Webroot Wifi VPN Security Review

Webroot has been around since the early 90’s, though the company recently received a second life when Carbonite acquired it in early 2019. Although the antivirus part of Webroot, the main part, is solid, the VPN falls behind in a number of areas. There are some strong points, but Webroot WiFi Security won’t be making our best VPN list any time soon. 

Webroot WiFi Security’s questionable privacy policy and overall lack of security make it a great example of a company tackling a problem well from a technical standpoint but failing to offer many of the smaller things that customers look for.

In this Webroot WiFi Security review, we’re going to cover all of the high and low points of the service. If you’d rather just start with the best virtual private network on the market, head over to our ExpressVPN review. It’s the best service we’ve tested, and comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, to boot. 

Strengths & Weaknesses

Alternatives for Webroot Wifi VPN Security

Features

Webroot WiFi Security is geared toward people who want a hassle-free VPN experience. Because of that, it offers some features that are nice to have, but keeps things bare-bones.

The application is available for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. Linux users are left in the dust, though, as are those who want to run the VPN through a browser extension. You can’t set up the VPN on routers, either, which makes it more difficult to protect all of your home’s devices at once (and flies in the face of the “WiFi Security” name).

It offers several protocols, including IKEv2, L2TP and PPTP. Though those protocols are fast, they aren’t the most secure options. We’ll go into more detail about their security later, but if you’re curious about VPN protocols, you should give our VPN protocol breakdown a read.

When you open the settings, you’ll find a short list of checkboxes. They contain options such as connecting automatically on start-up or turning the killswitch on or off. There’s also a web filtering option that helps block potentially malicious websites. Though that’s nice to have for those concerned about online security, it’s not as good as using a real antivirus (read our best antivirus software guide).

Certain features are missing from Webroot WiFi Security, though, including DNS leak protection and split tunneling.

Webroot Wifi VPN Security Features Overview

Pricing

When it comes to Webroot WiFi Security’s pricing, your options are limited. There are two plans on offer, both of which are for one year. There are no monthly or multi-year plans. The first plan comes with up to three connections, while the other allows for five.

3 Users for 1 Year Unlimited GB Bandwidth 3 Included Devices	1-year plan $ 3.33/ month $39.99 billed every year
5 Users for 1 Year Unlimited GB Bandwidth 5 Included Devices	1-year plan $ 5.00/ month $59.99 billed every year

Webroot WiFi Security doesn’t offer a free trial or accept cryptocurrency. That said, it does offer a generous 70-day refund policy if you’re unhappy with the service, which somewhat makes up for the lack of a trial period. It’s the longest refund in the business, beating out even CyberGhost’s generous 45 days (read our CyberGhost review for more on this excellent service).

If you’re just looking to hook up personal devices — perhaps a desktop and a laptop — the three-user plan is competitively priced. Even the five-user plan’s price isn’t outrageous, but it would be nice to see an unlimited connections plan.

It’s also uncommon to find a VPN service that won’t allow users to sign up on a monthly or quarterly basis. If you’re looking for an affordable VPN plan that offers unlimited connections, as well as a great monthly rate, we recommend reading our Windscribe review after you wrap up here.

On the other hand, many VPN providers offer discounts for people who plan to use a VPN on an ongoing basis and want to sign on for longer periods of time. If paying upfront for a long-term plan appeals to you, we suggest checking out our NordVPN review. NordVPN is an all-around great provider and offers plans for two and three years at appealing prices.

Ease of Use

When it comes to ease of use on the website, Webroot somewhat misses the mark. The website is laid out in a way that can make navigation confusing, especially when it comes to its WiFi Security VPN service. That’s mainly because Webroot’s antivirus is the focus of the website. The VPN is put on the back burner.

Once you find where you need to go, though, signing up and installing the client is easy. From that point on, it’s smooth sailing. The client is laid out well and user-friendly. At first, all you’ll see is a vibrant green window with the flag of the country you’re going to connect to and an orange button that says “connect.”

Click the flag or the small location symbol next to the “connect” button to open the server menu. It lets you look at the available locations to connect to and is easy to browse. The list has an automatic option at the top that picks the fastest available server, three “most recommended” options, including France, Germany and the U.S., and an alphabetized list of countries.

The list has the names of each country as well as their flags, which helps with quick browsing. There’s also a search function at the top if you know where you want to connect.

At the top right is a button that opens the menu screen. The menu screen is laid out well and, as mentioned, bare-bones. If you’re someone who wants complete control over how your VPN is configured, that could be seen as detrimental, but there’s something to be said for the simplicity of Webroot WiFi Security’s interface.

There are five tabs at the top of the settings window, and each one has a handful of clearly explained options. The tabs cover protocols; general settings, such as running on start-up and notifications; connection settings, such as the killswitch; the malicious website blocking web filter and contacting support.

Speed

Speed is a mixed bag with Webroot WiFi Security. From our testing, the overall picture seems to be that the North American and European servers are high quality, while the Asian and South American servers are not up to the same standards.

When connecting to a U.S. East Coast server, which are most likely in New York City, making them about 400 miles away from our testing location, we see a slight increase in ping, but a negligible loss of speed.

Moving farther away to the servers in London, which are roughly 3,800 miles from us, we see only a slight rise in ping time and little loss of speed. The Swiss servers also see impressive performance given the considerable distance.

The story is different when testing servers on other continents, though. For example, connecting to Japan, which is around 6,800 miles away from us, loses more than half of our sustained download bandwidth. Brazil paints a similar picture performance-wise, despite being about the same distance as London from us.

