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
Private VPN does not honor the 30 day refund policy BEWARE! Claimed that I used 348 GB in 2 hours (most of the 2 hours was spent trying to get the app to work) The app would not work properly on my android box. Contacted support took 12 hours to get a reply. Deleted the app and went with another service.
I marked everything bad because it’s a complete scam of a company. Lies like “most trusted VPN” …not 30 day refund policy, they won’t do it. What you get is nasty combative people obviously just wearing customers thin so they give up. All the configurations are faulty and most of their claims false. Very very bad.
PrivateVPN is a piece of shit A real crap Doesn’t work with Mac OS
A disaster of a company that does not understand Customer Service.
iPhone OpenVPN did not work because of limits within their system (even though the publish the config files for iOS). Eventually, after I had to switch to another provider (that workes fine) they say they have modified their system. But they refused refund.
Then I got SPAM e-mail and they have no “unsubscribe” and no account settings to stop such mail (and the link in the mail went to a web site blocked for “malicious content”). And all they can say is “mark their domain it as spam” (which is not possible on an iPhone !!) with the comment “Our time also cost money, you know…”.
Eventually “…because it’s not your fault…” they agreed a refund.
Disaster of a company. Recommend avoiding mainly due to their support and general attitude to users.
Can’t connect, the software is rubbish and they never say what the server status really is, they don’t seem to be working too hard at delivering a good service. Incompetent?
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.