While searching for a suitable VPN solution, you’ve most probably come across Astrill, one of the oldest industry players. Their website does not exactly leave a modern impression, not being all flat-designed and such – but that’s not why you need a VPN, right? Don’t be misled by the looks: Astrill is a team of dev geeks, and what they really, single-mindedly focus on is performance.
And when it comes to performance, Astrill VPN is on top of its game – their servers are fast and reliable even in peak hours. Extensive comparative testing in countries with restricted Internet access, foremost China, also indicates a much more stable connection by Astrill, especially in peak hours (weekdays and weekends around 5-9 pm).
Astrill Promo Code – Myth or Reality?
Astrill offers a free 7-day trial which does not require adding a credit card (a nice gesture in times when you can’t test most online services without submitting your payment details right away). There are four subscription plans which differ by billing cycles, with the longer ones giving progressively higher discounts: if you choose to pay every 3 months, the sum will be $29.95 ($9.98 per month), while a 1-year subscription costs $69.95 ($5.83 per month), or 42% cheaper. The 1-year and 2-year plans also include StealthVPN, and the 2-year plan also allows you to get an Astrill-optimized router (physical device) for free.
While going through the checkout procedure on the Astrill website, you can notice a “I have a coupon / reseller code” button which opens a field to input a promo code. However, if you search around, you’ll not find any coupons that even look like a coupon, not to mention being actually valid. There are dozens of websites allegedly offering “Astrill coupon deals”, but what every single one of them does is pretend to offer the same discounts that are already built into the Astrill plans, i.e. the above mentioned lower per-month prices for longer billing cycles.
In fact, Astrill have discontinued their promo code systems back in 2012, which means the coupon field on their website is an artifact for supporting those legacy systems. This means there’s no point in wasting time trying to find a non-existing black cat in a dark room: if a 42% discount Astrill themselves offer on their yearly plan is not enough, we don’t know what is!
Why Use a VPN?
There are three main purposes for using a virtual private network, or a VPN: security, privacy and accessing restricted content. All of them are interlinked, but can matter to a varying degree depending on the particular user; for example, companies and teams might find a secure connection being the most important benefit of a VPN, while expats in countries like China will find VPNs an essential part of their daily life if they wish to keep using locally restricted domains such as Google, Wikipedia, and Facebook.