ProtonVPN is based in Geneva Switzerland. The service was created by proton technologies AG; the same group of people that brought ProtonMail into existence in 2014. ProtonMail is currently the most encrypted email service. Now that the company have diversified into providing VPN service; the question is whether their VPN service will reach the same quality heights that the ProtonMail reached.
Generally, a quality VPN should give security from all online threats by encrypting your traffic, give privacy by masking your real location, and give internet freedom by unblocking geo restricted contents. Does the Proton VPN service deliver these primary functions of a VPN? This review will provide the information to help you answer that question.
Is ProtonVPN legit? ProtonVPN review is the reviews that answer questions such as is ProtonVPN safe, legit, real? Or ProtonVPN scam, fake or not worth it or good enough. ProtonVPN complaints and feedback from members also reviewed. So, if you are looking for the best and unbiased ProtonVPN reviews, you have come to the right place
Is ProtonVPN legit and safe?
ProtonVPN is legit and safe to you use. Your information is always secured.
Packages and pricing
Service Plans
Proton VPN offers four different service plans. These are: Free plan, Basic Plan, Plus Plan, and Visionary Plan. The plans all have different features such as: number of servers the user have access to, number of simultaneous device connection, and connections speed. That means there is cost attached to the functionalities, such that the higher the features and functionalities in a plan, the more the cost of the plan.
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The Free Plan allows you access to only three server locations – the US, Japan and the Netherlands. It cannot be used on more than one device at the same time, and the connection speed is very low. One good thing is that it has unlimited bandwidth.
The Basic Plan is an upgrade on the free plan. It allows access to all the countries in their server network, but you are denied access to premium servers (Plus) and Tor functionality. Also, you can only connect two devices simultaneously, and your connection speed is higher than the free plan but not the highest.
The Plus Plan also allows you access to all the server locations, and adds “secure core” functionality and Tor compatibility. Also, simultaneous connections is increased to five, and you also get highest connection speed possible.
The Visionary Plan has all the features of the Plus Plan, but increases simultaneous connections to ten devices and adds the protonmail to its package.
Pricing
Every Proton VPN service plan (except the free plan) has two packages derived from the two allowed billing periods – a monthly package and a yearly package.
Needless to say, the free plan will cost you €0.00. The Basic Plan will cost you €4.00 if billed monthly, but you can have 20% off and pay only €38.40 (instead of €48.00) if you go for the yearly package.
The Plus Plan will cost you €8.00 per month, but you can have 20% off and pay €76.80 (instead of €96.00) by opting for the yearly package. The Visionary Plan will cost you $24.00 monthly, but you can pay €230.40 (instead of €288.00) which represents a 20% discount.
With the 20% discount that Proton VPN gives on all their plans; the Basic Plan will breaks down to €3.20 per month, the Plus Plan breaks down to €6.40 per month, while the Visionary Plan breaks down to €19.20 per month. These prices show that Proton VPN is not seeking to win the market with their prices; they are relatively expensive. Comparatively, the best deal on Proton’s basic plan (which is short on features and functionalities) is even higher than the best deals of the premium plans of most services that allow all their functionalities.
Payment Method
Proton VPN supports only the standard payment method such as credit cards, debit card and PayPal. These methods afford users convenience when making payments. However, they entail the submission of personal information that can turn around to compromise users’ privacy. As a result users seek services that allows them pay anonymously.
Proton VPN now supports making payments with bitcoin and other crypto currencies. The recent move to support anonymous payment methods shows that the Proton VPN service is commuted to ensuring users’ privacy. However, they’re yet to reach the realms of accepting hard cash.
That said, nomatter your payment preference (whether paying conveniently with the regular methods, or anonymously with bitcoin), the Proton VPN service will serve you.
Free Trial
Many VPN services give free trials to allow users test run the services and personally experience its features before committing resources to a subscription.
Proton VPN offers a seven days free trial for such testing. The service plan you get when you sign up for a free account is the Proton Plus Plan.
Many services may give a longer trial period but this does not necessarily mean that Proton VPN is stingy with their seven days offer. It should be remembered that the trial is on the Plus Plan which allows all but one of the Premium features of the Proton VPN service. This makes it easy for users to fully test the service and experience all its features and functionalities.
Refund Policy
Services offer money back guarantees which allow users who are not satisfied with the service to request a refund of their payment.
