[HN Gopher] WeVPN Is Shutting Down
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WeVPN Is Shutting Down
Author : askura
Score : 64 points
Date : 2023-04-13 18:10 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wevpn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (wevpn.com)
| askura wrote:
| Another VPN service bites it.
| yegor wrote:
| Heya, Windscribe co-founder here.
|
| WeVPN indirectly approached us to "make their users whole" for
| the time that they had paid for. In the spirit of collaboration,
| and not further tainting the already murky image of the consumer
| VPN industry, we decided to comp every WeVPN users with free
| service for the duration of their remaining subscription.
|
| This is a goodwill gesture only, we're not engaged in any
| official partnership with WeVPN, and are/were not affiliated with
| them in any way.
| Ephil012 wrote:
| Just wanted to say I have been using your product for years and
| it's been pretty great. I picked it up years ago for some
| lifetime vpn promotion on stack social that y'all ran. Been
| using it ever since and it's been amazing.
| yegor wrote:
| Glad to hear! Those Lifetime accounts are crazy good value,
| never to be offered again. :)
| sergiotapia wrote:
| This is great marketing. I checked you guys out and I'm in the
| market for a fast private VPN what's the BitTorrent story like
| with your VPN? I have gigabit fiber speeds, what kind of
| download max speed can I see with BitTorrent on windscribe?
| yegor wrote:
| No VPN is "the fastest" for everyone. There are many factors
| at play that dictate speeds, these include: your ISP, the ISP
| of the server location you connect to, protocol you use, 3rd
| party software installed (AV or firewalls are common speed
| reducers), etc. Most people think that one VPN oversells and
| runs severs at 95% NIC throughput, while another does not,
| and that's the only factor. Sure, some probably DO do this,
| but I'd wager most do not.
|
| I recommend just trying it for yourself, there is free
| service available. Choose Wireguard as the protocol, and try
| the closest geographic location to you.
| aftbit wrote:
| Why do you still use RSA keys?
|
| https://windscribe.net/features/strongest-encryption
| yegor wrote:
| This page is rather outdated, the answer depends on the
| protocol you use. Our entire site is being overhauled right
| now, so this will be addressed part of that release.
|
| However the RSA portion only applies to OpenVPN, and for
| compatibility reasons. Use WG (our default protocol) if you
| want modern algos and high throughput.
| distracteddev90 wrote:
| Was affected by this, and so far, windscribe is a far superior
| service.
|
| The transition was seamless.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| I've never heard of WeVPN but honestly it's a pretty poor name. I
| would associate it with WeChat and just assume it's for state
| surveillance.
| livinglist wrote:
| I have the same feeling towards WeWork and WePay...
| singlow wrote:
| At least WePay predates WeChat by a few years and WeWork was
| founded same year so probably before WeChat was well known.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Interesting. I assumed it was part of the WeWork crowd and
| would have avoided it on that basis.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Running a VPN service nowadays feels kind of like starting a
| local ISP in the early 90s. How many of those survived?
| imhoguy wrote:
| Local ISPs were either replaced or taken over by larger
| operators. But one had to show up and put cables. VPN is rather
| like FTP hosting of 2020s, global and anyone with WireGuard
| source anyone can fork clients and make VPN in a little time,
| even one dev business.
| askura wrote:
| I've noticed community ran ISPs are on the rise. It would be
| great to see a boom like in the 90s as some ISPs have such a
| monopoly
| mardifoufs wrote:
| It's weird because the VPN industry is usually portrayed as
| having high margins (and it makes sense, considering how much
| money is spent on marketing by various VPN services).
|
| Is it a case of "winners take all", with smaller players having
| little revenue and profit? But then again, everyone seems to
| offer their own vpn now (adguard, blokada, protonmail, etc). Is
| it just profitable if you offer a bare minimum, almost white
| labeled service?
