I’ve been using Mullvad for the past few months. Have not had many issues with it aside from the 5 device limit and the removal of port forwarding. I’m currently looking at Private Internet Access as a potential replacement. It looks like it offers 10 device limit and port forwarding included with the price.
Anyone using PIA? How’s the experience?
Edit: Probably should have mentioned, feel free to offer any other recommendations, I’m not attached to, or against any specific recommendations. I would like it to have a GUI available on Linux though if possible.
I have been using NordVPN since forever to be honest.
Never had any problem (servers always up and good speed too), but people say that it is very expensive in comparison with other VPN providers, so I don’t know.
I’d say past security breaches are enough reason to stay away.
This message has been sponsored by NordVPN
Also, it doesn’t seem to be much more expensive than something like ExpressVPN, though that is pretty expensive at about $13 USD monthly. Way cheaper to buy yearly though. In comparison, Mullvad is a flat 5 Euro (about $5.20 - $5.40) per month. Other VPNs seem to be about $10-$13 per month.
I have not tried them, but always stayed away from them due to aggressive marketing that really put me off. there was a good year or two where I was bombarded with NordVPN ads and sponsors, and still get the occasional advert about them. It may be worth trying though, I have colleagues that use it.
It may be worth trying
You mentioned removal of port forwarding as an issue with Mullvad, why would you consider migrating to a much spammier VPN that has never had port forwarding? LOL that message really does sound like it was sponsored by NordVPN :P
Didn’t know they don’t have port forwarding, thanks for pointing it out, I did a google search and here’s the link stating they don’t offer port forwarding.
“Port forwarding and triggering could work with a VPN protocol in general, but not with NordVPN. Our apps block almost all port communication from within your device except for the ones most commonly used by popular applications.”
Surfshark offered a similar deal that I bought a few years back. At the time it worked just fine for me, but they don’t offer port forwarding (at least they did not at the time I was using them), and they don’t have a Linux GUI.
Nord is such a weird case. It almost never gets recommended. It even gets negative comments as soon as someone mentions it. And yet, even the comparison table at r/VPN hast Nord at the top spot with full points for almost all criteria. So do people hate Nord just because they see other people hating it and go along? Or is r/VPN also just an ad for NordVPN?
I myself started using Nord quite a while back and I also never had any problem whatsoever. Speed is super good, availability was never a problem, it just works. Still, if someone would point me to some specific flaws with Nord and showed me how some other VPN is an improvement, I´d be happy to reconsider once my Nord subscription runs out in september.
I think people hate Nord because they spam their ads all over YouTube along with not offering things like port forwarding which is crucial for torrenting.
Nord does do a lot of sponsoring, that´s right. But that doesn´t make it a bad service automatically. If I want to believe that comparison table I mentioned, Nord might even be a pretty good service, so maybe they “need” this big marketing to rake in enough users to make it profitable and affordable.
About that port forwarding though, what´s the deal with that? I´m asking because I lack the tech background here. You say, it´s crucial for torrenting. And obviously, many look for alternatives to mullvad because they don´t offer it any more. Others though say they don´t really need port forwarding.
