VPN services are mighty useful additions in this day and age. They protect your data and privacy, and may also help you bypass geo-restrictions. There are numerous VPN services out there that serve different purposes.
Many charge a lot for monthly plans and give you huge discounts if you sign up for a year or more. Some, like NordVPN, seem to offer discounts all the time.
I reviewed WindScribe years ago when the VPN service gave free users 50 gigabytes of data. Currently, free users can still sign up and get 10 or so gigabytes per month for free. Connections are also limited some
I stumbled upon the Build your own VPN plan recently. It sounds interesting. Instead of getting a range of features and server locations, you simply select what you need. The price is then based on that.
Here is how it works. Once you have set up a Windscribe account or signed in to one, you may select the Build your own VPN option from the paid plans section.
Here you make two core choices that determine the plan:
- Select whether you want unlimited bandwidth (adds $1 to the plan).
- Pick at least two regions that you want to connect to (each region adds $1).
So, if you just need connectivity to one or two regions, you end up paying $3 per month for the plan. While that limits connectivity, it does not really matter if you do not require access to servers in other regions.
Also, you can edit the plan to add or remove locations from it. The regular plans costs $9 per month or $5.75 per month when paid yearly. They offer a handful of advantages besides unlimited regional connectivity:
- Only 10 custom rules for the R.O.B.E.R.T. add-on, instead of 1000.
- No ephemereal port forwarding.
- Static IP only if you get the unlimited bandwidth option.
It does not really make sense to push the custom plan beyond the price charged for the regular plans, as you get access to all server locations in those. The main advantage is that you pay less, if you limit regional availability to two or three locations.
While $3 may still pale compared to the discounts that companies like NordVPN throw around all year round, it may still be better than the $5.75 that you pay for a regular plan at Windscribe.
My main recommendation regarding a VPN remains Mullvad though. While it costs $5 per month, it is as private as it gets. May not be for everyone, especially if you have different requirements.
Now You: do you use a VPN service? If so, which do you use and why? How much do you per per month or year for the service?
I am using NordVPN and prepaid it a while ago for about $6 a month. Next year I will try Mullvad VPN or Private Internet Access VPN. Windscribe VPN is my third choice.
Windscribe or Proton free is enough for my needs; Proton sent email users the following discount posted on PC Mag–checked the link seconds ago, still valid:
https://www.pcmag.com/deals/proton-turns-11-celebrating-with-a-70-off-deal-on-a-top-rated-vpn
$3/month–worth it? I don’t know.
For some reason, I no longer sense a need for a VPN; easy enough to set up a SSH Tunnel and use the BitVise Client. Either use AWS or find a LowEndBox rate.
https://lowendbox.com/
PIA is too slow.
NordVPN is very fast but we can’t connect half the time.
ExpressVPN has been rock solid.
Our ISP keeps raising our speed (at no cost) and ExpressVPN can’t keep up anymore but it’s still plenty fast enough. We started at 200Mbps, then it doubled to 400Mbps, and recently it went up to 500Mbps. Being able to always connect when we want is more important then a little more speed.
They said if we used thier app we could get more speed but I’ll stick with OpenVPN. The provided app has some serious security issues, as most do, and that defeats the whole purpose of a VPN.