to set up automatic connections, and split tunneling on Android. If you're looking for advanced features like port forwarding, you might want to look into other VPNs (like Mullvad).

Password leak checker

In case you’ve ever wondered whether your email has been compromised, you can use Avast SecureLine VPN’s password leak checker.

All you need to do is open the feature (it’s located at the right side of the window), enter your email address, and click on Run Scan. This will show you if any of your accounts associated with the email had their passwords breached.

Smart rules

When using Avast VPN, you can set up a bunch of rules of how the app should behave depending on your activities.

For example, you can make the VPN turn on automatically once you connect to a public network, use torrenting clients and websites, go to banking sites, and stream videos.

You can also manually make a list of websites that require VPN connection.

Split tunneling

Like lots of other VPN services, Avast SecureLine VPN offers the split tunneling feature on its Android application.

You can select certain apps that you want to use with the VPN, like Netflix or Tinder. Meanwhile, other applications won’t use the VPN tunnel.

Customer support

If you stumble upon a problem when using Avast SecureLine VPN, you have a few different ways of getting help.

Those who like solving problems on their own can read through Avast’s knowledge base. Here, you can find articles on various topics like installation or changing your DNS settings. However, there aren’t that many articles, and you’ll definitely need a customer support agent if you come across a more unusual issue.

You can reach customer support by either writing them an email or using Avast’s live chat. I got in touch with an agent a few minutes after joining the chat and got my questions answered in a friendly and helpful manner.

Bottom line: Is Avast VPN worth it?

Avast SecureLine VPN is a decent VPN tool. While it can’t really compete with standalone VPN solutions, it’s able to deliver some good speeds, unblock a couple of Netflix libraries, and provide a good level of security.

However, there’s still a lot of work to be done. The team behind Avast VPN should consider adding more features, making sure the app works with more streaming services, and fixing the weird loading issues.

You will find the tool pretty useful if you’re a newbie in the IT world. But if you need an advanced VPN solution, we'd recommend checking out providers like NordVPN or Surfshark.

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