Hong Kong-based PureVPN has been in the VPN business since 2007, so it's no surprise that it's built a long list of features: 6.500+ self-managed servers in 140+ countries and 180+ locations, with apps for just about everything, OpenVPN and IKEv2 protocols, torrent support, DNS and IPv6 leak protection, smart kill switch, shared tunneling, and optional extras including dedicated IP addresses, port forwarding, and even DDoS protection. Support for the platform is a real highlight, with dedicated apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and Linux, extensions for Chrome and Firefox, and more downloads and tutorials to help you get set up on routers, Kodi, Android TV, Amazon. Fire TV Stick and Suite.
PureVPN has thousands of servers around the world (Image credit: PureVPN) Up to 10 devices can be connected simultaneously. It's better than most of the competition, though Hide.me, IPVanish, Ivacy, and Private Internet Access also support 10 devices out of the box, and Windscribe has no limits.
PureVPN subscription options PureVPN:- 1 month plan - €0,99 per month (total cost €0,99)
Pricing starts a little higher than the average €11 billed monthly. The annual plan also seems expensive at €5,83, especially since signing up for two years brings the monthly bill down to €3,33. Or to put it another way, parting with €70 gets you one year of service, while handing over €80 gets you two. Sounds like great value to us, though Private Internet Access also charges €3.33 per month on its yearly plan, dropping to €2.69 if you sign up for two years. Dedicated IP addresses are also cheap at just $2.99 per month for a US address on the annual plan. Private Internet Access charges €5 per month, NordVPN €5.83 on its yearly plan.
You can try PureVPN for 7 days for just $1 (Image credit: PureVPN) If you're intrigued, there's a 7-day trial. It costs €1, but it gives you plenty of time to see if the service does what you need, and if you cancel your account before the end of the week, you'll get your dollar back. If you sign up for a full plan and aren't satisfied, there's a 31-day money-back guarantee, with no questionable clauses in the fine print to surprise you. If you're not satisfied, simply email and request a refund.
Confidentiality and registration
PureVPN's privacy policy gets off to a good start, with a long list of all the data the service doesn't log: 'We DO NOT keep any records of your browsing activities, connection logs, VPN IP address records assigned to you, your originating IP, your connection time, your browsing history, the sites you have visited, your outgoing traffic, the content or data you have accessed, or the DNS queries generated by vosotras. “¡Estupendo! Pero is a simplified poco. The company says in the upper part of the page that we keep connection registros, for example, pero move hacia abajo y hay una section llamada `` Information incluida en los registros de conexión VPN '' giving details that compiled: el día in that connected to a specific location, on ISP, the length of the connection, the quantity of connections that realiza and the ancho de banda total general que usa (no por connection, aparentemente). No hay registro de la dirección IP de origen, la dirección IP de destino, la hora en que initiation sesión o su sus actividades después, por lo que es poco probable que estos datos limitados compromised su privacidad. Pero creemos que es una mal idea decir "no guardamos sus registros de conexión" en la parte superior de la página y luego enumerar las en que registra las conexiones un poco más abajo. The política también establece que PureVPN usa
algunas herramientas '' en sus aplicaciones para perform VPN diagnostics and monitor crash reports''. But then it lists Google Analytics, iTunes, Crashlytics, Apptentive, Firebase, New Relic, and MixPanel, which may be more than you expected. This type of bug reporting is not uncommon, but we would expect it to be optional and it's not here. There is no "Send fault data?" in Settings: PureVPN sends it anyway (and if you don't read the privacy policy, you won't even know it was happening).
PureVPN successfully passed a no-log audit by KPMG (Image credit: PureVPN) There's some positive privacy news here, too. In 2020, PureVPN announced that it had passed a no-logging audit by KPMG, and concluded that the service does not log a user's original IP address, the VPN IP address assigned to a user, the exact time a user connects to a VPN. server or does not log a user's activities through their VPN connection. PureVPN also said that it has opted for an audit policy
siempre activa '', lo que significa que KPMG puede initiate an unscheduled privacy audit at any time of the year, without prior notice.'' The audit appears to have been thorough, and PureVPN said it involved "inspecting our complex infrastructure, server configurations, code base, technical data logs, and global servers, as well as" interviews with our staff involved in server maintenance and database administration. ". The report has not been made public, so you cannot verify the details yourself. And you are only trying to verify the main no-logging policy, not looking for privacy issues in general. Could there be privacy issues with the diagnosis of PureVPN flaws, for example? Who knows, it was outside the scope of the audit. Still, we're not complaining, even with these limitations, there's a lot more comfort here than you'll get with most VPNs. Hopefully PureVPN will continue with your regular audits and make full reports available, not just one sentence.
