Zen Internet Reviews

As an IT professional, I work and do support from home. My wife and me are also big online gamers. Therefore when going for an ISP I went for realiability as my top most quality.

My broadband previously was with NTL (Virgin) via cable and let me tell you never, ever again. Numerous outages, frequent disconnects and terrible customer/technical support.

So I did some research reading forums and reviews of all the ISPs and I decided to go for Zen because everyone had mentioned its realiability as being excellent. I have been with them now 3 years and its true, you don't notice them being there which is a great advert for their services.

There will always be someone who will have a bad experience with Zen. But I bet you will find it to be a very small percentage.

I will breakdown the points I have awarded for Zen:

Services = 10, its reliable. I am on Zen Active and the cap suits me fine.

Support = 9, only thing is that its not 24/7. The times I have dealt with support they have been reasonable in getting back to me. I do IT support myself so I am aware what constitutes a good service.

Speed = 10, have no issues with the speeds I have. As a online gamer I am well aware that most online performance issues are PC related or game server related.

Value = 8, It is expensive and no one is arguing with that, you can get a similiar deal with another ISP at half the price. But as most people have stated, you get what you pay for.

It's funny if you look at the Top 10 on this website, you will see Zen Internet is on both lists, a large user base and still highly rated??? I wonder why that is.

I have been with Zen Internet for 4 years now. Since my first nightmare with BT when broadband started taking off in the UK, I never went for a big name broadband supplier again. Was with Demon for a while and their foreign support helpdesk was pathetic when something went wrong. Went to Zen for business and residential broadband thinking any company offering a 1 month rolling contract must have high standards and so far I have been proven correct. Zen might be more expensive and less value than some other ISPs but you get what you pay for with Zen. Customer service actually knows what is going on with orders and technical side of things. Super friendly. I thought the usage cap might be an issue but in 4 years it never has been. Highly recommended with support and company based in the UK.

I have just switched to Zen after having been with Orange since Freeserve days. What a difference! My connection to Orange was laggy and throttled, my new connection with Zen is uniformly fast no matter what time of day.

I am getting rock solid 6.5mg downloads constantly with a low ping to server, my gaming experience which was awful with Orange is now an absolute joy with Zen. This coupled with the fact of polite knowlegeable British based customer support staff, makes me wonder why I left it so long to change.

I cannot praise them highly enough!

Zen is technically without fault. It's reliable and fast.

Zen's support staff is exceptionnal. I needed to call Zen only when I got connected to get help regarding the configuration of something (router or email, I can't remember; it was 4 months ago). The people I talk to were not the usual front-liners who bombard you with questions but who have no idea what they are talking about. The person I talked to was technically knowledgeable, which made the conversation pleasant (I am technically knowledgeable too) and also very short. Great support? No. It's exceptionnal support from top notch people!

But Zen has 2 drawbacks:
- It's expensive at £25/month for 25Gb.
- I find myself having to monitor my consumption, a chore I did not have to do when I was with an unmeterred service. I check it every morning to make sure my trend of consumption is in-line with the cap at the end of the month.

I am connected to the Internet without disruptions, but the price and cap still make make my connection a concern.

I would not think of trying another ISP (only with monthly contracts) if Zen would either lower its price or raise its cap.

I have been using Zen now for the past 20 months and have had excellent service from them.

Prior to that I had been with AOL for some years then changed to another smallish UK owned ISP about 6 years ago who were also very good until, horror of horrors, they were bought out by another ISP and all their technical support staff were suddenly off-shore based and there were loads of other issues. The price stayed high but the service and quality of technical support deteriorated dramatically, hence my move to Zen.

Major bonuses with Zen are as follows:-

1. Well trained, UK based technical support staff who not only speak tech-talk but who can also talk in layman's terms. I have not had any major problems but when I have had to call, my query has been dealt with politely, promptly and knowledgeably.

2. Very good connectivity and speed.

3. 0845 access number, not a pay by the minute service as so many other ISPs now have (and they keep you holding on for ages in order to make more money from you!)

