Looking for a review of the PureVPN service? You’ve got it! As you may know using a VPN is a popular way to increase your security online especially when using WiFi in public places like hotels, coffee shops or libraries.
While a VPN does not eliminate all risk it is probably enough for most people and is certainly a must-have service if you do a lot of web browsing, work or play over wireless or wired networks that you do not have control over (i.e. anywhere outside your home and even there if you have an insecure router).
Read on to find out how you can increase your security online (and enjoy services like Netflix regardless of your location).
About a month ago I heard from the team at PureVPN who had seen my review of the Witopia PPTP VPN service and were interested in hearing what I thought of PureVPN.
I’d just renewed my Witopia service and it was working pretty well for the most part although not quite as well as it had over my DSL connection back in the United States.
I’m now running over a 2 Mbps cable Internet connection in Central America and Witopia’s PPTP service was dropping it’s connection a bit more than I liked to see. It also wasn’t quite as fast connecting all the way from Central America to servers in the U.S.
A PureVPN Review Opportunity
When I heard from PureVPN I was pretty curious to learn more about their service because of the minor issues I’d been running into with the VPN I was using. They offered to give me a year of basic level service if I would be willing to share my experience with others.
I warned that I might have to write the truth even if I didn’t like using PureVPN but that didn’t seem to be a problem :) Guess they were confident enough in the product.
They also signed me up for their affiliate program so if you decide to use PureVPN and sign up through one of the links here I do get a commission.
You can go straight to the their website if you’d like of course but those of you who decide to click through one of my links here have my thanks!
So…now that we know about all that let’s see what there is to know about this Virtual Private Network.
The PureVPN Packages
There are three service levels you can get through the company:
You can pay on a monthly basis too ($9.95, $18.00 and $15.00/mo) but you will end up paying 20-26% more over the course of one year than if you just pay for a year upfront.
The Pure Gold plan gives you a dedicated IP address if that is something that you need. Most users will probably be best served with the Standard plan which is the one I’ve been using for the past month. The pricing is comparable to other services out there.
Using the PureVPN Service
While you can use the PureVPN service on Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems I’ve been running it only under Windows XP. Some of the work I’ve been doing requires the Windows OS so despite experience with Linux I haven’t been using it much lately.
Setup is extremely easy and if you can install programs on your PC you can get the VPN up and running without trouble.
PureVPN provides a handy connection dashboard program you can download that let’s you select the server you would like to use as well as the protocol (L2TP or PPTP). Once you choose both and enter your username and password you simply hit the big green “Connect” button and you are logged on in a matter of seconds.
I’ve occasionally had problems connecting to a specific server (I usually use the Florida USA server because of it’s speed) and get an error message telling me the log in failed. If that is the case I simply choose another option such as Las Vegas, Los Angeles or Chicago and connect without further problems.
There are many other servers around the world in places like Singapore and Switzerland but I often want to appear to be based in the United States to the websites I visit so I usually run through the U.S. servers for convenience.
I don’t believe I’ve ever experienced a disconnect that wasn’t caused by a failure in my cable connection but sometimes it does seem like the VPN stalls so-to-speak which amounts to about the same thing especially if you are in the middle of downloading a large file.
I think the stall in connection I’ve experienced only occurs when I’ve been connected to the same server for more than 8 hrs. I haven’t tested this rigorously since I typically just disconnect and reconnect to a different server if a stall out occurs.
This seems to be the type of thing you have to deal with in relation to VPN services. Like I mentioned before the Witopia PPTP VPN had a tendency to just disconnect on it’s own recently. Perhaps there is a service out there that has a 100% reliable connection but I have my doubts.
PureVPN Speed Test
Of course no one is going to use a VPN for Internet security if it slows there connection so much that it is unusable.
Fortunately my experience with the PureVPN standard level plan is that it delivers some pretty good speed figures. My cable connection is currently rated at 2Mbps and performs at that level most of the time.
Running through the VPN I will usually get ~1.4Mbps when using the Florida USA server. I’ve tried a few and the Florida connection seems to have a slight edge over the others for me although Los Angeles also performs quite well and with low ping times (typically about 110 ms).
You can see a screen shot of my SpeedTest.net results below as well as see the video of the speed test in progress. As I mention in the clip this is a below average reading for me since I usually get over 1Mbps and a much lower ping number.
I don’t know if the slow results for today were based on a slow down with the VPN or with my local cable which has been unreliable lately.
Should You Use PureVPN?
The decision is up to you but I can tell you that I’ve been pretty happy with the service in the month that I’ve used it and am glad to have another 11 months of service left. I expect I’ll be renewing it as a paid subscriber when my initial year is up.
I can only compare it with Witopia so there may be other top of the line VPNs out there I haven’t tried but I do prefer PureVPN and even though I could use both at this point since I have a year’s worth of service in each I still connect to PureVPN every time I log on.
The do have a 3 day money back guarantee so you have a chance to reverse course if you try it and find that it doesn’t work well for your situation.
My call is that it is worth your while. The price is pretty standard, the software is very nice to use and the reliability has been good.
If you want to secure your Internet connection or just get access to U.S. only services like Hulu, Netflix and others you can get PureVPN service for yourself by clicking here.
If you’ve found this review helpful why not share it with others via the Facebook, Twitter or +1 buttons below? You can also check out my PC security guide right here.
I wrote a brief review on Witopia’s PPTP personal VPN service a few months back and thought now might be a good time to revisit it with an updated review not only because
