I switched to windscribe last month because the proton CEO starting spewing politcal BS, and I wanted port forwarding that wasn’t locked behind a shitty GUI.
As far as I was concerned setup was super easy, the VPN speeds were great, and port forwarding worked really nicely. The whole price for a fixed server and port forward, + unlimited data was a bit much (at $95/year) but for the ease of use and speeds I was getting, I was happy to stick with them.
My setup is a always-on server with a 1gbps connection, where yes, I fucking seed my shit, all of it. I have about 30TB of linux ISOs and counting, and it’s rare that my combined upload speed is less than 1MBps, ever.
Which lead me to getting banned from windscribe with no notice or warning in the middle of last week. This lead to me having to spend tracker points to avoid HnR, and i’m also unable to grab any new ISOs until I find a new VPN provider that won’t ban me for actually using the service full time.
I did shoot them an email (after talking’ with their AI bot first), and they were actually helpful enough. The offered to restore support, so long as I promised to not torrent with them again (which, I honestly did promise not to. I’m not sticking with a VPN service that can’t handle me actually using it for what it’s advertised for) and they did unban the account. Whole email chain took about three days to get resolved.
My sticking point is that they still have instructions on setting up torrents on their own website, and that they specifically allow for unlimited data (with the plan i paid for) so long as it’s just one user. I did not break those rules. After clarifying that in the support email, they still said that I was using too much data (despite the unlimited data advertisement) and that torrenting was not allowed on their service.
TL:DR: Windscribe bans you if you use a lot of data, and support says torrents aren’t allowed, despite their website advertising such. Proof in the attached images.
If y’all have any other suggestions for a VPN that allow port forwarding i’d really appreciate it.
Them calling it “unlimited” when there’s a limit is wrong, but so is using all of the available upload bandwidth 100% of the time on a cheap home VPN service when you consider the current market prices for data transfer. Mine’s limited to 2Mbps. Seems fair for $7/month or whatever it is.
Edit: Oh right it was 2Mbps. I spent 20 minutes surveying datacentre prices around the world to come up with that number, but bandwidth prices vary widely and might’ve changed by now.
they shouldn’t make it unlimited them, skill issue on their part.
If you’re selling me 1Gb networking speeds, with no bandwidth limit, it’s not my fault for using all of it lol. I’m just using what i pay for.
That’s technically within your legal rights I guess, just like (depending what the fine print says) it’s within their rights to throttle all your traffic one way or another to a low speed including the stuff you actually need to go faster. The places that always have low speeds for everyone are like that because they’re designed to cater to people who don’t give a shit about what their fair share might be and just want to max out their connection. Those services are fine for torrenting, useless for everything else. Windscribe isn’t one of those but it could become one if enough of its users think like you and insist on it.
Hopefully they’ll set a soft 2TB limit or something before they do that, though.
that’s true, but i would prefer they be upfront about it. If you’re advertising something, and i’m not getting it, that’s not great advertising.
If you’re telling me i get unlimited bandwidth on a 1gb connection, and you don’t give me that exact thing in return, it’s false advertising. Soft limit it if you want, just be honest about it. The solution here is a bandwidth limited plan, and one that isn’t.