Readers Pick Their Favorite VPN Brands for Home and Office

For this calendar month's Readers' Choice Award survey, we asked you near the virtual private network services yous use for personal and work-related online activity.

Businesses take long used VPNs to securely connect their remote workers and branch offices to their main office, merely in recent years, VPNs accept gained in popularity for personal use. Personal VPNs make yous more bearding online, encrypting your net traffic and hiding your IP address. If y'all connect to a VPN server in another country, you may also be able to access content such equally streaming movies that are only available in that state.

If you don't currently utilize a personal VPN, you might think that those who exercise are extremely concerned nigh their online privacy. According to a recent study, that'due south not ever the primary motivating factor.

Overall, staying anonymous falls virtually xx percentage points backside accessing better entertainment content, which was cited past more than than half of respondents equally a leading factor. Anonymity is the No. one motivating factor among personal VPN users in the Usa, whereas in the Asia-Pacific region, about twice equally many respondents chose accessing amend content as the principal factor.

If you apply public Wi-Fi networks, information technology's virtually incommunicable to assess how prophylactic the network is. Is the network legitimate or is the host trying to steal your data? Are other users on the network sniffing your Wi-Fi traffic to capture your data? Consider using a VPN. Whether you're using a laptop or a smartphone, you can connect to a VPN service and hibernate your traffic from snoops. At home, you can also install a VPN service on most routers so that the traffic for every device on the network, including digital streaming devices such as a Roku or Apple Tv set, passes through the service.

This type of protection isn't expensive. There are dozens of companies offering personal VPN services that only cost a few dollars a month, often with substantial discounts if you're willing to sign on for a twelvemonth or more than. At that place are even some free VPN services, though conduct in mind that the provider must brand coin somehow, so they might serve up ads, limit your bandwidth or traffic, or even sell your data. (Of course, there's nothing stopping a paid service from doing that either.)

Our survey respondents used a diverseness of personal VPN services. Nine services had at to the lowest degree 50 responses, the minimum to be included in our assay. By contrast, the business VPN responses were dominated by two of the biggest companies in enterprise computing: Cisco and Microsoft.

Our respondents were asked to rate their VPN services on a variety of factors, from overall satisfaction and likelihood to recommend to satisfaction with setup, performance, and trustworthiness. Read on to come across which ones they say provide the most satisfying experience. The right service can help you lot stay vigilant about your online safe and enhance your online experience.

The PCMag Readers' Choice survey for VPNs was in the field from Baronial 13, 2022 through September 5, 2022. For more information on how the survey is conducted, read the survey methodology. Each person who completed the survey was entered into a drawing to win an Amazon.com souvenir bill of fare valued at $350.

You can win! Sign upwards for the What'due south New Now mailing list to receive invitations for future sweepstakes.

Readers' Choice: VPNs

In that location are a lot of personal VPN services and near are non household names. Nonetheless, nosotros were pleased to encounter that our survey respondents are generally satisfied. I service, Individual Internet Access, stood out from the others, though, receiving the highest rating for overall satisfaction and likelihood to recommend, and earning our showtime ever PCMag Readers' Choice Award for Personal VPNs. (It's too one of our Editors' Choice VPNs.)

Private Internet Access was at or near the top on every satisfaction measure. The service'due south overall satisfaction rating was viii.8 and likelihood to recommend was 9.1, top marks among the nine services in our assay. (All satisfaction ratings are on a calibration from 0 for extremely dissatisfied to 10 for extremely satisfied.) Private Internet Access as well had the all-time marks for satisfaction with performance (8.v), keeping users condom online (9.0) and trustworthiness (9.0). It also tied with Windscribe for the highest rating for satisfaction with reliability (8.7) and ease of utilize (9.0). ExpressVPN likewise received a 9.0 for satisfaction with ease of utilize.

Wherever Individual Internet Admission didn't come out on tiptop, it wasn't far backside. Its satisfaction with toll rating of 8.seven was 2nd to KeepSolid VPN Unlimited'southward nine.0 and its fantabulous rating for satisfaction with ease of setup of 9.1 was but behind Windscribe'south 9.ii.

