PureVPN best

What Is a VPN?
Office workers reading this may recognize the term VPN (Virtual Private Network) as referring to "that thing you need to log into to do work stuff from home," but a VPN is much more than that. When you connect to a VPN, your Web traffic travels through an encrypted tunnel to the VPN service's secure server before heading out into the wider Internet. This means that the bad guys—be they hackers, advertisers, or government spooks—won't be able to see your Web traffic, or trace your movements on the Internet back to you. The next time you're using a public Wi-Fi network, like the one at your local coffee shop, you might want to fire up a VPN to make sure no one is intercepting your traffic.

VPNs protect your privacy, but they can also unlock restricted content. In countries with oppressive Internet policies, activists and journalists use VPNs to sidestep government control and contact the outside world. VPNs can also be used to access region-locked content, such as BBC and Netflix streaming services, but many such companies are starting to fight back against VPN cheats. More on this below.

Pricing and Features
PureVPN currently does not offer a free version, nor a free trial of their product. There is, however, a seven-day money-back guarantee. If you're unwilling to plonk down cash for a VPN, consider the numerous exclellent free VPN services on the market.

I really like that PureVPN doesn't lock features behind different price tiers, and instead offers the same capabilities with different billing cycles. PureVPN costs $9.95 a month, though there are usually discounts in play. You can also opt to pay $47.95 for a six-month subscription, or $59.99 for a year. Subscription payments are made through just about every means you could desire: credit card, AliPay, Bitcoin, Cashu, PaymentWall, or PayPal. The service also accepts nearly a dozen other cryptocurrencies. You can even pay through gift cards for popular stores. If you ever wanted to use your Starbucks gift card to buy VPN service, this is your chance.

That's a reasonable price, but it's worth noting that Editors' Choice winner NordVPN$11.95 at NordVPN is a dollar cheaper, and offers specialized servers for specific needs. My other Editors' Choice, Private Internet Access, has an even smaller footprint on your computer, and is cheaper at $6.95.

When you go to complete your transaction, PureVPN gives you the chance to purchase add-on services. An additional $2.99 gets you a NAT Firewall, $4.99 buys you a dedicated IP address, and for just $5.99 you can drive a DDoS-protected, dedicated IP right off the lot. VPNs are confusing enough already, so I really appreciate the thorough info buttons that explain each add-on and tell you who might want to purchase them.

Whichever you choose, you get five device licenses to spread across Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and Linux devices. That's in line with most other VPN services. PureVPN also has software available for routers and streaming devices. TorGuard VPN$9.99 at TorGuardsells routers and Apple TVs with its software preinstalled, as does Private Internet Access. Running VPN software on your router can be a smart way to extend protection to every device in your house.

Other benefits? PureVPN allows P2P file sharing and BitTorrent on many of its servers. The Split Tunnelling feature lets you select specific traffic to go through the VPN. That way, you can keep certain activities secure and allow other, more data-hungry functions, to get all the access they need.

PureVPN won't do everything, however. For instance, it won't block ads, while Private Internet Access$6.95 at Private Internet Access and Spotflux will. Nor does it provide access to the Tor network, which NordVPN does. That said, these are rather fringe features, and their absence doesn't hurt PureVPN in my opinion.

There is also a business version of PureVPN, priced on a per-seat basis. It's $69.99 per month for 5 accounts, $113.99 per month for 10 users, and $176.99 per month for 15 accounts. Custom pricing is available for larger organizations.

Hands On
Windows users should note that there are two versions of PureVPN, confusingly called Old and New. The older version has more features, but the developer is clearly pushing users toward the new one, and that's what I tested. For this review, I installed PureVPN on a Dell Latitude E7250$1,375.30 at Dell Small Business running Windows 8.1. Installation on my test system was quick and painless.

I ran into a small hiccup when setting up the software, however. When you create an account for billing purposes with PureVPN, you enter an email and a password (a mere 12 characters, with no special characters—hardly secure). But this isn't the password or login information you use with the actual PureVPN app. Instead, you receive an email with the password and username in plaintext. It's annoying but unfortunately not unusual among VPNs. I would prefer if PureVPN had told me that this would be the case, rather than forcing me to figure it out.

Right from the start, PureVPN feels different from other VPN apps. A screen prompts you to select one of five options, which have descriptions like "I want to stream" or "I want to unblock." Depending on what you select, PureVPN delivers a customized experience. It's a nice idea, but it might be confusing for a novice user who likely doesn't know what they want beyond a functioning VPN.

