Unotelly is quite upfront about what it expects its geoblock-dodging service to be used for. It (mostly) works as advertised, but not without a few quirks.
Ethical disclaimer: I’m interested in VPNs generally, but it should be pointed out that Unotelly’s provided the review account as a “lifetime” account for the purposes of review. Looking around, that’s the way they appear to operate for review generation, but I’d much rather be upfront about this; not everyone is.
Unotelly: On the plus side
Unotelly isn’t shy about what it’s offering, which is intended to be for dodging the geoblocking that restricts direct access to Internet TV services in the US and UK, from BBC iPlayer to Neflix, Hulu to 4OD, and so on.
The standard way that most of these services are accessed is via what’s called a VPN (Virtual Private Network) connection. VPNs can have many uses, because they encrypt every bit of traffic coming out from your system, but as a result they can introduce significant degradation to the quality of your broadband connection. VPNs are used for all sorts of purposes as a result, including a lot of business work where confidential information needs to remain confidential, as well as getting around the IP-based geographical blocks put around online content.
In brutally simple terms, everything’s got to go through a single pipe, and if the pipe isn’t wide enough you’ll find your entire net connection slowed down.
Unotelly does offer VPN services, but its basic product is instead access to modified DNS (domain name server) services. DNS is more lightweight than a “full” VPN service, because rather than routing all your traffic through a single secured pipe, all it’s doing is looking out for access to specific sites or services, and masking those to allow access.
Getting Unotelly up and working involves logging into the service (unless you’re on a fixed IP address) after you’ve configured the DNS settings for the device you’re going to use for access. Here Unotelly does well, with clear instructions on how to set up everything from a Windows PC to an iPod Touch available.
It mostly works, too; with Unotelly enabled I was able to access services such as BBC iPlayer or Hulu without those pesky “not available in your country” error messages popping up. It will vary a little depending on the connection you’ve got, but for the most part it does do what it says it’ll do with regards to specific Internet TV services.
Unotelly: On the minus side
The catch with DNS services such as Unotelly is that they’re specific creatures that look just for traffic to the specific services Unotelly is covering. That means that there can be an element of cat-and-mouse with those services, but that aside, it also means that if you’re looking to access a service that’s not on Unotelly’s list, you’re plumb out of luck unless you can convince them to add it. Either that, or you pony up the additional monthly fee for their VPN service, and live with the potential speed bottlenecks there.
The included instructions for each type of device are clear enough, but I could easily see them as being daunting for network novices. It’s not quite as simple as many VPN connections that include a login client where you simply click the VPN on or off.
It’s also not entirely bulletproof. In my testing with both Hulu and BBC iPlayer, I hit several instances where programs would simply stall on streaming, sometimes halfway through a program. These kinds of problems are the pits, because from a layperson’s perspective it can be all but impossible to work out what’s going wrong. Was it iPlayer? Was it Hulu? Was it Unotelly, or was it my ISP? All you can do in those circumstances is wait to see if the problem resolves itself satisfactorily.
It’s also something that does still require a decent quality connection to be viable. The overhead for Unotelly’s DNS services is relatively minor, but if you’re sitting on a lower-speed ADSL connection, you may well find that even with DNS services in place, you’re still struggling to get a satisfactory connection for pleasant viewing.
Finally, it’s not as though Unotelly is the only option in this kind of service. There’s plugins such as Hola Unblocker that (while their methodology is slightly different) perform the same kind of service. Your experience may or may not be patchy with Hola — for the brief time I tested it out it wasn’t great — but it’s always worth checking your full options.
Unotelly: Pricing
Unotelly currently offers two pricing packages. The basic service, “UnoDNS Premium”, offers DNS access only for $US3.99 per month, while “UnoDNS Gold, which includes a VPN component, costs $US4.99.
Unotelly: Fat Duck verdict
Unotelly’s offering is competitively priced against the broader VPN-specific market, and if your interests in this kind of service only revolve around set TV-style access it’s a solid option with a trial period that should allow you to work out if it’ll play nicely with your network connection.
Unotelly has extremely bad customer service. You are lucky to get a response. I even referred a friend and they deleted my 1 month credit when I asked to have it applied to my bill. I emailed them following up several times and they ignored me every time.
There are so many other DNS services I would definitely not recommend Unotelly.
Unotelly customer service is actually very prompt, professional and very helpful. I’ve accessed it at least ten times. Never disappointed. Awesome product too.
I can’t agree with the OP. I’ve had UnoTelly for a couple of years, amazing customer service. As I move around a lot I have two subscriptions – one for home, one for away. They even gave me a discount on the second service.
I’ve never had any “freezing” problems that I can attribute to UnoTelly. I use a UK Roku 3 to watch BBC iPlayer, 4OD, iTV etc. all the time with no problems at all.
I did piggy-back onto a US subscriber’s access to HBO Go via my Apple TV but because it was streamed in HD it did lock up occasionally. However that wasn’t via UnoTelly – see slingsharing.com for offers
I dont know about the customer service, however the service they provide is great! (at least for me). Also VERY important to mention is the fact that the offer a Dinamic DNS Service so that you can access different streaming services from different countries without changing the settings of your DNS. I use it on daily basis and 97% of the times works perfectly.
Totally recommendable
I’m not very IT-minded. I work on the internet from home and wouldn’t want to mess around using UnoTelly DNS servers if it meant it might create problems in connecting with my work’s servers. Could this problem arise and would it mean having to switch DNS settings each time I needed to work?
Incidentally, if wanting to surf the net or check email etc do you have to change the UnoTelly DNS servers back to your ISP ones?
I cannot access HBO or Hulu from the UK
+1 for bad customer service from Unotelly. Half of the channels they listed did not work. I shopped around a bit and tried Unblock US and Unlocator. Ended up going with Unlocator in the end.
UnoTelly is really the best VPN/Smart DNS service which i tried, and i really tried them all!
it works like a charm without any kind of problem, never an error, never an issue and you really will be able to watch the most important channels of the world also without a VPN without any kind of problem
Also the 24 hours live chat is really friendly and competent.
A special thanks to Jason that i consider like a friend.
I’ve been using UnoTelly for about a year and they do as advertised. You need to understand how these systems work so you can take action yourself when the most common ‘problem’ arises. That is, if your router at home is issued a new IP address because of a reset or ISP re-connection, then Unotelly won’t know who you are and things won’t work. They have a couple of tools to deal with this and it’s very easy, but like I said you just have to be aware.
All you need to do is go to their website, login and find ‘Quickstart’ and it will tell you if your current IP matches your account. If not, simply press the “New IP” link and bingo, you’re good to go. This tells UnoTelly what your current IP address is so they can update your account configuration.
They also provide little widgets for PC and mobile platforms to do this little task and a few others.
I don’t work for these people or have any affiliation at all. This may be better or worse than other services, I couldn’t say. All I know is its easy if you are aware and then the streaming is just like a direct connection.
I have been using Unotelly for about a year now. The only problem I have is I can’t seem to use the Unotelly services when I’m away from home. Anyone got any quick fixes – I did talk to Unotelly Customer Services some time last year but they couldn’t fix the problem.