Slight negatives:

1. Technical support hours are a bit limited, especially if, like me, you use your Internet service at home mainly in the evenings and over weekends. I think the support hours should be extended.

2. And this is my one gripe - I use webmail a lot as I am often away from home and, quite frankly, Zen's webmail service is not a fully functional one as it does not have the facility to save drafts, neither does it have a sent mail folder i.e. you have no record of any e-mails you send using the webmail service unless you copy them back to yourself which is a real pain.

Occasionally I have had problems opening picture files whilst using webmail but this is a minor irritation compare with the lack of a sent mail folder or drafts folder.

All the other webmail services I have used offer a drafts folder and sent mailbox and this, to me, is the one big failing of Zen.

In summary, Zen is not a cheap ISP but at the end of the day you get what you pay for.

I like to speak to someone who is based in the UK and who speaks English that I can understand.

I like dealing with people who know what they are talking about and are not reading from a script.

I also like to know that connectivity is going to be consistently good and that download speeds are good.

Zen offers me everything I need (apart from a good webmail service, which I'm sure they will look to improve as demand increases) and I'm very happy to pay for that service.

Well done, Zen! Keep up the good work and, most importantly, keep everything UK based!!!

I've recently moved to Zen (because of the Breathe/Zetnet fiasco).

As others have said the packages are not the cheapest around but the service over the phone and by email from various staff has been excellent.

The support staff are polite and patient - providing a service like Zetnet used to be able to in better days.

If you can afford to, do you buy wafer thin value ham or the good stuff?

Most people will go for the good stuff, or at least a happy medium.

Broadband is no different and Zen offers the top of the range product.

Others have struggled over the years but Zen has managed very well. The netork is reliable delivering consistently fast speeds with minimal drops.

Competitors manage their network to prevent their customers congsting it. Zen manages its network to allow you to do what you want.

A subtle difference but a class of quality which makes Zen stand out.

The connection has been rock solid as I expected it to be and our whole internet experienced has been transformed, even web pages load faster than my old ISP.

Not really had to use support however on the occasions I called to find out about the service and to retrieve some details, I was dealt with in a quick knowledgeable and efficient manner.

The only slight disappointment is the price, but when I now look back at my previous ISP's and all the disconnects I had with them, I have to say that Zen’s is top quality. Like anything you get what you pay for.

I've been a customer with Zen on & off for the last 7 years.

When I've been with them they've been great, no complaints, quick connection (currently 7.2MB according to speedtest.net)

When I've strayed (normally after moving house)its been good with F2S, but then bad with Pipex, and then terrible with Tiscali - speedtest rarely went above 2MB, even though it was an 8MB connection.

Price with Zen is around £17 a month for the 5GB, if I need a little more, then I can buy another 1GB for £1.50

So yes, it is a little more each month, but I get very close to the 8MB Connection with 7.2MB - I dont drop out, customer services has been excellent - how many other people could say that?

Very, very happy to be back with Zen, I'm never going anywhere else again.

I've been with Zen now for almost three years and its been the most trouble-free three years of my fourteen years on the internet. In that time I've been with Pipex, when they were good, with Btbroadband when they were the first to go the way of the all in monthly payment (I got fed up of having extortionate phone bills) and finally came to Zen, when I decided to look for a more reliable, un-throttled service.

I really can't praise them highly enough. The transfer over to them was trouble free, despite BT 'losing' my transfer order. I can't remember when I last had any downtime on the connection (I suppose I had better touch wood here), and that downtime was only for 5 or 10 minutes.

They are more expensive than the run of the mill ISP's, but you really do get what you pay for with them.

If you have to phone the help desk for any reason then you are made to feel as if you are speaking to a human being, not some automaton who has to go through a pre-written list of things to try before actually getting down to help you sort out your specific problem.

Another good thing is that Zen don't out source for the call-centre. Its a local call and you speak to people who you can actually understand.

Sorry its a long review, but like I said at the beginning, I really can't praise them highly enough.