PrivateVPN
Website: www.privatevpn.com (formerly www.privatvpn.se)
Price: From 5.50 Euro / Month. (If purchased via 12-month plan) Accepts Bitcoins.
Our Rating: – 88.4%
Protection: 5/5
Software / GUI: 4.5/5
Features: 4/5
Speed: 4.5/5
Ease of Use: 4.5/5
Service Overview and Reviews
Protocols: OpenVPN, L2TP, PPTP
Service: PrivateVPN provides Open VPN, L2TP and PPTP across a high performance network in 57 countries with no traffic restrictions.
You can Watch Hulu and USA TV and the BBC iPlayer and unblock all VOIP Applications include Skype.
Port forwarding is available on OpenVPN servers with dynamic and public IPs available.
You can connect up to 6 devices simultaneously and P2P is allowed (Swedish servers recommended).
Connection Guard software to select application to close on VPN disconnection.
Customer service is available 24/7.
You can get a free test for 24 hours by emailing their support from the website.
Privacy: PrivateVPN never produce logs of any data traffic. See their Policy/Terms/FAQ
Note: PrivateVPN log IP numbers on their server in the U.S. This is because the laws of the United States. No P2P on US or UK servers.
Our Thoughts: This established VPN is very impressive, speeds are excellent and privacy is placed at a premium. A fair sized network that covers all the main locations you’ll need. Great client software that includes an auto-reconnect and an option to close specific programs if the connection is ever dropped. Competitively priced for the longer term plans.
PrivateVPN User Reviews
Summary
Reviews
Excellent VPN, simple clean interface, good server network geographic spread and good speeds. Download speed via NL server almost matches my direct connection and upload speed exceeds it. Great for torrents!
I’m very new to vpn, so I don’t know what speeds should be normal. I normally get around 15mb/s in real download speeds (sometimes 20). Once I used PrivatVPN I was getting 1-2mb/s. Just too slow for what I use it for.
Robust privacy and great support. Started with the trial version and barely noticed any speed decrease. Installed on linux and there are client installations for a variety of OS. Used US and Swedish servers so far with no major issues.
Fantastic service, not only because of great support, but because the quality of the connection is awesome. I’ve compared 3 different providers over the last 2 months and this one is not only the fastest on my rather weak (approx 6,5mbit real speed) connection, but it’s also showing the lowest latency gain among all of them. The speed drop that I see running PrivatVPN is approximately 10-15% and thus clearly related to the VPN protocol itself, the latency increase is completely acceptable with a non-VPN average of 50ms to a US server, increased to approx. 90ms with VPN. I LOVE IT. Fastest service I ever used, other VPNs slaughter my connection by at least 20%, and the lowest ping I ever got to a US server was on StrongVPN with 120ms. I think this speaks for itself, also, the price is comparable to StrongVPN (4-city special), but with better speeds.
No loss of speed for me. Been using this vpm for 31/2 months now. What’s not to like. Fast reliable and secure with a solid privacy policy. Just don’t use the US servers for torrents. One of the cheapest as well.
Please rate this VPN from your own experience via the form below:-
PrivateVPN Speed Test Results
PrivateVPN Speed Test
Below you can see our testing results for PrivateVPN. 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 (Chromium) | Location | Ping | Download | Upload |
Not Using VPN | United States | 27 | 23.21 | 7.18 |
OpenVPN | Germany | 175 | 9.03 | 6.46 |
OpenVPN | US | 152 | 11.53 | 6.81 |
OpenVPN | Netherlands | 172 | 10.10 | 6.45 |
OpenVPN | United Kingdom | 168 | 9.13 | 6.37 |
Download Test (Curl) | Location | File Size | Av. Speed/sec | Time/mins |
Not Using VPN | United States | 620M | 1330K | 07:57 |
OpenVPN | Germany | 620M | 1061K | 09:58 |
OpenVPN | US | 620M | 1104K | 09:35 |
OpenVPN | Netherlands | 620M | 864K | 12:14 |
OpenVPN | United Kingdom | 620M | 976K | 10:50 |
P2P Test (Deluge) | Location | File Size | Av. Speed/sec | Time/mins |
Not Using VPN | United States | 695Mb | 1.59Mb | 07:17 |
OpenVPN | Germany | 695Mb | 1.47Mb | 07:51 |
OpenVPN | US | 695Mb | 1.49Mb | 07:46 |
OpenVPN | Netherlands | 695Mb | 1.56Mb | 07:24 |
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 | Germany | 53 | 9.95 | 0.89 |
OpenVPN | US | 200 | 5.04 | 0.63 |
OpenVPN | Netherlands | 41 | 9.97 | 0.89 |
OpenVPN | United Kingdom | 36 | 9.99 | 0.88 |
Download Test (Curl) | Location | File Size | Av. Speed/sec | Time/mins |
Not Using VPN | United Kingdom | 620M | 1241k | 08:31 |
OpenVPN | Germany | 620M | 899k | 11:46 |
OpenVPN | US | 620M | 714k | 14:49 |
OpenVPN | Netherlands | 620M | 1184k | 08:56 |
OpenVPN | United Kingdom | 620M | 1072k | 09:52 |
P2P Test (uTorrent) | Location | File Size | Av. Speed/sec | Time/mins |
Not Using VPN | United Kingdom | 695Mb | 1.1Mb | 10:22 |
OpenVPN | Germany | 695Mb | 0.97Mb | 12:15 |
OpenVPN | US | 695Mb | 0.78Mb | 15:05 |
OpenVPN | Netherlands | 695Mb | 0.90Mb | 13:05 |
Tips: OpenVPN seems to be faster than PPTP connections
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.