At a glance
Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Good speed and performance
- Impressive anti-virus/anti-malware shielding through its real-time protection feature
- Extensive approach to identity alert and protection, including access to beta tools
Cons
- Subscription price only becomes reasonable on an annual or multi-year contract, not on a month-to-month basis
- Occasional trouble accessing Google services
- Annoying pop-up ads asking for app reviews
Our Verdict
It’s not entirely perfect, and the price point differences between the monthly and annual subscription tiers lead to mild whiplash, but Surfshark One offers a genuinely excellent suite of tools that combine the best of VPN, anti-virus/anti-malware, and privacy-focused identity protection that are worth your Consideration.
Price When Reviewed
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Best Pricing Today
It’s never easy balancing the engineering and the marketing departments within a company, and a great utility can head out the door at a price that’ll make the customer wince. This is somewhat the case with Surfshark One, the combination VPN/anti-malware/alert/private search/identity protection suite from Dutch developer Surfshark.
Moving beyond its VPN roots, Surfshark is now working to add additional tools to its package, the software requiring macOS 11 (Big Sur) or later to install and run (it is also compatible with Android and Windows operating systems). The price point, which includes a 30-day money-back guarantee from Surfshark, wanders all over the place, with a 24-month Surfshark Starter plan beginning at $2.19/£1.69 per month with three extra months and including VPN and Alternative ID tools for an annual or multi-year subscription, while a 1-month Surfshark Starter plan is $15.45/£12.29 per month for the VPN and Alternative ID tools.
See how Surfshark One compares to the Best Antivirus for Mac apps we’ve tested.
Where the modules themselves are concerned, Surfshark knows what it’s doing and isn’t afraid to show it. The VPN module includes the usual tools such as geolocation and IP address hiding with more complicated tools such as IP configuration, an Internet kill switch, rotating IP addresses, and Invisible on LAN features. Surfing is as easy as expected, and I was able to easily stream my guilty fix of Canadian reality TV while briskly hopping around to other sites for work. Read about Surfshark’s VPN in our round up of the Best Mac VPN and our review of Surfshark’s VPN offering.
The antivirus tool showed what Surfshark is capable of, and once I’d given Surfshark One full access to my hard drive and created a VPN configuration through the installer, Surfshark One’s real-time protection tool was able to catch dozens of my sample malware installers before I’d even begun to install them. Efforts to install dozens of chunks of malware were headed off at the pass with the application quickly quarantining them, and while I was able to get a false Adobe Flash Player installation through as well as decompress the occasional malware installer, Surfshark One was able to isolate the vast majority of everything that was thrown at it.
Foundry
Privacy is the current focus in the computing industry, and Surfshark One offers these tools in spades. The Search feature hooks into a private server if you’re worried as to what’s being tracked in your search history, and the company goes for broke with its Alternative ID tool, offering you a means of creating a private identity to surf with. This tool allows for a custom name, location, and preview to be created that can also be randomized with a generator function.
The Alerts function vies to compete with the big boys, such as Norton and McAfee, and offers email monitoring, credit card monitoring, and ID monitoring with customizable settings to control the frequency at which you receive email updates. The Alerts tool also offers leak reports, email leak reports, and an option to remove all data, which is present as a nuclear option. Surfshark One also offers access to beta identity protection features, which can generate a virtual phone number, manage phone calls, and mask your actual phone number to cut down on data collection.
All of this comes with surprisingly few hiccups, and while I occasionally had trouble accessing Google services, this resolved itself, and I was able to continue working normally. The Antivirus tool, albeit excellent, still allowed the occasional malware element through, and this might need to be checked on occasion. The only real point of contention remains the price point, which pushes hard for the user to sign up for an annual or multi-year plan. While Surfshark offers a fairly generous 30-day money-back guarantee and it was easy to get in touch with support contacts through the company’s web-based live chat feature, it’d be nice to see the company’s various departments come to an accord and offer a more balanced month-to-month subscription price as opposed to the wide chasm that currently exists between monthly and annual subscription prices. (To be fair, this pricing structure is pretty standard for VPNs, where settling for a two year option can save money over time, but doesn’t allow you to exit the contract.)
Should you get Surfshark One?
Surfshark One has grown beyond its VPN roots to offer a compelling set of tools that cover the gamut of VPN, privacy, security, alerts, customization, and anti-viral and anti-malware protection that are genuinely compelling. Surfshark offers an excellent package that works well, provides speedy performance, and becomes part of your streaming, entertainment, and work flow. Yes, the price points are a bit disorienting, and Surfshark heartily pushes you towards the annual or multi-year subscription, but it’s worth looking into the 30-day money-back guarantee and testing it out to see what’s there.