Selecting the Privacy option pulls up a search bar that lets you can search by country and select a server accordingly. I am disappointed that the search function can't identify cities within countries, and also that it was very slow to respond in testing. Privacy is not the most intuitive name for what amounts to choosing your server, either. Other settings are more to the point, however; Unblock, for example, lets you select that you want to watch Netflix or that you are inside China as an option. Note, however, that the latter option did not work for me in testing, as I'll explain.

The Protocols pull down lets you choose PPTP, TCP, UDP, L2TP/IPSec, PPTP, SSTP, or IKEv2 protocols. Each option is accompanied by a rating for speed and security, which is certainly helpful. By default, PureVPN is set to Auto and select the best protocol it thinks is best. We noticed that while the PureVPN website says it supports OpenVPN, it was not available in the drop-down list.

The Global Map tab on the left lets you bypass PureVPN's recommendations and simply select one of the company's servers. PureVPN offers users 500 servers across 141 countries. The list includes servers in Africa, Australia, Asia, Central America, Europe, North America, and South America. That's one of the broadest distributions of servers I've seen, and one of this service's key strengths. It also puts PureVPN among the top contenders, based on servers and locations alone.

The interface is clean and colorful, and it feels much more consumer-friendly than other VPN services. I really appreciate the design, but was surprised that the app felt sluggish in use. Maybe all that design costs the app in terms of performance? Once connected, you see your connection status, your current IP address, and your session duration in the lower half of the interface. There's also a traffic chart, showing how much bandwidth you have consumed during in your session. It's a good way to be aware of Internet usage, but considering PureVPN doesn't have bandwidth caps, it's mostly window dressing unless you have some other need to meter your usage.

Performance
Regardless of what VPN you use, your Internet performance will take a hit from the extra security measures. Most of the time this is just a mild annoyance; it's hardly like going back to the days of modem screeches and dial-up performance. In fact, PureVPN bills itself as "the world's fastest VPN," so I took great interest in testing its performance scores.

To measure a VPN's impact on Web browsing, I compare the average results from both speedtest.net (which is owned by PCMag's publisher, Ziff Davis) and speedof.me. Because network conditions can change quickly, I perform the baseline tests immediately after the VPN tests. In all my tests, I use a VPN server located in Australia. Speedtest.net allows us to select a test server in Fairbanks, Alaska, which I use for all my testing. Speedof.me lacks this feature, and simply selects the nearest geographic test server based on the apparent IP address.

The results from Speedtest.net are quite surprising. PureVPN increased latency by 188.8 percent, which sounds like a large number but is actually on the better end of the results in this test. Only HideIPVPN$9.99 at HideIPVPN and Hotspot Shield Elite had lower latency. When in use, PureVPN reduced upload speeds by 38.9 percent, which is slightly better than average, but not the best I have seen.

What is astonishing is that PureVPN's download speeds were actually improved over the baseline by 169.6 percent. Since my testing a few other services have shown the ability to improve download speeds—namely, IPVanish and ExpressVPN. But neither holds a candle to PureVPN; it is in a class of its own.

Speedof.me showed similarly impressive results. In these tests, I found that PureVPN increased latency by 669.8 percent. PureVPN didn't improve download speeds with speedof.me, but it only reduced speeds by 7.2 percent, which is among best result I've seen in this part of my testing. Surprisingly, PureVPN improved upload speeds by 4.72 percent, too. As of writing, it is the only VPN service I have tested to do so speed up uploads.

In testing, PureVPN seems to live up to its protection and speed claims. Test speeds aren't everything, however, so I spend time using each VPN to see how it works in the real world. Fortunately, PureVPN's real-world results bore out what the testing told me. Webpages loaded very quickly, even ones with many media elements. That said, I was disappointed to discover that Netflix managed to block me when connected to PureVPN, even whenusing PureVPN's special settings for Netflix. Netflix and the VPN services play a cat-and-mouse game of blocking and evasion, however, so this is not entirely surprising. The feature might or might not work on any given day. I couldn't confirm it, however.

Speedy and SlickEvery VPN claims that it is super fast, or at the very least, won't impact your Internet experience. And while a handful have lived up to this claim, PureVPN blows them away with an incredible increase in download performance. If you are someone who is concerned with speed tests, this is the service you want. Those high scores also come with strong security, geographically diverse servers, and specialized servers for specific use cases. The only thing that holds PureVPN is its price and sluggish client. If either were improved, it would join KeepSolid VPN Unlimited, NordVPN, and Private