What features makes for a VPN service? You may be looking for a VPN provider that can provide solutions with prices that stay well within your maximum budget. But what sense does it make if you are provided a solution that has really low prices but can’t even reach your needs？What elements are needed to consider when selecting a VPN service? How to review and assess these elements to guarantee it is effective and efficient to satisfy your needs? What is the best VPN service for 2019?
The Virtual Private Network, which is also called VPN in short, is a versatile technology that can be applied to various occasions to solve all kinds of problems. The technology allows users to establish a private network across a public network like the internet. By using this technology, the users’ devices may work as if they were hooked up to a private network. Programs working across the VPN may therefore enjoy many advantages of the private network, with security and functionality included. Relying on the VPN technology, employees in the geographically separated offices of a company will be able to access the intranet of each office in a secure way. For individuals, the VPN technology can be used to protect online transactions, personal information and to bypass censorship and geo-restrictions. By applying this technology, you will be able to visit such popular websites as Netfix, Facebook, Twitter, Pandora, Youtube, Hulu and so on from China.
Depending on this technology, you will be able to enjoy all the benefits and advantages of the VPN technology concluded as below:
1、Stay completely anonymous online to protect yourself against hackers, spammers, identity thieves, government surveillance, spyware and marketers
2、Enjoy blazing high-speed, reliable and continuous point to point file-sharing with complete anonymity
3、Circumvent port blocking and speed throttling management measures of the ISP
4、Enjoy free or public Wi-Fi securely
5、Enjoy geo-restricted resources such as movies and TV shows on the Netflix and Hulu
For users who are looking for reliable brands of VPN services, the following three can be listed among their best choices. Although none of these brands is good enough to be considered as perfect in all aspects, they are very competitive in many aspects compared with their competitors.
Private Internet Access is regarded as one of the most trustworthy VPN service providers in the field of VPN technology. The most impressive aspect of their VPN service is the affordable pricing. They are able to provide the customers with the most efficient services of the most reasonable prices. Apart from reasonable prices, the number of servers and various useful tools like ad blocking and one click termination for all applications connected to the internet in case of a VPN failure are all powerful tools they use to compete with their competitors.
Headquartered in Panama, a country where people scream for freedom from NSA snooping, NordVPN is one of the most popular VPN services in the world. Even though its pricing is slightly expensive, it doesn’t prevent the company from being one of the most favored VPN service providers at all since it is a company that can ease the user’s safety concern to the most degree.
Apart from vast pricing options, multiple server choices and a bunch of impressive tools, KeepSolid VPN is doing better in many aspects compared with other providers. Unless you are looking for a service with faster speed and more simple UI or higher speed of file sharing across all servers, there is no reason to remove it out of your list of best VPN services.
There are some important elements that you are recommended to consider in the process of selecting a good VPN service. Let’s look at them together now.
What Protocols Does the Provider Support?
Many VPN service providers offer OpenVPN, TTPT or L2TP/IPsec protocols in their VPN services. There are many different aspects between these protocols and the OpenVPN is agreed to be the most secure protocol that can help the users achieve higher levels of security compared with the TTPT and L2TP/IPsec. While you are good to select a solution with only TTPT protocol provided if there is something even better coming along such as lower price and your purpose of using the VPN is just to secure your non-essential web browsing at the airport or a restaurant. It is secure enough for you to protect your passwords from being stolen by the waiters in the restaurants. In this case, if you are free to choose between the PPTP and the L2TP/IPsec with all the other conditions unchanged, it is wise to jump to the L2TP/IPsec without any hesitation. The L2TP/IPsec is a protocol that has been improved a great deal over the PPTP, even though it is still not secure enough compared with the OpenVPN. The OpenVPN is undoubtedly better than the L2TP/IPsec in many aspects, but one thing you should know is the native OpenVPN is currently not supported by both Android and Ios systems. While the L2TTP/IPsec is supported well by both Android and Ios mobile devices like phones.
How Many Servers Does the Provider have and Where Do they locate?
The server number and server geolocations are two of the most important features for a VPN service. That is why you can see many VPN service providers advertise these two features in their offers. If your need is to watch the Netflix and YouTube from places beyond USA, it will be the most ridiculous decision you have ever made to select a service with their hundreds of servers only located in China. Because both the two websites are not reachable directly from China for the moment due to the geo-restriction and government censorship issues. In addition, how many servers and where these servers are located decides how powerful the service is and how widely the VPN service can be used geographically. And in the case of avoiding persecution by your government, it is wise to select a VPN provider located in countries that have no ties to your country.
How Many Concurrent Connections Does the Provider Allow?
What does the concurrent connection stand for? This feature decides how many devices are you allowed to apply the service at the same time. If you need to use the VPN service on 3 devices at the same time or there are 3 staff members that need to work using the VPN service concurrently, 3 concurrent connections at least are needed to satisfy the need. Generally, the more concurrent connections the better only if other conditions of the services are the same.
Are There Any Bandwidth Throttling and Service/Protocol Restrictions?
The bandwidth throttling issue is a factor that will affect how fast can you stream videos, music and share files with your friends or families. If a service provider promises to guarantee unlimited bandwidth, there is no need for you to worry about this issue at all. While since the bandwidth burns up quite fast nowadays, many providers restrict bandwidth in their service. On this occasion, you should know how to calculate the bandwidth to ensure the service you sign up is good enough to meet your need.
As for the service/protocol restriction issue, it is recommended to read over the documentation provided by the provider to see if they restrict certain services or protocols in their service before signing up. For example, if you want to use the VPN for file sharing, it is needed to confirm with the provider the file sharing service is not blocked. Nowadays many providers can provide services with all protocols or services supported.
What Is the Logging Policy?
This is not an issue you need to worry about too much. And zero logging become one of the selling points for many VPN service providers. This policy is not only to the benefit of the users, but also the benefit of the providers. Because it helps save a lot of disk resources without keeping logs. Some providers may say very few necessary logs are kept for a very short time. But these logs are generally used only for maintenance and smooth running of the system and will be removed at once after maintenance is done.
How About Payment Methods?
In some cases, the payment method may matter a lot for you. You may feel very interested in anonymous payment method if you are purchasing a VPN to avoid the political persecution of your government. On this occasion, you need to confirm with the provider if they accept payment via gift card for major retailers such as Target. This will help protect your credit card information from being exposed.
What elements are needed to consider when selecting a VPN service? How to review and assess these elements to guarantee it is effective and efficient to satisfy your needs? You may have got the answers after having reviewed the documentation that you are provided by the VPN provider before making any payment for the service. But it is wiser to read more information about the provider and its service that can be collected from the internet or other resources. This is to check if the provider is honesty and trustworthy and the claim in their documentation is true.
A good service provider should be able to provide diversified solutions to meet different needs of various customers with reasonable prices. For customers who want to bypass censorship or geo-restrictions like the case discussed in this essay where Netflix geo-restriction is mentioned, a regular solution of about 48 GB bandwidth with a fee of about $16 USD should be considered as reasonable. For team & SME subscribers of about 10 persons, a $315 USD team solution of about 10 TB bandwidth can be regarded as appropriate. For users who play video games or trade online, a gold solution of about 580 GB bandwidth with a fee of about $110 USD is treated as best value.
Kindly Reminder: If you have any question regarding how to Set up VPN on your device, please live chat with Yoocare online expert for help.
Published by & last updated on March 15, 2019 3:11 am
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