No, ProtonVPN might not be the cheapest or flashiest or biggest VPN provider in the market, but it is definitely one of the best providers that are available in the market.
This company stresses on user privacy and security and has an excellent client base. Proton VPN offers a suite of advanced tools for ensuring maximum privacy. For accessing all of that, it has a free version that imposes no limit on data usage.
ProtonVPN: Secure and Free VPN Service 2020
In fact, it has the Editor’s Choice award for being one of the best VPNs. If you’re trying your best to choose a reliable VPN, you may choose Proton. However, make sure you go through this review before making your choice.
ProtonVPN – Features and Pricing
Majority of the VPN services offer a similar set of features through all pricing tiers. For such services, the tiers are more about long-term subscriptions and less about upgrades at a nominal rate.
However, Proton VPN moves in an opposite direction. You get a 20% discount for the yearly subscription versus the monthly subscriptions. But there are few other advanced features that are added as and when you move up the ladder of pricing.
Once you visit the pricing page of Proton VPN, this comprise of speed classifications for the different tiers of subscription. There are just estimations that are based on the anticipated number of users. Proton VPN doesn’t play with your speed, irrespective of the subscriptions that you’re using.
It is seen that the Free subscription has ‘low’ speed as the VPN server expects to have too many users crowded within a few servers while the paid ones have high speed because they have access to more servers. More are the number of servers; there will be fewer users per server.
The first subscription tier of this VPN is its free offering and this includes only 3 VPN server locations. In this tier, only one device is allowed to be connected at a time.
Even in order to access the free account of Proton VPN, you have to create an account with them. In spite of these limitations, Proton VPN is a unique solution because it doesn’t limit the data that a free subscriber may use.
The second subscription tier of Proton VPN is the Basic one that costs $5 in a month or $48 in a year. With the help of this tier, you can get access to all VPN locations that this company has to offer. In this tier, you can connect two devices at a time. It allows P2P file sharing.
The next tier is the $10 per month Plus account and this is below the average monthly price of a VPN. In this tier, you can access all the VPN servers in the network and you will be allowed to use up to 5 devices at a time.
Once you subscribe to this tier, you can gain access to Plus server. The servers are restricted to the highest two tiers of Proton VPN and is hence intended to be less crowded. The annual fee for the Plus tier is not within the average price.
Privacy Features of ProtonVPN
The Swiss home of Proton VPN gives it an instant privacy benefit over the other competitor VPN providers. This country has strong privacy laws, is outside of EU and US jurisdiction and isn’t a member of 14 eyes surveillance network.
The company states the logging policy pretty clearly on the website and they a no-log VPN service. ProtonVPN doesn’t keep any record of your online activity.
One more thing that is non-existent with ProtonVPN is session logging. The company saves the timestamp of your previous login attempt that was successful and that’s it.
When you log in for the next time, this is overwritten and hence it reflects the last session. ProtonVPN relates your account with a mail address when you sign up. However, this address can be as per your wish.
If you happen to sign up with the free plan, you won’t have to offer any details about your payment. If you choose something else, you may even pay via Bitcoin.
In case you use credit cards or PayPal, the payments will be processed by a third-party and Proton VPN won’t check your billing details.
ProtonVPN billing details
When you sign up for ProtonVPN, you’ll find this extremely easy apart from just one or two complexities. You can pay in Bitcoin but in case you are a new user, you are not allowed to give your details on a simple payment form.
Their form even doesn’t mention any kind of support for Bitcoin. You need to know this, follow their instructions and wait for 36 hours.
Users reveal that there were no such issues with PayPal payment. Once the cash was handed over to them, Proton VPN directed them to the account dashboard, a web portal with information and files.
This includes details on your account, login credentials, a download link for the client, configuration file generator, and links to instructions for setting up Linux, Mac, iOS and Android.
You also have a Profiles feature that works in an unusually strength Favorites system. The process is as simple as creating a profile which connects you to the New York server.
You could instantly connect to the fastest server in the location and also be able to choose a random serve to diminish opportunities for tracking.
The Settings feature lets you enable or disable the main features, configure the QuickConnect action and set up the tunneling procedure. While all these will work perfectly for you, there will be few options that you may not get to like the change protocol.
The ProtonVPN Android app looks and feel like the desktop with a map view that is similar to the desktop. The settings panel has identical controls and options including the OpenVPN support that was also reported as per reviews.
Therefore, as we see, ProtonVPN has the ability of unblocking almost everything and the well-designed apps are independently audited and open source. Though support is a bit slow and there are speed issues at times, yet they offer you a decent service. You can henceforth give it a try!