PrivateInternetAccess
Website: www.privateinternetaccess.com
Price: From $3.33 / Month. (If purchased via 12-month plan) Accepts Bitcoins and Ripple.
Our Rating: – 85%
Protection: 5/5
Software / GUI: 3/5
Features: 3.5/5
Speed: 4.5/5
Ease of Use: 4.5/5
Service Overview and Reviews
Protocols: Open VPN, PPTP plus L2TP/IPsec.
Service: PrivateInternetAccess offers a paid VPN service with 3160+ servers in 33+ countries.
The software is installed using the normal OpenVPN GUI and there is a TCP option for each server. Set-up for PPTP is via control panel. Also compatible with Mac, Linux and Android.
PrivateInternetAccess utilize shared IP addresses rather than dynamic or static IPs, so it should not be possible to match a user to an external IP.
They allow up to two simultaneous connections, so users using OpenVPN can also multi-hop which enables the highest levels of anonymity.
Use up to 5 devices simultaneously.
Privacy: No traffic or request logs are kept and they maintain they cannot match a user to any activity on their system as they utilize shared IPs. See their Policy/Terms/FAQ
Our Thoughts: This is a rapidly expanding VPN service with very good speeds across their network and they are hard to beat on price for the longer term plans. Privacy is placed at a premium and you can pay using decentralized currencies such as Bitcoins or Ripple.
PrivateInternetAccess User Reviews
Summary
Reviews
The best VPN! you don’t worry for your privacy or any info given to DMCA!. they are the best!
very happy with the service, the price and the payment method
Everything was fine when I was using their service on a monthly basis but literally AS SOON as I bought a year subscription they started THROTTLING my speeds and now they are practically useless as a vpn provider. It hasn’t even been 2 months since I bought the subscription. I cannot get above 8M down speeds on ANY of their servers now when before I could get above 30. It says right in their agreement that they throttle if you use more than they would like. I wish I would have known that before I paid for a subscription because now I have 10 months of a useless vpn. I WOULD RECOMMEND USING A DIFFERENT VPN. THIS ONE THROTTLES.
Really good speeds (I’m in Australia) for NL, US and UK servers, great support and forum, plus the cheapest 12 month VPN plan around. PIA OpenVPN client has excellent features, however is somewhat hit and miss. I had dropouts and other issues with the PIA client, and eventually just ended up using OpenVPN GUI. Despite one of the best “No Logs” Policy, I would personally prefer a non-US provider, however would still definitely recommend PIA to anyone.
Several of the customer here are completely ignorant (eg. Linus).
PIA offers clients for Windows and Mac. For Linux, the setup requires a little work, but anybody can do that.
I’ve found it very stable and very cheap, and I use it permanently.
They have several servers around the world, so that one can choose.
The speed is good to very good, although I’ve found that some servers have some problems with some websites. For example, right now I can’t execute the test on https://www.dnsleaktest.com on the dutch server, while I can with the german one.
All in all, I’ve tried other ~3 services in the past, and this is the best.
Please rate this VPN from your own experience via the form below:-
PrivateInternetAccess Speed Test Results
PrivateInternetAccess Speed Test
Below you can see our testing results for PrivateInternetAccess. For more details of how we conduct our speed tests go to VPN Speed Tests
Test PC #1 – United States – OS (Ubuntu 11.10) – ISP (Cox)
| SpeedTest.net (Firefox) | Location | Ping | Download | Upload |
| Not Using VPN | United States | 32 | 18.83 | 7.22 |
| OpenVPN | Netherlands | 196 | 6.94 | 6.02 |
| OpenVPN | United States | 40 | 12.64 | 6.94 |
| OpenVPN | United Kingdom | 179 | 7.9 | 4.84 |
| OpenVPN | Canada | 123 | 4.32 | 4.00 |
| Download Test (Curl) | Location | File Size | Av. Speed/sec | Time/mins |
| Not Using VPN | United States | 783M | 1640k | 08:08 |
| OpenVPN | Netherlands | 783M | 1256k | 10:37 |
| OpenVPN | United States | 783M | 1204k | 11:05 |
| OpenVPN | United Kingdom | 783M | 1222k | 10:55 |
| OpenVPN | Canada | 783M | 1377k | 09:41 |
| P2P Test (Deluge) | Location | File Size | Av. Speed/sec | Time/mins |
| Not Using VPN | United States | 703.1Mb | 1.6Mb | 06:57 |
| OpenVPN | Netherlands | 703.1Mb | 1.59Mb | 07:23 |
| OpenVPN | United States | 703.1Mb | 1.62Mb | 07:14 |
| OpenVPN | United Kingdom | 703.1Mb | 1.61Mb | 07:16 |
| OpenVPN | Canada | 703.1Mb | 1.52Mb | 07:44 |
Test PC #2 – United Kingdom – OS (Win 7) – ISP (Sky)
| SpeedTest.net (Firefox) | Location | Ping | Download | Upload |
| Not Using VPN | United Kingdom | 32 | 10.56 | 0.94 |
| OpenVPN | Switzerland | 59 | 8.37 | 0.89 |
| OpenVPN | United States | 107 | 9.12 | 0.87 |
| OpenVPN | United Kingdom | 41 | 9.92 | 0.89 |
| Download Test (Curl) | Location | File Size | Av. Speed/sec | Time/mins |
| Not Using VPN | United Kingdom | 620M | 1241k | 08:31 |
| OpenVPN | Switzerland | 620M | 1119k | 09:27 |
| OpenVPN | United States | 620M | 899k | 11:45 |
| OpenVPN | United Kingdom | 620M | 1141k | 09:16 |
| P2P Test (uTorrent) | Location | File Size | Av. Speed/sec | Time/mins |
| Not Using VPN | United Kingdom | 695Mb | 1.1Mb | 10:22 |
| OpenVPN | Switzerland | 695Mb | 0.81Mb | 14:47 |
| OpenVPN | United States | 695Mb | 0.97Mb | 12:16 |
| OpenVPN | United Kingdom | 695Mb | 1.0Mb | 11:07 |
Tips: There are four US servers to pick from but selection is random so you may have to reconnect a couple of times if you insist on a particular US server.
Note: The handshake protocol (MSCHAP_V2) used by many PPTP connections has been cracked and therefore PPTP could now be considered unencrypted. For maximum security use OpenVPN or L2TP.