|
| (I guess I have always wondered how and why VPN offering seem to
| have exploded recently, and how tons of them seem to be able to
| afford lavish ad spend even with little VC money)
| askura wrote:
| I'm seeing it more going the other way. Over the past few years
| so many services have been bought by bigger corps or even media
| companies. These bigger companies seem to be able to undercut
| the competition. Causing things like this I guess.
|
| Though it's anyone's guess what has happened as service over
| time had deteriorated quite drastically.
| yegor wrote:
| Windscribe co-founder here.
|
| Consumer VPN industry is a shit show, especially in the last
| 3-5 years. The parasitic "VPN review" industry is making all
| the money, as the "big VPNs" are paying ridiculously high CPA
| rates (think gambling CPA rates of $50-$100). Most "review"
| sites rank VPNs based on a single metric - who pays the most.
| This is why vpnmentor (a review site) was acquired for more
| money than PrivateInternetAccess (a "major VPN). Hilariously,
| by the same company, Kape technologies which used used to make
| adware (as Crossrider), and then decided to go all in on
| "privacy".
|
| Then there are influencers and Youtubers, all of them peddling
| VPNs of the highest bidder, reading off a script and making
| impossible / bullshit claims about capabilities of VPNs. This
| outright causes harm to the industry.
|
| VPNs that don't participate in these BS schemes (or can't pay
| $100/signup, and wait for ROI 3 years later), have only 1 way
| to grow: word of mouth, based on the merits of the product.
| This is very difficult to do given the massive ad spend of the
| "big VPNs", and false advertising they engage in.
|
| Don't even get me started on the consolidation....
| https://blog.windscribe.com/consolidation-of-the-vpn-industr...
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I'll take a look at your product. FWIW as a casual observer
| of consumer VPN recently, I will tell you two companies I
| have used and so far liked:
|
| Mullvad, it performs well and I feel that the ability to pay
| cash/crypto, the lack of subscription both are tangible
| signals that they are real about anonymity.
|
| Proton, with their Secure Core features is pretty nifty and I
| like that they have other products that shoehorn into
| "getting away from being spied on" by providing
| mail/calendar/drive storage as an alternative to Google.
| Their drive product could use some work but overall I'm
| really happy to pay $10/mo for VPN+custom domain mail+500GB
| of available cold storage.
|
| Thanks for the background on the industry.
| stereoradonc wrote:
| Proton is overrated on most aspects; Fastmail is a better
| alternative to Proton Mail. Dropbox better than Proton
| Drive. (I understand you are paranoid about it, but just
| mentioning it is still better technically).
| yegor wrote:
| I'm personally puzzled by Proton. Their "pedigree" is
| nothing to snuff at, however being a privacy oriented
| service and then getting consumers to tunnel all their
| traffic through you, use your email, cloud storage, and
| calendar (basically all your personal info) is an odd
| proposition. Same goes for Nord, who also has a password
| manager on top of all of this.
|
| "We store no logs for your privacy", all whole literally
| storing your entire life under the umbrella of one company.
| Why not just stick with Google at that point? At least
| they're a public company and heavily regulated.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| Wow. Even though you are self-interested, or maybe because of
| it, I hope this honesty and naked emporer approach serves you
| well. I have no use (?) for a VPN but I just bought the pro
| plan with "cool badge" sticker anyway because I like the cut
| of your jib.
|
| What say you about Mullvad?
| yegor wrote:
| Thanks for the support, glad you enjoyed the COOL BADGE.
| Windscribe is full of Easter eggs and quirks, as we don't
| take ourselves too seriously when it comes to PR and coms
| (check out our Youtube). Perhaps to our detriment in some
| cases...
|
| As for Mullvad, I think it's a solid service. If one needs
| a VPN, and doesn't want to use Windscribe for whatever
| reason, I always recommend IVPN or Mullvad. Windscribe is
| spiritually based on IVPN (I used it for many years before
| WS existed). No advertising, no affiliate program, no BS
| claims.
