ProtonVPN review

Today we focus on a VPN provider called ProtonVPN, which was organized by scientists from CERN, engaged in nuclear research, first, they created a webmail service with encryption Proton Mail, but they decided not to stop there and later made a VPN service, every year the service is getting better and is worthy competition in the VPN industry, a credit of trust is first of all the country of incorporation - Switzerland, where laws on protection and privacy are strictly observed, secondly zero policy of conduct Thirdly, modern, reliable algorithms of encryption, the unique Secure Core structure, which ensures the confidentiality of your data and protects you from the attacks of cybercriminals, as well as tracking by Internet service providers, encryption AES 256, without which it is difficult to imagine today a reliable VPN, Wireguard, Open VPN, IKEv2 protocols, Netshield ad blocker and much more, which we will talk about in detail in separate sections.

General highlights

In this section, we will look at the privacy and protection that the ProtonVPN service gives us.

To begin with, it is worth noting the Secure Core network, whose servers are located in countries with favorable privacy laws (Iceland, Sweden, Switzerland). Although we know, that Sweden is included in the alliance of 14 eyes, this fact does not cancel the loyalty to the protection of access to the network, the servers equipment is reliably protected, some of them are located on former military bases, the Secure Core servers have full disk encryption, which protects all software and makes your actions in the Internet space is completely anonymous.

ProtonVPN uses AES 256 encryption which is the modern standard for secure VPN services, RSA key exchange with 4096-bit key length, and HMAC with SHA384 for message authentication.

ProtonVPN decided to use only protocols with a good and reliable reputation, namely Wireguard, OpenVPN, IKEv2.

It is also important that ProtonVPN has IPv6 and DNS leak protection, where the service has passed the test, which means that requests sent from the VPN client to the VPN server go through a secure tunnel without any holes and your IP is successfully masked so that it becomes impossible to disclose your real location.

ProtonVPN has a large server network consisting of 95 VPN servers in 61 countries. In the free plan, you will have access to 23 servers in three countries - Japan, USA, Netherlands. Not all servers support Tor and P2P, it is convenient that in front of each server is a label whether it supports P2P, TOR, as well as how busy it is, it is worth saying that the free servers at a load less than 90% I have not met, which is an additional factor affecting the speed. Secure Core servers will be available only when using the package Plus, Visionary.

List of countries:

USA, Ukraine, Taiwan, Turkey, Slovakia, Slovenia, Singapore, Russia, Serbia, Romania, Portugal, Poland, Philippines, Peru, New Zealand, Norway, Netherlands, Nigeria, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, South Korea, Japan, Italy, India, Israel, Ireland, Hungary, Hong Kong, Greece, Georgia, Great Britain, France, Finland, Spain, Egypt, Denmark, Germany, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Costa Rica, Colombia, Chile, Canada, Switzerland, Brazil, Bulgaria, Belgium, Australia, Austria, Argentina, UAE, Vietnam.

Consider how ProtonVPN copes with bypass blocking due to geographical restrictions of content, depending on what region you live in, I had no problems getting access to libraries Netflix, Hulu, Kodi, BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime Video, Zattoo, Canal+. However, if you use a free rate and the server you are connected to will be overloaded, and as statistics show, this happens often, be prepared that will buffering and average video playback quality, especially when using mobile applications. I was watching a soccer game, the video was without buffering, but when I connected to Netflix I had to set the video quality to medium and still had to buffer, when using the Plus package things were much better, I was able to watch full HD video content without lag.

P2P/BitTorrent support only starts with the Basic package. The bandwidth was quite good, I have not encountered any problems with downloading torrents, and what is important at that, ProtonVPN provides the claimed anonymity, since in some countries torrents are banned and internet providers without warning can send information to content owners, as a result, there may be penalties in the form of fines, up to imprisonment

Now let's talk about the prices of ProtonVPN tariffs.

ProtonVPN offers 4 tariffs, the first tariff is free, with certain restrictions (23 servers in 3 countries, connection of one device, low speed)

Package 2 (Basic) gives us an already average speed, the ability to connect to VPN servers in 40 countries and 2 simultaneous connections and support P2P/Bittorent.

Package 3 (Plus) already offers us up to 10 simultaneous connections, 95 VPN servers in 61 countries, Tor over VPN, Streaming Support and Secure Core VPN and the last 4 packages (Visionary) includes all the above features plus a ProtonMail account Visionary.

Basic - $48 annually ($5 per month)

Plus - $96 annually ($7.49 per month).

Visionary - $288 annually ($30 per month)

To me as compared to other WAP providers and what they offer, ProtonVPN is overpriced and not everyone can afford it.

You can pay for a subscription via Credit/Debit cards, Paypal, in the future they promise to add bitcoins.

There is a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Unfortunately, you can only contact support through the mail, the answer usually comes between 5 and 12 hours. On the site there are many guides on how to install applications and configure them, there is a section with frequently asked questions, on the site in the Support section everything is conveniently divided into categories, I am also a search line for the information you need,

I decided to check the response time from support, it was 7 hours, the solution was helpful and efficient, but the fact that there is no online chat is of course a minus as you may need urgent solutions.

Pros

✓ No logs
✓ Connecting via Tor
✓ Multifunctional
✓ P2P/Bittorent support
✓ Strong encryption
✓ Secure Core network

Cons

✘ High prices
✘ Slow speed in the free version
✘ Not enough optimized applications except Windows
✘ Support response time takes more than 7 hours