Proton VPN offers a thirty days money back guarantee. The 30 days period means that any refund request must be submitted not later than 30 days from the time of making payment. To request a refund under their Money Back Guarantee, you’ll have to send an email with your request to support@protonvpn.com. The company pledges to process all refunds within 14 days of the request; and say the refund will be in the original currency and payment method you used.
On the surface, the 30 days window makes the refund offer look generous, but it might not look so generous after a closer look. Proton VPN will only refund the remaining or unused portion of the service. They explain that: “any unused portion of the service period refers to the prorated remaining full days of the subscription period“.
This effectively means that they will never give refunds of full payment; except you cancel and request a refund the very next minute after paying for the service. If you buy a single month package and request a refund after seven days of use, the amount you can get is that equivalent to the remaining 21 days.
On a happier note, they will consider refund request made beyond the 30 days window, but such will be at the sole discretion of the service.
The Proton VPN’s refund policy will not sit well with many users (I’m first in the queue) because of its use of prorated payment. More so, many VPN services offer full refunds, with no questions asked.
Features
Ease of use
Proton VPN has a well designed Windows app. You wil breeze through downloading and installing it. The service provides lot of detailed instruction to help you through the set up process. Upon login, you’ll find the interface simple and very easy to operate. It features a world map, and clearly list the server locations. The servers have pertinent information like pings and load percentage to help you choose the best performing server.
You can also simply use the one click “Quick Connect” button, and the app will automatically connect you to the fastest server closest to you. When connected, the client shows you information that help you manage your connection including your new IP address, time connected, amount of data uploaded and downloaded and your download and upload speed.
You’ll have no problem navigating to settings to enable auto connect and features like kill switch and leak protection. If you’re on the Visionary Plan, you also get to add encrypted mail services (proton mail).
Supported Devices
Proton VPN is compatible with desktop operating systems, mobile devices and also routers (DR WRT). These include: Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android and iOS.
On their website, they provide detail instructions for manually setting up the service on the supported devices. Supporting a wide range of platforms makes the service available, for use, to a wide range of users.
Simultaneous connections
Users typically have more than one devices that they use at the same time. Thus, they seek VPN services that allow them use one VPN account to secure all their devices at the same time.
Proton VPN offers simultaneous connections that ranges from one to ten connections. The number of devices a user can connect at the same time with one account depends on the service plan. The Free Plan, Basic Plan, Plus Plan and Visionary Plan allow one, two, five and ten simultaneous connections respectively.
Proton VPN promotes the Plus Plan as their most ppopular plan, and the plan gives five simultaneous connections which equals the industry average for simultaneous connections.
If you have a small family or business and wish to secure the devices of the unit with a single VPN account, Proton VPN is an ideal choice.
Streaming
Streaming activities may not function well with some VPNs due to the fact that unexpected traffic can instigate security measures, or because different content is available in different countries and streaming services may block VPNs from helping users beat their geo restrictions.
The later makes it difficult to watch Netflix with VPN. Because very few services can still unblock Netflix and allow streaming of its vast content, any service that unblocks it is regarded as good for streaming.
Proton VPN gives access to Netflix. However Netflix access is available only on the Plus and Visionary Plans; and only with connection to the US servers. However, it should be noted that not all the US servers give straight access to Netflix. Though Proton VPN list 6 US servers as Netflix servers, they all do not give Netflix; it’s really a game of trial and error to get a Netflix server. In a support document, Proton VPN gives what’s more or less a disclaimer: “Note, Netflix may not always work“
You can still use the Proton VPN service to unblock other streaming services like Hulu, Hulu plus, pandora, and CBS; but just as with Netflix, some of the streaming services may not work sometime.
In all, Proton does unblock some streaming giants, but its inconsistency just does not make it stand as an excellent service for streaming.
Torrenting
Torrenting is an effective way to download files over the internet, but the activity which involves connecting to peers is dangerous, insidious peers might use it to get at personal information stored in your devices. Therefore, it is important to use a VPN to download torrents safely and anonymously.
Many VPN services do not support torrenting; thankfully Proton VPN does. They do not allow torrenting on their free plan, but do on all paid plans. However, the activity is limited to specified servers. This is because the P2P traffic is channeled through only neutral and safe countries.
