Features, Pros And Cons – Forbes Advisor – Technologist

Atlas VPN’s two standout traits that set it apart from other VPNs in the space: its status as a “freemium” VPN and its SafeSwap servers. Being “freemium” essentially means it offers a basic version of its product for free with the full version being locked behind a paywall. This is a fairly common business model across the tech industry these days, though less so for VPNs where you’re more likely to see providers offer free trials of their full platforms instead of a completely free version. While having access to a free VPN is nice and potentially affordable, Atlas VPN’s offering cuts out a lot of features you’d expect from a VPN, including a kill switch or unlimited bandwidth. This makes it less than ideal for anyone looking to use a VPN for long stretches of time.

The SafeSwap servers, on the other hand, are impressive. While connected to a SafeSwap server, Atlas VPN will periodically change your IP Address, in an attempt to make it more difficult for your activity to be tracked. This is a unique feature we can’t recall seeing in a provider before, though we’re not sure how much more effective it really is at obscuring your online activity compared to other methods, such as port forwarding. That said, there are only three server locations with available SafeSwap servers: the United States, Singapore and the Netherlands. Further, during our test, we did notice a significant drop in internet speeds when using the SafeSwap servers.

Pros

Atlas VPN has unlimited simultaneous connections, along with access to multi-hop and the unique SafeSwap servers. The rest of the VPN is fairly middling. The speeds are on par with what we expect from a top-of-the-market VPN. The platform’s other features, such as the kill switch, function more or less as intended but didn’t overly impress us.

Cons

Sadly, Atlas VPN’s cons tend to outweigh its pros. The main issue is a lack of features. Split tunneling, a basic feature for many VPNs in the space today, can only be found on Atlas’ Android version. On top of that, Dedicated IP is missing, making the service less than ideal for business use. Its server count, clocking in at over 1,000, is extremely low for a VPN, which can lead to bottlenecking issues during periods of high user activity. The sign-in process, which requires you to access the email associated with your Atlas VPN account for a sign-in link, is nice for security but can be a bit of a hassle if you’re trying to have multiple users on a single account.