Whether you’re someone who’s particularly interested in keeping your data safeguarded when online – or even simply looking to access geo-restricted content – you’ve probably already heard a little bit about VPNs and the kinds of solutions they can offer you.

Still, given just how many different features come with Virtual Private Networks, they’re not always as easy to grasp if you’re a beginner to the technology – especially if the aforementioned example of using VPNs for things like streaming services is more your thing and you’re less clued up about the privacy or technical aspects of these tools.

So, throughout this article, we’re going to be covering what VPNs actually are and what key features you should be looking out for if you decide you want to invest in one.

Furthermore, we’ll also be breaking down our top 10 choices for a VPN that you can access now, and while not all of them are going to be companies that are based here in the United Kingdom, they’re all still accessible and won’t limit you in terms of any kind of jurisdiction or legal issues.

Although the term Virtual Private Network (VPN) might sound like you need some sort of tech background to fully understand, it’s actually just a simple service that is often overcomplicated. At its core, VPNs are basically just a means of keeping a secure connection when you’re using the internet, so anything that you do is both anonymous and encrypted.

So, if you were using the internet from a public network, somewhere like a library or café, for example, you can use a VPN to automatically make a private network from the public internet connection – essentially masking your IP address and encrypting data transmissions.

We’ll come onto this in a little bit more detail in just a moment, but if it helps, simply try to think of a VPN as a kind of tunnel between the device that you’re using and the VPN server that keeps any unwanted threats on the outside.

Let’s get into the main focus of the article and break down the ten favourite options that we’ve tested.

It’s briefly worth mentioning that awarding any one of these ten options the title of “best” can be a little bit misleading, as ultimately, the best services are always going to be the most expensive ones with the best track records when it comes to data breaches or customer support.

Having said that, obviously, not everyone is going to be able to pay excessive amounts for a VPN, so the best option for certain people might actually just be the free options that simply allow you to use it.

Still, all these features are fairly run of the mill for most VPNs, so what exactly makes NordVPN so special to us? Well, usually, the fact that you’re paying a mere £2.39 per month (if you opt for their 24-month subscription) means that you should expect some kind of knock towards performance, but NordVPN is actually one of the fastest services we’ve tested on this list – even running exceptionally well for video streaming and downloading when connected to American or Asian servers from the United Kingdom.

Aside from the performance, NordVPN just makes using a VPN easy to do in general with an interface that can be used by even the least experienced users. Essentially, all you have to do is open a list and select which country’s server you want to connect with, so there’s not really a learning curve involved. Still, NordVPN has great advanced settings you can get into if you’re more of a pro – like split tunnelling, for instance, so it’s really got something for everybody.

Now, you might’ve also heard concerns about NordVPN facing security breaches in the past, but they’ve confirmed that it was only a single VPN server in Finland – their own servers were never hacked, and therefore, no customer information or data was leaked either. As such, NordVPN remains our number one choice for a solid platform you can sign up for today.

Not to say ExpressVPN isn’t also highly safe – with no-log policies and independent auditors ensuring the platform stays secure – there are just better VPNs in this field. Fortunately, though, whether you’re using a Playstation, Chromecast, or even Amazon Fire TV device, you’ll be able to connect your VPN to five different devices at once.

Still, it’s worth mentioning that although you should be able to access whatever streaming services you like with ExpressVPN, it’s probably not the fastest out of all the VPNs we’ll be covering on this list – and when you’re going to be paying approximately £5.50 for the next 15 months you’d definitely want your platform to feel a little bit faster.

Having said that, it’s far from the most expensive option we’ll be covering, and for the streaming services you’re now gaining access to, it’s still a pretty good deal all in all.

 

A few of the VPNs we’ve mentioned allow for ‘split tunnelling’, which is where you can choose whether your VPN is active or not based on which app or website you’re on, and Hotspot Shield joins them on this list, too – naturally given you the option to connect their VPN directly to your router if you’d rather have network-wide privacy protection.

Lastly, with dedicated streaming servers in both the UK and the US, you’ll be able to access all the major streaming sites with Hotspot Shield if this is one of your main reasons for using one in the first place.

You’ve got a few different subscription tiers you can choose from with this VPN platform, with the most basic of these covering two separate devices and setting you back around £3 per month (with their 36-month plan. The other major tier, IVPN Pro, comes with a few extra features, but the main benefit here is that you’re also gaining five extra devices for seven in total – costing around £5 per month for three years.

In addition, adding to the whole theme of anonymity and privacy, you can actually pay for this in cryptocurrency, so not even any of your bank details are linked to the platform if you’re paranoid about storing any kind of personal data at all on their platform., and you can even pay for your subscription in anonymous cryptocurrency.

To reflect some of the less extensive features they provide, CyberGhost actually only costs £1.92 per month for 28 months of usage, so it’s pretty much as cheap as you can go without losing all the quality entirely and opting for a free VPN instead.

You’ve got plenty of options for things like streaming and gaming, but even though CyberGhost is more of a simple service than others, you can still configure a bunch of advanced features for more technical benefits – ‘smart rules’, for instance, which is basically one of the settings you can configure so that your VPN is automatically turned on whenever you connect to a certain network or app.

Ultimately, you know what you’re getting with CyberGhost, and while you’re naturally able to use this VPN for a pretty wide selection of services, you’d be better off with something a little bit more pricey if you value speed and server options above all.

So, it’s no surprise that HMA offers such impressive download speeds given that they’re based in London – clocking speeds of up to 350 Mbits per second.

For just £2.39 per month (if you sign up for their three-year subscription plan), you can’t really argue with the quality of HMA all in all.