Though the ping times on some of the servers aren’t terrible, they aren’t low enough to play competitive games on. If your aim is to play restricted games, or play on other servers, check out our best VPN for gaming roundup to see which VPN will give you the best edge.

That said, many of the servers we tested do have excellent speeds. The London server performs well and loses little of our sustained speeds.

Server speeds are inconsistent, though, making Webroot WiFi Security a risky choice if you rely on fast internet speeds. If you’re looking for reliably impressive download or upload performance, then take a look at our list of the fastest VPNs.

Security

Security is the weakest area for Webroot WiFi Security. As we touched on earlier, the protocols offered are far from ideal, with IKEv2 being the default protocol.

IKEv2 sets up a security association between your computer and the server that’s being contacted with things such as a cipher and a traffic encryption key. What that means is it’s the fastest VPN “protocol” in most cases, and the security is modestly good but not as good as a true tunneling protocol, such as OpenVPN.

The other options are worse, with L2TP being a reasonably secure tunneling protocol and PPTP being out of the question for anyone because it’s outdated and not secure. Neither one is as robust in terms of security as OpenVPN, which most providers offer because it’s free and open source.

That said, all of those protocols have AES 256-bit encryption added to them to aid in obscuring your data. If you’re curious about encryption and what that means, consider taking a look at our description of encryption article.

A red flag in addition to the lack of secure protocols is that during our testing we found that Webroot WiFi Security is full of DNS leaks. Every server and protocol got picked up on our internet service provider’s DNS server.

If you’re want to know more about what that means, read our what are DNS leaks article. In summary, it means that even though you’re connecting to the internet through a foreign server, your computer is still contacting and sharing information with your ISP or, in some cases, your government.

The lack of secure protocols and the DNS leak issue mean that people trying to get around internet censorship should avoid Webroot WiFi Security. If you’re looking for a way to punch through China’s Great Firewall, for example, you should take a look at our best VPN services for China roundup.

Privacy

Privacy policies make an immediate first impression depending on how long they are. Longer ones are much more likely to conceal sneaky legal language or “ifs” and “buts.” That’s the case with Webroot’s privacy policy.

At the start, it claims that it doesn’t log or collect browsing activity data. If you read further, though, that appears to be untrue. The policy outlines five things that Webroot WiFi Security logs, including date and time of usage, amount of data transmitted during use, which server you connected to, the country you connected from and the number of devices linked to the account.

Though your IP address isn’t kept on record, according to Webroot, the country you’re in is. That’s something of an irrelevant distinction, though, because it keeps your home address on record to process payments. The policy then says that the information is kept “for as long as is necessary in the purpose for which Webroot collects it.”

No VPN provider should have a privacy policy as long as Webroot’s. If the policy drones on for pages, and the provider is trying to keep your home address and other information on file for as long as it pleases, it’s not private. If you’re interested in what a concise and well-written privacy policy looks like, read our VyprVPN review.

Streaming Performance

Given the DNS leaks that we picked up in our testing, we thought Webroot WiFi Security wouldn’t be able to pierce through the BBC’s or Netflix’s intense proxy denial capabilities. It proved us wrong.

Without changing a single setting, we were able to access BBC iPlayer and watch BBC content. The story was the same for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and all other streaming services we tested.

The performance was good, too, with videos only taking a few seconds to load and defaulting to 1080p or, in some cases, 720p. There were no interruptions or buffering issues, and if the player defaulted to 720p, it often moved up to 1080p when the connection was more stable.

Though Webroot WiFi Security did surprisingly well at accessing geoblocked websites, we urge you to investigate other options because of its security and privacy issues. If you’re trying to get to BBC content, check out our best VPN for BBC iPlayer roundup. If Netflix is what you’re after, read our how to beat the Netflix VPN ban article.

Server Locations

Webroot WiFi Security has 35 locations that are spread evenly across the globe. There are locations in Africa, North America, Asia, South America and Europe, meaning you have a good chance of finding a nearby server, no matter where you may be.

The locations that most people will make use of are covered, including the U.S. and UK. Though they’re spread out well, 35 servers is an anemic number. If you’re trying to find the VPN that offers the most locations, check out our HideMyAss review. HideMyAss has a stunning 280 locations in 190 countries.

Customer Service

Customer service was a mixed bag with Webroot WiFi Security. There are several options for how to get support. There’s a live chat feature on the website, but it’s only available on the checkout page and is geared toward answering any final questions people may have while shopping.

When we got in touch with the people on live chat, they were able to answer our questions and responded quickly. We also created a support ticket to get help with a simulated problem through email. As of the time of writing, it has been three days since we made our support ticket and we have still not heard back.

Webroot’s website also has an extensive user forum where you can ask questions to the community and get answers from other users. It’s laid out well and easy to use. On the other hand, the massive knowledgebase is useful if you can find the right section, but it’s more difficult to navigate because it prioritizes answers about Webroot’s antivirus and other programs.

The Verdict

Webroot WiFi Security executed many of the technical aspects of being a VPN provider well. The server locations are chosen well and distributed all over the globe. Many of the servers offer impressive speeds and the VPN’s ability to access geoblocked content was among the best we’ve seen.

That said, it misses the mark when it comes to security and privacy, which are arguably the two most important aspects of a good VPN provider.

If you have experience with Webroot’s VPN or any of its other services, let us know about it in the comments below. We love hearing from you and, as always, thanks for reading.