With all sorts of threats and snooping eyes on the Internet, it pays to keep a low profile while going about your business online. A VPN service is what you need to keep safe and maintain online privacy, among other things. Once you’re connected to this service, your uploads, downloads, emails, and other messages will be ciphered. In addition, the service will enable you surf the Web anonymously by cloaking your real IP address.
Even so, the first hurdle you have to jump is to find the best VPN service for your needs. The best VPN is not one that offers the cheapest packages. Rather, it is one that offers the perfect balance between cost, features, reliability, performance, support, and security. Some services excel in a particular area whereas others are fairly balanced in all.
To choose the best VPN for your needs, you must first determine the most pertinent reason why you need a VPN service. Is it privacy, security, or access to restricted content? If you frequently transact online, then security will probably be your most crucial need. If you’re a regular traveler, then your need might be bypassing government censorship as well as access to local content while abroad.
Whatever your need, the following list of the best VPN is a good representative of the top VPN services that offer the best combination of performance, reliability, cost, features, support, and security.
Contents at a Glance
- #1 – HideMyAss VPN
- #2 – PureVPN
- What’s the Best VPN
- #3 – Private Internet Access VPN
- Video Module
- #4 – IP Vanish VPN
- Popular VPN Routers
- #5 – Strong VPN
- #6 – IbVPN
- Make the RIGHT selection…
- Share Your Experience
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#1 – HideMyAss VPN
HideMyAss has consistently earned a lot of praise from its users for various reasons. It has over 40,000 IPs in 53 countries, provides free public proxies, unlimited data transfer, and offers very flexible packages. The one month package costs $11.52; the 6 months package costs $49.99; and the one year package goes for $78.66 and they all come with a 30-day money back guarantee to safeguard your money.
With 358 servers in several global locations, you can easily switch between servers at no extra charges. What’s more, there’s no technical knowledge needed to switch between the servers as everything is pretty straightforward to setup. Proactive load balancing ensures top performance of the servers by preventing server overload. When many users try to connect to one server that has reached its capacity, they will be redirected to an available server, thus maintaining smooth connectivity.
The service supports the three major VPN protocols including OpenVPN, PPTP, and L2TP. Whether you’re connecting a corporate entity or you need your own personal VPN, you’re fully catered for with these protocols. Read a more detailed review here.
#2 – PureVPN
When it comes to connection speed and reliability, PureVPN is simply hard to beat. PureVPN is a time tested service that has consistently been ranked as one of the best as far as performance is concerned. Beyond performance, the service offers impeccable customer support for both corporate and personal users.
PureVPN offers three types of plans including Standard, Unlimited, and PureGold. The standard plan is the most basic at $74.95 a year (or $9.95) and it affords you unrestricted speed, a choice between PPTP, L2TP/IPSec, and SSTP protocols, as well as unlimited server switches. Downloads are limited to 30GB per month for the Standard plan.
Like the Standard plan, the PureGold package connects you through a shared IP and gives you all the options of the Standard plan but with unlimited downloads at only $160 per year (or $18 per month).
The PureGold option is for users who want increased freedom afforded by the privacy of a dedicated, anonymous IP. Users can choose between a shared IP and a dedicated IP depending on their privacy needs. All plans have unrestricted speed, 128-bit SSL encryption, access to live support 24/7, and device portability (all accounts work on Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, and Android, among others).
#3 – Private Internet Access VPN
Private Internet Access is prized for affordability of its packages. The monthly option is only $6.95 while the six months option is only $35.95. However, you get the best value for money with the yearly subscription at $39.95. Regardless of subscription type, an account with Private Internet Access affords you top-notch online security, encrypted Wi-Fi when connecting via a wireless hotspot, support for VoIP and P2P, unlimited bandwidth, various VPN gateways, and easy setup with custom VPN software, among others.
For users in North America, VPN support is provided around the clock to ensure the best customer experience with the service. As its name suggests, Private Internet Access provides you with total online privacy and identity protection through an anonymous IP. In addition, all your online activity is not logged, so you can have peace of mind knowing that no one is going to track your activities. In fact, their anonymity service and identity protection have earned praise from the majority of subscribers. So basically, Private Internet Access makes it on the best VPN list mainly due to affordability and its excellent privacy protection features. A comprehensive review is available here.
#4 – IP Vanish VPN
IP Vanish boast of a solid reputation after being founded on the background of a well-established Internet services company. The company has a very experienced team boasting of more than 10 years experience in secure data delivery on the Internet.
IP Vanish provides extremely fast and reliable VPN connections. The plans are flexible, catering to both short-term monthly users as well as long-term users on personal or business accounts. All plans come with unlimited bandwidth, 128-bit encryption, and peer-to-peer communication capabilities.
The service allows for uninterrupted connections between servers in more than 20 countries, meaning that users can switch from a server in one country to another in a matter of minutes with the least amount of disruption.
The service supports 3 VPN protocols including PPTP, OpenVPN, and L2TP. All major operating systems are supported as well as mobile devices on iOS and Android.