Hi all. So, it is not under normal circumstances that I promote a product or a service, but I had a positive experience and wanted to share it with other folks. I was not prompted to share this and I am not using any affiliate/referral URLs in this post.
tl;dr: ProtonVPN is a trustworthy VPN service that values user privacy and security to the fullest of VPN providers I have interacted with. Their base in Switzerland enables enforcement of the world’s (currently) most powerful privacy laws. Extra points for integrating super easily into a Linux environment with a Python-based command-line configuration tool.
For the holidays, I gifted my family a ProtonMail Visionary account subscription. This includes secure email via ProtonMail and access to the ProtonVPN service. I started using ProtonVPN on mobile and Linux.
For the security and privacy overview, the website above does a good job of explaining the privacy advantages of their service, so you can evaluate that on its own merit.
On stock Android and iOS, it integrated seamlessly with the native VPN functionality. I was able to kick the curb on the Google-provided VPN I’ve used by default on my phone (
). So this was a nice change and the user interface felt easy to navigate. The less technologically-savvy of my family had no issues figuring out how to use and connect to it, both on Android and iOS.
On Linux, their open source Python command-line app is amazing:
Their open source Python command-line utility makes using ProtonVPN easy on Linux. I literally installed the tool and had the VPN connected and running in a few minutes (using an OpenVPN profile). I always struggle with OpenVPN even though it is the VPN client-side software I wanted to use; the integration with OpenVPN was a plus.
For Fedora 31/rawhide, CentOS 7/8, and RHEL 7/8 users, you can install it as an RPM package below via COPR:
https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/jflory7/protonvpn-cli/
As far as their plans go, this is my suggestion:
- Free plan is available if you want to try it out
- Basic plan ($4/month) is good if you just want to generally improve your online privacy
- Plus plan ($8/month) is good if absolute privacy and security are of high importance to you (at cost of speed)
Their plans are below:
I hope others find this useful. It was the VPN service I’ve always been looking for and it has been too good of an experience to not share.