For the servers in their server network that allow file sharing. Proton VPN provides a list of the the servers, locations, the services that is allowed on those servers, and which plan can access each locations.
Secure Core
Proton VPN offers a “secure core” feature, which works like the double VPN feature, to give an added layer of security.
The Secure Core first route user traffic through dedicated secure core servers in privacy friendly countries like Switzerland and Iceland before passing it through the server connected to by the user. This ensures that users privacy is not compromised even when the server connected to is compromised.
In a high risk jurisdiction, if a particular server is compromised by surveillance, you will still be protected when connected to it because your traffic coming into it is from a “secure core” server and already secure.
However, the secure core functionality is not available to the free or Basic Plan users; you’ll have to upgrade to the Plus or Visionary Plans to have this extra layer of security.
TOR compatibility
TOR is a network that gives anonymity. It can be combined with a VPN, to give unparalled protection. As a result, VPN service that are compatible with the TOR network, are given high security rating.
ProtonVPN also integrates with the Tor anonymity network. It allows users connected to Proton servers to route all their traffic through the Tor network and access Onion sites. The set up enhances anonymity because even your ISP cannot tell that you are connected to a VPN, but only that you are connected towards a TOR node.
Servers Locations
Proton VPN have more than two hundred and fifty seven (257) servers in twenty one (21) countries. As expected, the network covers choice locations in Europe and North America. Asia is represented by Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore, Africa is represented by South Africa, and Oceania is represented by Australia. However, the whole of South America and the Middle East is neglected.
The number of servers made available by a VPN service, the number of countries covered, and the geographical distribution of the server network are useful measurement of the strength of their services. VPN services create new servers to be able to accommodate the increasing number of new subscribers, to give users more virtual locations to enhance their anonymity, and also to make the servers fast and near for better performance. Generally, a nearby VPN server will likely be faster and more reliable than one that is in a far flung location.
Proton VPN’s server network is at best modest. 257 servers in 21 countries is much more than many services provides, but is also less than the thousands of servers in 50+ locations provided by the industry top guns. Proton also neglects entire regions in the network, some services with far smaller network manage to have a better geographical spread. Another ugly part in Proton’s server operation is that some of the servers are not made available for certain service plans.
Privacy and Security Features
Proton VPN says that unlike other services, ProtonVPN is designed with security as the main focus. We will put that to the test by examining: the protocol and encryption supported; presence (or lack) of security features such as kill switch and leaks protection; logging policy and jurisdiction.
Protocol and encryption
In order to provide its primary function of protection, VPNs offer different protocols and encrypted tunnels to choose from for establishing connections.
Of all the available VPN protocols, the OpenVPN is regarded as the best. It is reliable, and expertly optimizes speed and security. It is open source; it has been picked for vulnerabilities, but none has been found to date.
Proton VPN supports only the OpenVPN (UDP and TCP). On one hand, the support for the most secure protocol is good for security; on the other hand, when the OpenVPN does not work, it would have been good to have alternative protocols to use. Also, even when the OpenVPN is working fine, there are circumstances when users would want to use the less secure protocol because of their faster speed.
In terms of encryption, Proton VPN use the super-secure AES 256 bit encryption with 2048-bit RSA for key exchange, and HMAC with SHA 256 for message authentication. Proton VPN use ciphers with Perfect Forward Secrecy, “meaning that your encrypted traffic cannot be captured and decrypted later, even if an encryption key gets compromised in the future” This is unhackable military and bank-grade encryption standards.
Kill switch
Many internet users are aware of the potential risk associated with having their online activities or data exposed to third parties. That is why they make use of VPNs.
Unfortunately, there are times that the most stable and reliable VPN connection can suddenly disconnect; and all your data and activities are exposed. That is why many VPN services provide a kill switch to cut off internet connection when a VPN connection fails so that the user will not continue online and expose traffic.
Proton VPN is equipped with an in-built kill switch; it can be configured to either stop selected programs or the whole device from having access to the web once a VPN connection goes down. This is another point for the security provision of the Proton VPN service.
Security leak protections
DNS, IP and Web-RTC leaks can expose your true IP address. A DNS leak for example will make DNS requests leave the VPN tunnel and go to the DNS servers of your ISP, effectively exposing your activity and location. As a result, any service that promise optimal security and privacy should prevent security leaks.
