If you do a quick search online for VPN recommendations, chances are NordVPN’s name comes up quite a bit. While it is one of the more popular VPN choices aren’t, is it necessarily the best?
Does it do what you want it to do? Before choosing a VPN, you have to ask yourself what is it that you need a VPN for?
Is it to protect your online identity? Are you an investigative journalist that wants to do their investigative work anonymously? Are you in a foreign country and need to perform a bank transaction from your home country? Do you on public WiFi and don’t want potential hackers to snoop on you? Or do you simply want to unlock additional content from Netflix?
That being said, there are plenty of VPNs to choose from, both paid and free, and here are some of the best alternatives to NordVPN that we could find.
Coming in close in terms of popularity would be ExpressVPN. It offers users VPN access on both your computer as well as your mobile device, and there are a ton of server locations around the world that you can choose from. It is also relatively fast, offers encryption, and it supports streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, HBO, BBC, and more.
While VPNs are meant to help you stay relatively anonymous, the fact that some VPNs do log your activity kind of defeats that purpose. If you’re looking for a VPN that has a zero-logging policy, then IPVanish could be the VPN for you. There is no data cap, there is remote device wiping, there are servers in 75+ regions, and it also comes with 500GB of storage if you’re looking for a cloud storage provider.
If you’re not so keen on committing to a VPN subscription, then perhaps TunnelBear could be an option to consider. The company offers a free tier which is limited to just 500MB of data, but if you don’t need to use a lot of data, then this could work. The company also offers a $3.33/month plan, that comes with unlimited data, that’s still cheaper than most VPN services out there.
If you’re looking for a VPN that lets you access regionally-blocked content, Ivacy VPN is one way to go around it. In addition to Netflix, Ivacy also unblocks content from Disney+. Ivacy also claims to offer some of the fastest speeds as far as VPNs are concerned and also features what is called split tunneling, where in essence it connects you to both its VPN and LAN at the same time by automatically choosing which one is the best for you at the moment.
When it comes to VPNs, there are many new players in the market, but Private Internet Access has to be one of the oldest VPNs companies around, which should give you a good indication of its reputation and reliability. Its plans are also some of the cheapest we’ve seen and allows users to connect up to 10 devices simultaneously. In addition, it claims to also block ads, trackers, and malware at the same time.
When you connect to a VPN, how it works is that it in a way masks your IP address and allow other servers to think your IP is that of the VPN’s server. However, when you disconnect, your original IP address remains which can give your presence away. If this matters to you, then Surfshark could be the VPN for you as it has a built-in kill switch that disconnects you from the internet if your VPN connection ever drops. It also offers the ability to connect to multiple countries at once, and the company is also claiming that don’t log your activity.
If privacy and security are your chief reasons when it comes to choosing a VPN, then Mullvad might be the best choice. While a lot of VPNs out there rely on the OpenVPN or L2TP/IPSec security protocols, Mullvad is actually one of the first few VPNs to take advantage of the newer and more secure Wireguard protocol.
For those who have heard of ProtonMail, the company behind the secure and private email service also has its own VPN service called ProtonVPN. As the company is based in Switzerland, it follows the EU’s strict data privacy laws. ProtonVPN also boasts over 500 servers in over 40 countries and uses a combination of IKEv2/IPSec and OpenVPN security protocols.