PureVPN now only accepts PayPal and credit cards (Image credit: PureVPN)
applications
Signing up for PureVPN is pretty straightforward, but we've noticed that the company now only supports credit card and PayPal payments. Payment options via Bitcoin, AliPay, gift cards, and more have been removed. After dumping our money, the website told us to download links for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, browser extensions, and more. We got the Windows client back and during the download a welcome email arrived with login information.
The Windows client now has a simple but straightforward interface (Image credit: PureVPN) The app ditched its confusing ``modes'' system, which works for us, and the interface is clean and very simple. A status panel shows the recommended location; tapping on the list of locations shows more; there's a big on/off button for logging in and out, and some little sidebar icons for other areas of the app (Settings, Help, Account).
You can choose your preferred server location from a list (Image Credit: PureVPN) The location picker is capable enough, with a list of recent locations, a favorites system, and a list of countries where you can perform searches with ping times to help you spot the fastest. Click an arrow to the right of a country to expand it to list all cities. It's a familiar idea, but most VPN apps only show this kind of ``expand'' prompt when a country has multiple locations. PureVPN does this for all countries, so we regularly expanded a list to find that it only included one city. Connection times were reasonably fast, around three seconds for IKEv2, eight seconds for OpenVPN. Desktop notifications let you know when you're online.
The Windows app has very few settings (Image Credit: PureVPN) The settings are more basic than the previous Windows app. There's always a kill switch, and you can choose between TCP/UDP IKEv2 and OpenVPN, but there's not much else. Old features like split tunneling are gone. A Help button includes one of the most unnecessary FAQs we've ever seen. Only four items, none of them helpful (“What are recent locations?”, “How do I change my subscription?”, “How can I see the ping values for a location?” and “What does the tag mean? p2p? means?"), with incredibly short answers, and some of them are even dead wrong. The full answer to the Ping question reads: "To see the ping values, go to Preferences and enable the option 'Enable Ping ', for example, but this refers to the previous client. There is no "Enable ping" option in this version. And our build was approaching six months, so this bug has been around for a while. You can at least submit a ticket from the app or open a live chat window, but that's not ideal either. When we clicked the Chat button, a browser tab opened to a link similar to https://direct.lc.chat/109xxx87, which wasn't even branded PureVPN. It's probably staffed entirely by PureVPN employees, and it's all completely secure. But it would still be reassuring if the live chat window opened on the PureVPN site, rather than a third-party service that most users wouldn't recognize.
You can check for leaks using PureVPN's DNS leak test tool (Image credit: PureVPN) Advanced features include IPv6 leak protection and a multiport option that intelligently chooses the best port, avoiding locked or limited options. You can choose to use a non-NAT network to get a unique IP address, and port forwarding is available if you need it. We took a look at PureVPN's Android app, and it was pretty much the same story as the Windows version. The old mode interface has been replaced with a desktop-like version, and there are only a handful of key settings in kill switch, split tunneling (only apps you specify can use VPN), and choice of protocol (OpenVPN or IKEv2.) Previous apps were a bit confusing, so it's good to see the redesign. Giving up everything that didn't work means there's not much left, and the apps seem a bit less powerful compared to the competition.
The Windows app has limited protocol options (Image credit: PureVPN)
Windows application test
We found some nasty underlying issues with the old Windows app, but would the new version be any better? IKEv2 connections are now correctly configured to require encryption, a major improvement over our last tests. They do not save your credentials locally and IPv6 is disabled by default. The handling of the protocol is still, well, weird. We notice that if we choose the OpenVPN UDP protocol, PureVPN effectively connects via IKEv2, apparently because it has this fallback...