Keenow is a powerful VPN and Smart DNS service that allows people from all over the world to protect their privacy, enhance their security, and access websites and apps that are otherwise blocked for them due to censorship or geo-fencing.
The Lite plan was initially introduced in 2015 with Keenow v1.0 in order to provide Free Smart DNS services to users around the world. As years gone by, most streaming services have improved their geo-fencing protection methods, and they continue to do so nowadays. Consequently, the Lite plan does not fully answer the needs of our non-paying users as it did back in 2015.
Therefore, we are retiring the Lite plan as of August 31st, 2019. Shortly after that date, all DNS requests to Keenow DNS from Lite users would be diverted to 3rd-party DNS servers.
If you are using Microsoft Windows, then you are welcome to try our free vpn product - FreeVPN.win, which features high-speed VPN servers that can be used to unblock streaming services worldwide.
Easy - just press on the ‘Get Keenow’ button above and follow the instructions.
You can use Keenow from anywhere in the world. Keenow Premium allows you to access all the countries listed on the Keenow Network Map.
Please refer to the Keenow Setup Page to download apps for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, iOS (iPhone and iPad), Android, Android TV and Amazon Fire.
In addition, manual setup guides are available for other devices.
Keenow was developed to overcome web censorship by Keen Media Group, a team of IT professionals from various countries. We have a very strong stance against geo-blocking and the fact that International end-users like us are discriminated compared to our U.S. peers, and therefore we have built Keenow out of ideology.
We invite you to visit the European Consumer Organisation website to thoroughly understand why Geo-blocking is a very wrong business practice.
This section relates to Netflix for web (i.e. www.netflix.com). If you are enquiring about the Netflix app (i.e. iPhone, Android, Playstation, etc...), then please jump ahead to the next question.
In most cases, issues with Netflix are a result of DNS caching by your browser or device, but before we jump to cleaning your DNS cache, let’s check the following to determine the root cause of the issue:
Everything should work well now. If it doesn't, please feel free to contact our support team and we'll do our best to assist.
Please follow the Netflix App guide to unblock the Netflix App.
Unlike Netflix for web (www.netflix.com), most Netflix apps use hard-coded DNS settings, as well as hard-coded IP addresses - which means that it is nearly impossible to unblock the Netflix App using Smart DNS.
Unlike most unblockers that rely on Virtual Private Networks (VPN), Keenow mainly relies on the Smart DNS technology to unblock content, and therefore using the basic unblocking feature of Keenow would not change the device's IP address. We do recommend to read the Technical FAQ section below to understand more about the differences between Smart DNS and VPN's. It is important to note that the premium version of Keenow also includes unrestricted VPN access as well as state-of-the-art VPN client.
Firstly, we are really sorry to see you go - and we would really appreciate your feedback. Please feel free to share your thoughts by contacting our support team - our CEO reviews the support tickets daily.
The Keenow Smart DNS Suite for Microsoft Windows adds an uninstallation entry to the Control Panel / Settings menu. You can uninstall the product by accessing the Start Menu and then Control Panel -> Add/Remove Program menu (Windows 7) or Settings -> System -> Apps and Features menu (Windows 10).
Mac OS Users would first need to quit the Keenow app. Open Keenow, click on the Keenow Unblocker entry on the top menu bar and choose Quit Keenow Unblocker (refer to the image below). Open Finder, head to the Applications directory and drag the Keenow icon to the trash can.
Unlike most unblockers which solely rely on a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection to unblock content, Keenow also takes advantage of a Smart DNS technology to unblock websites and apps. The Smart DNS technology allows users to unblock content on the fly without a need to first establish a VPN connnection.
DNS stands for Domain Name Server. When a device is trying to connect to a remote server, the IP address of that remote server must be included in the request. Since IP addresses are usually hard to remember, a typical human-being would much rather remember a domain name such as 'Facebook.com' than an IP address such as 66.220.156.68. When encountering a domain name, your device first connects to a predefined Domain Name Server (DNS) which resolve the domain name to an IP address, allowing the device to send a request to the proper IP address - the network destination. This is where Keenow steps in.
Smart DNS is basically a customised DNS server which resolves domain names of streaming sites to proxy servers which are (normally) located in the U.S, allowing you to unblock U.S. streaming sites no matter where you are situated right now around the world, and without compromising the speed of your Internet connection.
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a network technology that creates an encrypted network connection over the Internet between a client (you) and a remote server. Since military-grade encryption is being used, no one can decrypt the data flowing between the client and the server unless they have the proper decryption key - not your ISP, not hackers, and definitely not your government. In most cases, remote VPN servers are located in the U.S. and therefore you are being assigned with a U.S. IP address which allows use to access U.S. sites and apps.
To answer this question, we must understand how VPN services actually create a private connection. When you start your VPN client, it actually creates an encrypted tunnel to a remote server, and encrypts all the data that flows through it. The VPN client actually encrypts and transmits ALL your bandwidth through remote servers, and therefore the solution is relatively slow and not cheap (unless the VPN providers decide to share your Internet connection with other people - but that's a different story). The bottom line - unless you want to conceal your online identity, VPN is most likely to be an overkill if all you want to acheive is only unblock websites.
Smart DNS uses a set of rules on the DNS level to determine which domain calls to proxy, and which not. Therefore, the solution is generally faster than a VPN service since not all your data is being transmitted via a proxy server.
Smart DNS by itself does not conceal your online identity, and does not secure your Internet connection. In addition, some apps (not websites! i.e. Netflix or BBC apps for iOS/Android) can override the Smart DNS configurations by setting the app to call hard-coded DNS and IP addresses. For those reasons, the premium version of Keenow includes a state-of-the-art VPN feature.
DNS resolution only takes few hundred milliseconds, but when a webpage calls 50 different domains it can get a bit tricky. In order to improve webpages loading speed, both Microsoft Windows and Google Chrome have a local cache where all previous DNS calls are saved, and quickly retrieved when you access different sites. In fact, that's one of the reasons that Chrome is such a fast browser.
