I checked the sub and couldn’t find a similar post, so I thought I’d share my personal journey with VPNs because it’s been a game-changer for me, and I think it might help those who are new to VPNs. Like many of you, I started off using free VPNs. I mean, who doesn’t love free stuff, right? But let me tell you, that love affair with free VPN service turned sour pretty quickly.
First of all, speed. At first, the impression was that it was quite good, enough for my needs and can be usable. But after starting to use a VPN daily, it honestly sometimes felt like I was back in my dial-up days, waiting for web pages to load. And don’t even get me started on streaming. Buffering has become my new best friend, but not in a good way.
Connection drops. Quite often I ran into situations where it seemed like I was in the middle of something important, and BAM! The connection was lost. It got to the point where I was more anxious about my VPN failing on me than the actual content I was trying to access.
Ads. Now, I get why this happened. At first it was quite fun to see those unusual, sketchy ads. After a while I started wondering, who gets my data such as browsing history, device information, and location, and then targets me with such ‘personalized ads’. It came to my understanding that I was probably just feeding my data to who-knows-who.
That was enough for me. I did my research on paid services and finally invested in a VPN. This decision, in my experience, was like stepping out of the Stone Age into the Space Age.
The first and the most fascinating difference between free and paid VPN was the speed. It honestly felt like I somehow upgraded my internet plan to the deluxe edition. Waiting around for websites to load or dealing with endless buffering during Netflix marathons was left behind.
Totally different reliability. I couldn’t say I haven’t experienced a connection drop since switching to a paid VPN, but it was far beyond constant/daily/hourly (!) connection drops like it was before.
The biggest relief was the peace of mind. And what I mean by that is knowing that my data isn’t being logged or sold is priceless. Also, since you all probably have guessed that I chose NordVPN (not obvious at all, right?), I have to admit that additional perks such as Threat Protection, Kill Switch, Meshnet added a decent bonus.
So, that’s my free vs. paid VPN story. If you’re still on the fence about whether to go for a free or paid VPN, take it from someone who’s been there, save yourself the headache and invest in it.