Proton VPN applications feature leaks protection on all their plans. I tested to see if this will hold up; and thankfully, there were no leaks.
Logging
ProtonVPN categorically say that they’re a No-Logs VPN service. Almost all the VPN services claim to have a no log policy; but that is not always true – a good percentage of them log one form of users’ data or the other. I went into the privacy policy of Proton VPN to determine what information (if any) is logged, and how such logs affect users’ privacy.
Proton VPN definitely do not log users’ traffic or the content of any communication. Because of their commitment to users’ privacy, for account creation, they limit the personal information they require to only a valid email address. When you make payment, they do not store the full credit cad info, but the last 4 digits. Overall, this bode well for privacy.
Also, each time you connect to the service, they monitor the timestamp of the last successful login attempt; they say this is done to protect user accounts from password brute force attacks. Thankfully, the logs do not stay long; it gets overwritten each time you successfully log in.
They also pledge to delete from their system all data pertaining to a user at the request of the user. Overall, Proton VPN’s no log policy is strict.
Jurisdiction
About their jurisdiction, Proton VPN says: “We are headquartered in Switzerland which has some of the world’s strongest privacy laws. Switzerland is also outside of EU and US jurisdiction and is not a member of the fourteen eyes surveillance network”.
The second sentence remains true; Switzerland remains outside EU and US legislation and not a member of the extended Eyes surveillance alliance. This promises that users information is less likely to end up either in the hands of the local government or intelligence agencies of foreign nations.
However, the first sentence about Switzerland having some of the world’s strongest privacy laws can be brought into question. This is because Switzerland has passed some laws that requires the storage of detailed connection logs for 12 months.
Speed
Speed makes all online activities (Streaming, Torrenting and so on) smooth and easy going.
Proton VPN speed depends on the plan, servers, and also activities assigned to the servers. The free plan is advertised as having slow speed, and the speed increases as one move up their graded plans. Also, nearby servers record faster speed than distant servers.
Some remarkable things about the performance of the Proton VPN service is that the difference between the near connections and distant connections is not too much; also the free plan advertised as slow have serviceable speed that even rival that of some paid services.
In all, Proton VPN showed fast speed that will get you flying on your every online activity without any interruption.
Customer support
Customer support allows a company to manage and treat every request, queries and enquiries from both prospective and existing customers. Since it is inevitable that VPN users will have questions/ issues, a service that does not have a strong customer support system is already set up to fail.
Proton VPN allows users to reach out to them directly for assistance through a ticket based support system and an email service. On their website, they different email addresses that can be used for different issues. One good thing about responses from the Proton VPN primary support channel (ticketing) is that they are clear and adequately answer the question addressed. However, you might have to wait for about 24 hours to get a response; and this might not be timely if you’re pressed.
Unfortunately, Proton does not support any support channel for instant response such as telephone service and live chat. The live chat is being featured by many services, and it is really a minus that the Proton VPN service does not offer it.
However, if you’ll rather find your answers yourself; Proton VPN has a support center that hold a lot of support resources. The support center is neatly arranged into categories to aid navigation – General Information, download and setup, account, troubleshooting, and access content. In each of the category, you’ll find detailed articles that’ll answer some of the questions you might have.
Summary
Proton VPN says unlike other VPN services, it is designed with security as the main focus. True to those word, the service aced all my security checks: they support only the secure OpenVPN protocol and use top notch unhackable encryption, they have a kill switch, prevent security leaks, have a strict no log policy, and headquartered outside the feared extended Eyes surveillance network.
They have other provisions that enhances security and anonymity: a “secure core” doubleVPN-like feature ensures that even a compromised VPN terminal server will not expose your traffic or IP; Tor compatibility ensures that you have increased anonymity; and supported anonymous payment ensures that you pay for the service without leaving a trail.
On the service front; they offer fast speed, allow torrenting, allow multiple connections (from 2 to 10), supports a range of devices, and the service is easy to set up and use.
Overall, the service is a solid VPN, but has some few cons. The server network can see some improvement; more countries should be covered, and more importantly, there should be a wider geographical spread. The service does not come across as an excellent choice for streaming; getting Netflix involves a trial and error game, that mostly do not work. Also, the popular Plus Plan and the premium Visionary Plan are relatively expensive, and their money back guarantee has conditions that effectively makes it “some of your money” back guarantee.
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