US VPN and UK VPN for Mac: Support and FAQ

When it comes to downloading content quickly, what you want is the fastest route from your location to the server that hosts the content you need to access.

If your local internet provider has very good international bandwidth, connecting directly to the UK or US should be fine.

However, while good bandwidth within national boundaries is common, international bandwidth can be expensive so some internet providers economise on international connections and use cheap bandwidth that routes traffic across less-than-direct routes.

We created our ‘via’ routes to help: they use the best connections to route traffic quickly across the globe.

For instance, if you’re in Asia and you want to connect to the UK, if you connect straight to the UK you’ll be using a fast connection around the country you’re in, but the international traffic from there will probably use cheap bandwidth on slow connections.

If you instead use our UK via Singapore or UK via Thailand connections you should have a much faster connection to the UK – you’ll be connecting to a data centre in Singapore or Thailand that has a direct route under the sea straight to the UK – fast, more expensive bandwidth on a premium tier 1 network connection.

OpenVPN is a VPN protocol renowned for speed and security. If you’ve been having difficulty connecting via PPTP and L2TP we’d recommend trying OpenVPN.

If you don’t have a Flow VPN account:

1. Open UK / US VPN and click the blue ‘account’ button
2. Create a new account with your email address and a password of your choice
3. You’ll be sent an email with a verification link. Click the link and you’ll be taken to the Flow VPN client area
4. Choose a VPN server location
5. Click the Mac button to find configuration instructions including how to download the FlowVPN OpenVPN app to access OpenVPN

If you already have a Flow VPN account:

Go to the Flow VPN Knowledgebase Mac configuration page where you’ll find instructions on how to download and configure the FlowVPN OpenVPN app. Use your Flow VPN account to log in when you’re ready to connect.

To delete a VPN profile from your Mac, go to System Preferences > Network, select the profile you want to delete and click the – button.

Please note that a known bug with some versions of OS X prevents some profiles from being deleted.

If when you try to connect you see an error along the lines of “server did not respond”, assuming that your network connection is good and you’re online, it’s possible that your network doesn’t support the VPN protocol you’re using.

If you’ve been trying to connect using your PPTP profile, try L2TP instead. If you’re tried both PPTP and L2TP, try OpenVPN.

The other possible reason for this error is that there’s a problem with the server you’re trying to connect to. Use the ‘Select Server’ function in US or UK VPN to reconfigure your connection to use a different route.

If you’ve paid for your VPN subscription through an in-app purchase you don’t need to cancel, your subscription will come to an end after the expiry date shown in your VPN app and you won’t be charged again until you make another in-app purchase.