ExpressVPN had the second-best overall satisfaction rating, 8.7, just behind Private Net Access. In general, its scores were very practiced although it did have the lowest rating for satisfaction with cost (7.three). As of this writing, ExpressVPN'south cheapest plan costs $8.32 for 12 months compared to KeepSolid VPN Unlimited, which goes down to $2.78 for iii years and $199 for a lifetime subscription. Private Internet Access offers a two-year program for $2.91 per month.

KeepSolid and ExpressVPN had the highest percentage of respondents needing technical back up during the past 12 months—at 41 percentage and thirty percent, respectively—far above the category average of xix percent.

IPVanish (8.6) and Windscribe (8.5) as well had very good overall satisfaction ratings. IPVanish, all the same, had a disappointing rating for satisfaction with toll (7.7). The visitor's least expensive plan is $6.49 for one year. Windscribe's likelihood to recommend rating was 8.9, 2d only to Private Internet Access.

NordVPN—another PCMag Editors' Pick winner with our analysts in PCMag Labs—received more than responses than any other provider in our survey. The service received its best marks for satisfaction with ease of setup (viii.ix), ease of use (8.vii), keeping the user safe online (viii.vii) and existence trustworthy (8.vii). However, near of the visitor's other ratings—including overall satisfaction (8.3) and likelihood to recommend (viii.5)—were in the middle of the pack. Our third Editors' Choice, TunnelBear, in general scored right behind NordVPN.

Most people are familiar with Symantec and its Norton line of security products. Still, its Norton Wi-Fi Privacy VPN finished near the bottom on virtually every satisfaction measure. Information technology had the everyman ratings for satisfaction with operation (vii.0), reliability (7.1), ease of setup (7.vi), ease of apply (7.6) and keeping the user safe online (seven.6). Norton's overall satisfaction rating of 7.six was tied with PureVPN for the worst in the lot.

Run across all of our survey results for VPNs

WINNERS: VIRTUAL Individual NETWORKS (VPNs)

Individual Internet Access
Private Internet Access received consistently high ratings from its users across every aspect of VPN satisfaction from ease of setup and ease of use to performance, reliability, trustworthiness, and safety. That's a winning package, worthy of our get-go-e'er Readers' Choice Honour for personal VPNs.

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VPNs for Work

Setting up a VPN for business concern is more than complicated and expensive because you need to set up and configure both ends of the connexion: the remote client and the home server to which it will connect. That's a much bigger bargain than the personal VPN services in a higher place, where your VPN connects to the company's server(s) at dissimilar spots beyond the globe.

The goal is an encrypted link for traffic between a worker's device (be it a PC, tablet, or telephone) and a server in the function. The upshot is the same for the employee'due south PC traffic equally it would exist with a personal VPN—but the access provided is protected and offers access to specific files or services at work.

Cisco and Microsoft were the only companies that received plenty responses to be included in our assay of business VPNs. Respondents were much more satisfied with Cisco's AnyConnect VPN in full general, so information technology receives our get-go Business Option Award for business VPNs.

Cisco had higher satisfaction ratings on every mensurate, including overall satisfaction (8.iii to seven.3), likelihood to recommend (7.six to 7.1), ease of use (8.iii to 7.6), functioning (8.ii to 7.3), and reliability (eight.4 to 7.4). Having scores about a full point college in many cases shows Cisco clearly making things a lot easier on end users.

That said, the scores for both companies nether the likelihood to recommend aren't high. So their Internet Promoter Scores are also very low, at thirteen percent for Cisco and only ii percentage for Microsoft, indicating that no one really loves the work VPN required past their IT departments.

See all of our survey results for VPNs for the office

WINNERS: Business concern VPNs

Cisco
Cisco is doing a much better job than its rival, Microsoft, in keeping its users satisfied with their VPN feel. The company earned substantially college satisfaction ratings across the board. Businesses that want to proceed employees happy while keeping data safety should consider Cisco start.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/nordvpn/29311/readers-pick-their-favorite-vpn-brands-for-home-and-office

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