Proton VPN

Proton VPN is one of the top Virtual Private Networks (VPN) in the market. They are based out of Switzerland and privacy and security are at the top of their list. They started with secure email back in 2014 and have expanded their products to include a whole suite of products. We will detail those below. Then the VPN service was founded in 2017.

I have personally used Proton Mail since it first came out. I was on the invite list from when Google+ was around and have used it since. It is outstanding and has great mobile apps and integrations. I have used the Free VPN as well a few years ago when it came out and it was as good as many paid versions at the time. The paid version is near the top across the board in all metrics. Them being a Swiss based company is a definite benefit.

As mentioned above, Proton Technologies, Proton VPN’s parent company, started with ProtonMail. Which is a privacy-focused email provider. The VPN came out in 2017 after they worked some kinks out about the ever-changing privacy laws. But since the VPN’s launch in 2017, it has grown to have over 4,400 servers in over 90 different countries.

The technology they use is open-source for all their products so anyone can see exactly what is going on. It leads to total transparency. Products? I am sure you are wondering what that means. In addition to Proton Mail and VPN, Proton also has Proton Pass, Proton Drive and Proton Calendar.

Proton bought SimpleLogin in 2022 and it is integrated into all their products. That led to the creation of Proton Pass in 2023. It is a cloud based password manager that is encrypted end to end. As with SimpleLogin it allows users to create alias emails and other secure protocols to ensure privacy. It is available to all Proton users. There is a Free and Paid version.

Proton Drive is cloud based storage that is encrypted. It is also available to all users of Proton products. They have a free and a paid version. The free version gives you 5GB of storage, with paid plans increasing the amount of storage.

The Proton Unlimited plan gives you premium access to all the features on all the products in the Proton ecosystem, effectively combining the following plans for a substantially lower price than if purchased separately. Proton Unlimited is $7.99 a month for a 2-year plan.

• Proton VPN Plus
• Proton Mail Plus
• Proton Drive Plus
• Proton Pass Plus

Security is King With Proton VPN

The company’s headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland. This is a definite plus and means it isn’t under the jurisdiction of any international surveillance alliances like the Five Eyes.

The Five Eyes, or FVEY for short, is a group of countries consisting of the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The Five Eyes gave rise to other alliances. The major ones are the Nine Eyes and Fourteen Eyes. Members of the nine eyes include the Five Eyes’ nations plus Denmark, Netherlands, France, and Norway. The Fourteen Eyes alliance consists of countries in the Nine Eyes alliance plus Germany, Italy, Belgium, Spain, and Sweden. All alliances actively share on matters of international intelligence even though their relationships may not be as tight as that of the countries in the five eyes.

These organizations developed after the Cold War started and have never ended. They were created to spy on the Soviet Union and other Communist nations. These countries were originally sourced to decrypt Soviet intelligence information. As we all know, these groups never are disbanded and continue on doing what they do.

Swiss law doesn’t require VPNs to keep user data logs, which makes the country great for VPNs with no data-logging policies like Proton.

It does cooperate with Five Eyes’ partner countries regarding law enforcement requests. How do they handle these requests?

On its website it covers the process. Proton VPN maintains a transparency report which discloses every time that third parties request user information. When courts mandate that Proton VPN hand over user data, the company had no data to hand over since it doesn’t log customer IP addresses. If there is any VPN out there you can trust with your data, it seems to be this one.

You can pay using Visa, Mastercard, American Express, PayPal, or Proton credits. Once you’ve created an account, you can purchase Proton credits using cash, bank transfers, or Bitcoin.

A Proton VPN Plus plan automatically comes with a Proton Mail Free plan, Proton Drive Free plan, Proton Pass Free plan, and limited access to Proton Calendar. To access all premium features available on the Proton ecosystem, you should upgrade to a Proton Unlimited plan. Proton Drive and Proton Calendar come with any of the Mail plans. This is a great perk.

Speed and Other Details for Proton VPN

Proton VPN uses IKEv2, OpenVPN (UDP/TCP), and WireGuard in all its Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, and Windows apps. By default, the app selects the best protocol to use. Which is pretty nice. You can change it if needed.

Proton VPN offers tunneling as well so you can choose the connections you want to be run through the virtual private network. That way you can pick and choose which ones count against the 10 simultaneous connections. If you are like me, I have 25+ things connected to WiFi at the house. This is always a nice perk.

The apps are self-explanatory and easy to use for all systems you want to use them on. They allow you to create profiles for different people or products. It also changes your public IP address to stop leaks of information and allow you to stream Netflix and other services. It allows you to watch virtually any streaming service from your home country and unblocks international videos and services if needed.

The speed is outstanding with the Plus plan according to other tests. You can feel free to Google and see the results from different sites. Hard to quote them as each has different results, but in general most were under 10% and as high as 21% loss in speed when going through the VPN. Different servers definitely play a part in this. Proton also has accelerators to help as well. Hard to argue with over 60 Mbps on Mac and Windows to stream in HD.

Our Recommendation

You know this is a top VPN service, as we are very picky about what services we endorse. This one passes the muster. It is one of only six of the dozens of services that are legit and are not out to make a quick buck.

Is Proton VPN the cheapest? No. Is it the most expensive? No. It is right smack dab in the middle of the pack. With the other products you get included with your VPN service (or standalone if you wish) the little bit of an extra price increase is well worth it. Fully encrypted email, cloud storage, password manager and calendar. Hard to beat that.

We do wish they had a 24/7 live chat option for help. They offer 24/7 email and a chat options with regular hours. They make up for a lot of it with outstanding self-help guides, tutorials and videos.

Proton VPN is a well-rounded service and is perfect for the most privacy conscience user, while being so easy to use the casual user will not have any issues. In the ratings below the 8.5’s we gave are not a knock on the service it is just it lacked speed and connections with certain apps. For the vast majority of people it will be rated a 9 or higher.