Are you looking for the best secure VPN on the market? Our security experts have gathered up a list of their favourites below. Let’s take a look!
What is a VPN?
A VPN, which is short for Virtual Private Network, is an online service that can encrypt and protect your online activity. They work by editing your public IP user address and instead provide you with a new, temporary one.
Virtual Private Networks uses primarily public telecommunication infrastructure. The overall goal is to protect you from hackers and other cyber threats, such as
- Trojans and worms
- Ransomware and other types of cyber attacks
- Crypto miners
- DDoS
By providing you with a temporary IP address, a VPN can protect your anonymity and keep malicious hackers from tracking and targeting your activity. As ExpressVPN explains on their website: “Your IP address says a lot about you. When you don’t hide your IP address, you’re probably revealing more than you realize about your location, your identity, and your activity.”
Plenty of private users are paying for the service because it gives them full access to certain online activities they might otherwise not have been able to access, for example due to location restrictions. By giving you the opportunity to change your IP address, you can use it to access streaming services such as Netflix, BBC iPlayer and Amazon Prime. Beware that streaming services are becoming stricter and more aggressive when it comes to blocking these services.
However, a VPN is so much more than simply a Netflix-enabler. In fact, it can be a valuable tool for any professionals regularly working out of the office. In the good old days, companies often installed a leased communication line to ensure secure communication between two points. With the increasing amount of remote workers, the combination of leased lines and a firewall is no longer enough to protect the employees on the road.
Having a VPN means that you can easily log onto unsecured networks without risking your data and other sensitive types of information. To sum it up, it enables companies to securely transfer data between two locations in a manner that emulates a point-to-point private link.
Read More: 21 Scary Cyber Security Facts.
Are there any downsides of using VPNs?
Before you get too excited about the many benefits of using VPNs, there are a few things you should consider.
Firstly, it’s absolutely essential that you choose a trustworthy provider with good (and authentic) customer reviews. You see, not all free VPNs are safe to use. While some are known for only offering limited bandwidth, others have been known to track your data and sell it to third-party companies. In order to remain as secure as possible, it’s imperative that you conduct your research and only settle for a provider with a proven track record.
Plenty of companies are questioning whether VPNs are actually legal. And the answer? Technically, yes. However, there are countries that either prohibit them or only offer special government-approved alternatives. These countries include Iran, Belarus and China amongst others.
In other words, if you are a standard British corporations, you should have no difficulties using VPNs.
Read More: The Complete Guide to Buying Security Software.
Paid vs Free VPN: Do you get what you pay for?
The best VPNs on the market are paid versions. However, most of them offer free trials so that you can try them out for a limited amount of time – most often 7 days – before deciding if you want to commit to the provider long-term.
What are the downsides of using a free VPN service?
With a free VPN, there are often many clients on the same server, meaning that the bandwidth is reduced heavily and the data transfer rates can be very slow. Secondly, didn’t your mum ever teach you that nothing is ever completely free in this world? If a service is free of charge – or too cheap to be true – it likely makes money another way, for example by selling your data to third-party companies.
Here at Software Advisory Service, we don’t recommend using a free VPN as it might end up putting you at risk of privacy breaches. Are you really willing to risk your data in order to save a few pounds a month?
The Pros and Cons of Paid VPN
Plenty of companies are surprised to find that most VPN services are becoming cheaper. Why is that?
While there are numerous reasons, the perhaps strongest factor is that there is an increasing amount of competitors on the market. Back in the days, there were only a handful of good VPN providers available – hence the prices went up. These days, the market has flourished and new providers are popping up like fresh daisies in the spring. In order to stand out from competition, plenty of providers are willing to lower their prices in order to attract new customers.
Another reason is of course that with the advent of cloud computing, computing power has become much cheaper. This also leads to lower maintenance costs, as most servers can work for a long time with only minimal configuration changes.
As we have briefly mentioned, a paid VPN should really be the only option for corporate users. And the advantages are many:
- A reliable and secure service
- Much faster than free solutions
- You can increase service plan if necessary
- Updated and improved regularly
- Tech support
In addition to this, paid VPNs often come with strong encryption protocols, such as OpenVPN or SSTP. Many are also equipped with advanced features like a firewall, kill switch and ad block.
Top 3 VPNs with Free Trials
Below, we have gathered up a list of some of the top VPNs on the market, and we have focused especially on solutions that offer a free trial.
Having the opportunity to do a free trial is important for new buyers, as you would need to evaluate the solution over minimum 2-3 days to understand whether it actually meet your needs. When doing a free trial, you should look for these considerations:
- Is it hard or confusing to connect to nearby servers?
- Does the connection drop frequently?
- Do you find the solution to be secure?
- Does it falter during peak hours?
The answers to these questions should impact whether you decide to sign up for a subscription once the free trial is over.
PrivateVPN
This is the perfect service for those looking to try their very first VPN. They offer a free 7-day trial with absolutely no commitment (no credit card necessary!). They also have an additional 30-day money back guarantee, if you have signed up for a subscription but are not entirely happy with the way things are going.
PrivateVPN offers 24/7 live chat support, and this is also available for users on the free trial package. Prices start from $5.95 and is billed monthly.
- Available on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android
- 7-day free trial
- Unlimited support
- No credit card required
- 30-day money back guarantee
VyprVPN
This is another infamous brand on the VPN market. Unfortunately, VyprVPN only offer a 3-day free trial, but this should be more than enough for you to go over and test out its features. You must sign up with a credit card and select one of their monthly packages before you can test it out, but you can cancel anytime before the trial expires.
What sets VyprVPN out from its competitors? Most importantly, they own all of their global servers, thereby giving them full control over user data. As a result, they don’t log customer data.
Prices start from $4.79 and is billed monthly.
- Available on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android
- Fast and reliable speed
- Strong security credentials
- Owns and manages its own servers
ExpressVPN
This is one of the most popular and highly recommended VPNs available on the market. It comes with a blazing-fast speed and strong encryption parameters (it also doesn’t store any user data except for dates, server, and total bandwidth used).
The VPN accepts Bitcoin as a payment if that’s your jam, and it also operates more than 3000 servers across nearly hundred countries.
Unfortunately, there is no free trial. However, ExpressVPN offers a brilliant 30-day money back guarantee. During this time, you will have complete access to all servers, features and unlimited bandwidth.
Premium packages start at $8.32 and is billed monthly.
- Available on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android
- High speed
- Great encryption and security
- More than 3000 servers worldwide