|
| At the end of the day, it tunnels your friggen packets to a
| remote endpoint, nothing more. That alone has virtually
| zero impact on privacy (safe a few exceptions, like Linux
| ISO torrenting). The additional/optional bells and whistles
| we have DO make it more of a privacy suite, but that's only
| one small part of the big picture.
| all2 wrote:
| It's a pity you guys aren't hiring. I'm rather a fan of
| the no-bull discourse you're putting out.
|
| I'll be swapping from ExpressVPN shortly.
| yegor wrote:
| We actually are if you're a network engineer or SRE. Even
| if you're not, we have room on pretty much every team
| (backend, web, QA) for like-minded individuals with a
| particular skill set. Feel free to drop me a line at
| yegor@windscribe.com
| fock wrote:
| and you seem to provide wireguard-configs! (which for me is
| the #1 criterion for a sensible VPN: provide me a hop on the
| road which I can use however I like it; bonus-points for
| Mullvads cash-top-up, it works!)
| yegor wrote:
| We do, but for most people we suggest to use our apps.
| They're open source (https://github.com/Windscribe/Desktop-
| App), have a LOT of neat features (split tunneling, MAC
| spoofing, firewall, TCP socket termination, running a local
| proxy server, and (as of the next update) DOH/DOT support
| with split horizon DNS).
|
| You can also import your own WG and OpenVPN configs into
| the app, and use your own servers and benefit from all of
| the above mentioned features. Hell, you can even use the
| app without a WS account, solely for this purpose.
| bullhorn wrote:
| >VPNs that don't participate in these BS schemes (or can't
| pay $100/signup, and wait for ROI 3 years later), have only 1
| way to grow: word of mouth, based on the merits of the
| product. This is very difficult to do given the massive ad
| spend of the "big VPNs", and false advertising they engage
| in.
|
| Highly agree with this statement.
|
| That's why from my experience of using PIA, windscribe,
| keepsolid, Nord and mullvad.
|
| I keep recommending mullvad VPN to collegues, acquittances
| and online friend (on a down side their IP reputation sucks
| badly, too much of captchas)
| stereoradonc wrote:
| I implemented the SOCKS5 proxy, and I hardly get any.
| Shifted from ProtonVPN to Mullvad; rock solid connection;
| great app. Totally worth the investment. ProtonVPN's app is
| clunky, and I am not happy with it. Besides, zero Linux
| support despite the premium charge. I am not affiliated
| with Mullvad, but this represents an excellent value for
| money. I still have to try Windscribe. I have heard good
| things about them.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > (on a down side their IP reputation sucks badly, too much
| of captchas)
|
| I'd be surprised if this doesn't apply to _ALL_ commercial
| VPNs.
| yegor wrote:
| There are ways to get around it. I'm confident you will
| see much fewer CAPTCHAs on our network, as we have
| mitigations in place for it.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| I don't know much about VPNs but that statement is one of
| my red flags: when a VPN provider is vague about ip
| reputation migrations I assume they're buying residential
| proxys.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Wow I had no idea those fake review sites were such a big
| money maker. As a technical person I would instantly discard
| them and look for comments from real users. Word of mouth is
| also how I ended up with Mullvad.
|
| I thought this kind of thing didn't happen so much with VPNs
| as their target market is pretty technical and I would expect
| those people not to fall for 'review' or comparison site
| scams.
|
| Clearly I was completely wrong. I'm sorry to hear your
| industry is basically being blackmailed by these scammers (I
| consider a site pretending to give advice or comparisons but
| instead offering the highest bidder a total scam)
| yegor wrote:
| Everything is fake on MOST (I'm talking 99%) review sites.
| The comments are fake/cherry picked too, to make the "best"
| VPN look best.
|
| We did some tests years ago by commenting positive things
| on "best" VPNs, and negative ones on "not best" ones. These
| get published every time. Do the same in reverse, only a
| small fraction gets posted.
