The Paid VPN Services vs the Free VPN Services

We pay for so many services in our lives that receiving something for free always seems highly attractive to us. Researches have shown that people are gladly willing to waste their time standing for hours in long, slow-moving lines to get freebies. Scoops of ice-cream, pancakes, and donuts seem to taste infinitely more delicious, when we are not required to pay for them. Every promotional sign with the word “free” attached to its items immediately lures thousands of people desirous to partake in a giveaway, even if it would not occur to them to buy these items at full price. And if people get so excited that they are ready to queue for hours for a free donut that costs around a dollar, how happy would they feel to receive more expensive objects free of charge? Certainly, prospects to use for free costly programs and services are alluring, especially when payments must be executed on a monthly basis. A free version of a program saves a lot of money by one stroke, people usually reason, liberating them from monthly payments. Yet while this reasoning might be true about some items and services, having a free version does not always guarantee good quality. Take the VPN: most of the people seek free versions of the Virtual Private Network, but the paid VPN is considered better on many counts. This review of Express VPN touches upon some features of the Virtual Private Network; other pros and cons of the paid and free VPNs are detailed below.

The Virtual Private Network has long become popular with people around the globe, because it allows them to access the web safely and privately by routing their connections through a server and hiding their online presence. Precisely this guaranteed invisibility is what makes the VPN so appealing in people’s eyes. An easiness with which they can use it is another reason why more and more people resort now to the Virtual Private Network software. When users start their VPN software from their VPN service, it encrypts their data, moving ahead of their Internet Service Providers that thereby lose their chance to track them down. The encrypted data then goes to the VPN, after which it moves to the user’s online destination, whatever that might be: google, Netflix, or their bank website. Because of the VPN, the online destination sees the users’ data as arriving from their VPN server rather than from their computer and its location.

Now, statistically, most of the people using the VPN to hide their online presence have it free of charge. Whereas their free VPNs do perform the required function of camouflaging their online addresses, not many users know that, in many respects, they still look inferior in comparison to the paid Virtual Private Networks. For one thing, the free VPN services provide only PPTP VPNs (Point-to-Point Tunnelling Protocol) that utilize MS-CHAP V2. The problem with MS-CHAP V2 is that it has been proven to be easily hacked. PPTP VPNs are, therefore, highly insecure. The paid VPNs are more reliable, since, in addition to PPTP VPNs, they let people use L2TP/IPSEC, SSTR, SSH, and Open VPN, all of which secure users’ connections. For another, the free VPN has low speed, because many people flock to it. A lack of bandwidth slows the VPN’s speed even further. As bandwidth is costly, a provider giving free services naturally does not have money to invest in it. Those providers who charge for their VPN services, by contrast, have resources to put money into bandwidth and thus guarantee high speed of their Virtual Private Networks. High bandwidth also ensures the VPN availability. There are lesser disconnections in the paid VPNs than in the free ones, which are always overloaded and move painfully slowly.

Customer support is also worse for those people who use the free VPN. The reason for this inequality is, again, money. Like bandwidth, customer support is expensive. If you do not pay for your VPN, you cannot truly expect specialists to busy themselves with your problems. Providers who charge money for their VPN, however, include support into its cost. That is, help with your software is exactly what you pay for, when you turn to the paid VPN. Whereas nobody is going to assist you, when your free VPN malfunctions, you can rightly demand experts to solve your problems, after you have purchased their services. 

This is not to say, of course, that the free VPN has no merits. Its worth lies precisely in what attracts users to the VPN in the first place. Only the free VPN provides desired anonymity, because, not charged, people do not need to register for its services. Providers asking their clients to pay for their Virtual Private Network need to have their name, credit card details, and address to make a transaction. Giving one’s personal details to use the VPN turns it into oxymoron, since it was created precisely to disguise one’s identity. Anonymity trumps all other advantages provided by the paid VPN, though they still should be taken into account when you decide which kind of the Virtual Private Network to use.

The Yucatan Times
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