Our VPN Reviews

Methodology: How We Rate VPN Providers?

There are several common elements that we scrutinize closely for all VPN service providers. Most of these areas will impact your experience with the VPN service and the overall effectiveness of the principle VPN usage.

Remember, regardless of what you do with them, VPNs must always have security and privacy at the forefront of their concerns.

VPN HQ Locations

You might be surprised, but the location of a VPN service potentially affects the concept of privacy. To understand this, consider a VPN service provider based in the United States. It’s a democratic country that advocates freedom; unless the government decides otherwise and intervenes.

Comparatively, locations like Panama and the British Virgin Islands have lax data retention laws and a history of non-government intervention in private businesses. It’s a small detail that can make a big difference.

VPN Server Locations

Many VPN services will boast of a massive number of servers. While that’s important, so too is the strategic spread of those servers. A service that offers a million servers based in South Africa would be impressive but relatively useless.

That’s why we note the balance of servers that VPNs offer. While most will show multiple locations, these must be well-dispersed to support users with global connection needs. At the very least, they should cover primary domains, including America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Logging and Privacy Policies

Connections to a server almost always generate log files. These can serve as tracks for anyone looking at them, allowing identification of devices, activities, and more. This capability goes against the basic tenet of VPN services.

As such, most reputable VPN providers will have a “no logging” clause to assure users of privacy on the VPN servers. However, this clause isn’t always present. In extreme cases, VPN, some providers have kept logs in violation of policy.

Pricing

Although pricing doesn’t affect performance (typically), it is a concern of affordability. VPNs need to balance their price with what they offer. It’s a reason why they often sell hard on certain statistics; to prove they’re worth the price.

Since we assess them in-depth, we can see the real implications of price versus quality of service. That’s what makes our price assessment more vital than simply looking at the dollar and cent value presented to the public.

Protocols and Encryption Technology

The technical portion of VPNs doesn’t change much over extended periods. One of the most common protocols, for example, has been OpenVPN. It’s been a standard for years, but many are now adopting WireGuard, a turning point for the industry.

Our assessment of VPN considers how well the service is adapting to new technologies and the spread of options it offers customers. Meanwhile, a few service providers may try to get away with improving speed by lowering encryption levels; and we do take note of them.

User-friendliness for Various Platforms

Platform support isn’t generally a concern for mainstream devices like PCs and Macs. Yet, not all of us use them, and you can deploy a VPN on almost any platform (in theory). Allowing greater access for a non-tech-savvy user to deploy the VPN on, say Linux, can make a difference.

Meanwhile, as a while, the experience should be streamlined and we try to ensure the VPN doesn’t try to confuse users with lots of technical-sounding jargon.

Streaming Capabilities

We love Netflix and VPNs, which makes us even harder on VPN services that make false claims. Regardless of any claims made, from a personal standpoint, VPNs need to support at least a few mainstream streaming services and allow a seamless viewing experience.

Past that, it’s more of a bonus. While the focus is often on US-region content, some users want access to media libraries for other regions like Japan and Australia, which not all VPN services can access.

Torrenting Support

Traditionally, many VPN service providers frown on torrenting. It occupies a dominant portion of bandwidth and drives up their cost. To mitigate this, some VPN providers have restricted P2P to specific servers only.

While that may be fair, P2P users who sign up for the service will suffer. The question we often ask is how much this impacts the experience for torrent users for the VPN.