|
| Most of these "reviews" are written by SEO blog spammers,
| as most review sites are owned by marketing agencies or
| people with marketing backgrounds.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Woah! thanks for your reply! Exactly the type of insight I
| was looking for when I wrote my comment :). Does the very
| high CPA indicate that the core vpn service by itself is
| fairly inexpensive to run, meaning that a vast majority of
| the costs are related to marketing and customer acquisition?
| Was it a "better" business to run a few years ago when
| competition was less cutthroat?
| yegor wrote:
| It's certainly a lot more competitive now. There is very
| little customer loyalty in the industry, especially for the
| average joe. "Why would I pay $x/month when I can get
| lifetime account with NAME_GOES_HERE VPN". We did sell
| Lifetime accounts for a bit, 4+ years ago, they sold like
| hot cakes, but if you keep doing it, you're screwed long
| term.
|
| For us, biggest cost (no surprise) is infrastructure and
| staff, which is split ~50/50. Our ad budget is $0, however
| the same is not true for the big snakeoil sellers out
| there. They burn CRAZY cash on ads, which is why the
| renewal terms in fine print (at least for Nord) would make
| American telcos salivate with jealousy. "Buy X years for
| price Y, get Z months free" - you don't get any "free"
| months (basically a lie), and it renews at 2.5x the price,
| if you read the fine print.
|
| It's really disgusting.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I recognize that this isn't fair, and apologize for this, but
| the consumer VPN industry is so obviously full of scammers
| and nonsense that I wouldn't go with any of the providers at
| all.
|
| I have no way of knowing with anything approaching confidence
| which ones are decent and which ones aren't.
| yegor wrote:
| It really is, no offence taken. We're trying to be the
| cherry on top of the turd pile, but I'm not really selling
| it, am I...?
| JohnFen wrote:
| Actually, you're selling it very well. Speaking frankly
| is the first step towards gaining trust -- even if that
| frank speech appears not to be flattering.
| winstonprivacy wrote:
| 100% agreed with this comment.
|
| We kind of got lumped into the VPN segment back in the day,
| despite being a hardware product. The cutthroat nature of the
| existing media agreements (NordVPN and Express VPN mainly)
| along with the sky high CPMs they were paying made it
| impossible for us to acquire customers and keep them long
| enough to pay our bills.
|
| Pretty smart tactic... if you're them. Quite bad for the
| consumer though.
| flavmartins wrote:
| This reminds me of Web hosting and the review industry around
| it 20 years back and I worked for a large web hosting
| provider.
|
| The founder was really open about it. And back then hosting
| had ~$100 CPA and we had instances where we wouldn't turn a
| profit on a customer who purchased a shared hosting account
| UNLESS they renewed after 2 years given the cost to acquire.
|
| To this day, when I see lists reviewing services providers,
| I'm always skeptical of them and steer away from letting them
| influence my decision on a service provider.
| majormajor wrote:
| Those marketing costs need to be included in the margins - put
| concretely, it means cost of customer acquisition is very high.
| If you're spending two dollars to bring in one dollar, you're
| going to fail.
|
| Consolidation is an attempt to bring those costs down by
| reducing the number of players bidding for customers.
| leros wrote:
| The barrier to entry is also pretty low. It's basically a
| marketing game to see who can attract customers at the best
| rate of return. I'm guessing there are tons of VPN startups
| that never get large enough to keep going and the ones that do
| grow probably get acquired by the bigger ones.
| askura wrote:
| Yeah seems to be the case. Express VPN's parent corp acquired
| CyberGhost, Zenmate, Private Internet access over the last
| few years.
|
| They also paid as much as several of these put together for
| the marketing/affiliate websites Webselence, VPNmentor,
| Safety Detectives. Which shows how much money must be in
| these affiliate programs.
| meltedcapacitor wrote:
| Sounds like a hard business for small VPN providers, getting
| squeezed between the cat and mouse game with content providers
| blocking them on one side, and users abusing the service on the
| other side. Same work whatever size, so better be big, or white
| label a big name.
| codexon wrote:
| What work do VPN providers do get themselves unblocked?
| [deleted]
| CharlesW wrote:
| Sketchy VPN providers use botnet services like Mylobot to
| provide residential exit nodes.
|
| https://www.bitsight.com/blog/mylobot-investigating-proxy-
| bo...
| jfengel wrote:
| I don't know much about the industry, but I'm a bit surprised
| to hear about them having high margins.
|
| I'd have thought that maintaining infrastructure would be kind
| of a pain. You need to have outgoing access points all over the
| place. I assume that they mostly just rent them, but still,
| that's just a bunch of egress fees. And I'm sure that their
| customers love to stream movies through their VPN.
|
| I suppose the fact that I hear about VPNs mostly through
| commercials means that the margins must be high, or they
| wouldn't spend so much on acquisition. But it seems like an
| unpleasant business to be in, with a lot of overhead and
| customer handholding.
| Trufa wrote:
| Have never heard of neither but honestly a pretty good compromise
| if you ask me.
| tecleandor wrote:
| It's super weird that they've removed the founder's and CEO
| information from the site, and there is so little information
| about them on the Internet. Specially when WeVPN founder claims
| to "have been running" Private Internet Access for years, and
| there's a blog post saying that he used to be the President for
| PIA, and some other press releases saying he was the CEO.
|
| The cache for their "about us" section [0]:
| Jonathan Roudier Founder VPN Experience: 8
| years Jon has nearly a decade of working in the VPN
| industry originally in Marketing and later in leadership and
| senior management. With his years of insight and customer
| knowledge gained from running Private Internet Access(r), one of
| the world's biggest VPN providers, Jon decided to build his own
| VPN to ensure that the moral and ethics which he holds true are
| upheld and to provide an industry leader in transparency and
| accountability. Outside of WeVPN, He enjoys spending time at the
| gym and watching movies.
|
| Press release in PIA's blog for when they bought Cypherpunk VPN
| [1]: Private Internet Access President Jon
| Roudier
|
| Press release announcing CES sponsor [2]:
| Jonathan Roudier, CEO of PIA, said "We, at Private Internet
| Access, are so thrilled..." 0: https://webcache.google
| usercontent.com/search?q=cache:LVfIvHK77E4J:https://wevpn.com/abo
| ut-us&cd=2&hl=es&ct=clnk&gl=es 1:
| https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/private-internet-
| access-london-trust-media-acquired-cypherpunk-vpn/ 2:
| https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151221005130/en/Private-
| Internet-Access-Top-Mobile-Sponsor-2016
| urbandw311er wrote:
| I'm sure they're delighted that you've drawn attention to this
| and republished their personal information. /s
| saghm wrote:
| > Jon decided to build his own VPN to ensure that the moral
| and ethics which he holds true are upheld and to provide an
| industry leader in transparency and accountability.
|
| Seems in the spirit of their own values!
| jstarfish wrote:
| Commitment to transparency and accountability are not
| exactly selling points for a privacy product.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| VPNs are insanely profitable, they're probably BEING shut down,
| so that would explain that.
| askura wrote:
| Interesting spot there
| IndigoIncognito wrote:
| Windscribe VPN's marketing team is honestly top notch
| kube-system wrote:
| I'd guess they were a Windscribe reseller.
| yegor wrote:
| No, they never were. We had no relationship with them until
| now.
|
| Source: I'm a Windscribe co-founder.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Hi Yegor, does Windscribe have an API (for resellers)? If
| so, how can one get access?
| yegor wrote:
| Hit me up at yegor@windscribe.com
| IndigoIncognito wrote:
| Your marketing team needs a raise
|
| Source: A happy customer
| fuddle wrote:
| I did wonder how WeVPN were offering such low prices compared to
| all other VPN providers. e.g a 2-Year subscription @ $2.59 per
| month
| bananapub wrote:
| that's rough, especially for the various law enforcement and
| intelligence services who lost that collection avenue.
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