What’s more, aside from the military-grade encryption tools they obfuscate your IP address with, security and privacy are prominent with ProtonVPN, too, as the fact that they’re an open-source service means the public can audit their platform. Ultimately, this just means that you’ll be completely safe while using their service for absolutely free – not a bad deal.

Their customer support team is pretty helpful as well, but you are going to need to submit a ticket if you want to hear back from someone.

Interestingly enough, Surfshark actually boasts one of the largest ranges of different servers out of every VPN we’ve covered already, giving you access to over 100 different countries and 3,200 separate servers throughout them, so this makes the platform one of the more versatile choices, too.

Swiss laws for services like VPNs actually aren’t dissimilar to how their banking laws are: insanely private – meaning the VPN is under no obligation to store any of your personal details other than basic usernames and email addresses.

The pricing is fantastic, too, because if the £1.99 per month (with their two-year subscription plan) is too much for you, you’ll be able to access a free subscription tier that comes with around 50 different servers for you to connect to – not to mention you’ve got quality customer support on standby should you need anything.

It’s worth mentioning that PIA could do with making some updates to their app, though, as it feels a little bit outdated at this point.

Lastly, if Private Internet Access’s VPN has nothing else, it’s the cheapest option we’ve covered today that’s not one of the free platforms, setting you back approximately a minor £1.57 per month for 24 months. So, with its long-standing reputation, quality of privacy, and price, PIA has all the components of an impressive VPN.

While it’s not exactly a prerequisite, having a decent understanding of how VPNs actually work can be pretty important when you’re doing your research and weighing up all the options that are available.

So, as mentioned, whenever you initiate your VPN connection, all the outgoing data on your device – whether it’s your phone or your laptop – becomes fully encrypted and gets sent to the VPN server through a kind of tunnel. Then, once it finally reaches the server (the time it takes to do this is actually one of the biggest indicators of the value of the particular VPN that you’re using), The VPN server will decrypt all your data and send it to the intended destination, like a website.

This works in reverse, too, as any incoming data from the site that you’re on will then be encrypted by the VPN server before being sent back to your device, so this whole encryption-decryption process is just to keep the data fully confidential while it’s moving around behind the scenes on the internet and keeping it safe from interception.

Generally speaking, although some of them are naturally going to offer their own unique additional features to complement the VPN, most providers are all offering the same kind of service.

So, in this next section, let’s walk through some of the most common – yet still vital – features you should be keeping an eye out for when you’re looking for the right service for your particular needs:

Encryption and Security

If it wasn’t already clear, although the added bonuses of streaming services are nice, the main appeal of VPNs is, more often than not, the security that’s offered via encryption, which is essentially when you’re data is briefly scrambled so it’s completely unreadable to anyone who tries to intercept it.

As touched on earlier, when you’re using public Wi-Fi networks in places like hotels or a coffee shop, the networks are often a hotspot for cybercriminals looking to snatch sensitive information like passwords or credit card details from you – so all a VPN does is add an extra layer of safety to watch your back.

Anonymity and Privacy

VPN services offer you the chance to mask your IP address, which effectively anonymises all of your online activities and obscures your true location and identity by routing all the internet traffic through different regions.

This sort of thing can be pretty important if you’re someone who cares about tracking from advertisers, government surveillance, or just censorship in general.

Speed Test Results and Server Locations

When you’re checking out a VPN, you’ll always want to know how fast it is and where its servers are, as good VPNs with lots of servers in different places mean you can connect easily and quickly wherever you are.

Speed tests show how well the VPN performs, like how fast you can download stuff and how long it takes to send and receive data, so these can also help you figure out whether or not the VPN is right for you.

Customer Support and Satisfaction Guarantee

Needless to say, all of the best VPN providers offer quality support to their customers when needed, and you should also always keep an eye out for any services that offer a 30-day money-back guarantee so that you’d be able to test it out without worrying about wasting your money if you don’t end up liking it.

If you’re someone who hosts their own website, you’ll probably already be aware that you’re going to need to store and manage all your site data on a server with an internet connection.

Now, while some of the more traditional web hosting services out there might come with reliable enough infrastructure and support for handling any of the technical or privacy concerns you may have, that’s not to say VPNs won’t still come in handy

So, throughout this next section, we’ll be walking through the particular benefits of using a VPN for web hosting:

Protection Against DDoS Attacks

If you’re lucky enough to have no experience with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, these are basically a kind of cyber attack that criminals use to cause downtime and generally disrupt your online operations.

It goes without saying that if you’re using your site for business-related reasons, for instance, any kind of consistent disruption to your website is going to have some pretty damaging consequences in terms of your cash flow and general public perception.

So, the idea is that by routing all of your web hosting traffic through a VPN server, the same way we mentioned earlier in the article for personal use, you’ll then be able to mitigate a lot of the risk that comes from DDoS attacks since your hosting server‘s true IP address is fully obfuscated.

Naturally, this then makes it way harder for people to identify and target your website, so you shouldn’t have to worry about any visitors being unable to navigate your website because of any inflicted downtime.

Geo-Location Flexibility

If you’re using a VPN for web hosting, you’ll actually be able to choose the specific geographic location of the VPN server where all your website traffic will be routed to, which can actually be a massive opportunity to cater to specific demographics if your website happens to receive more traffic in a particular region.

In fact, aside from just being able to target international markets, this can also help out a lot when it comes to complying with data sovereignty laws, so you’re getting a lot of flexibility here either way.

Bypassing Internet Censorship and Restrictions

Following on from the previous point, any regions with pretty heavy laws or restrictions when it comes to internet censorship can be dealt with by using a VPN since you can simply just route the hosting traffic through a VPN server somewhere with open internet access – essentially allowing you to ensure your website is open to visitors regardless of where they’re actually located.

Let’s recap the primary reasons why you’d want to get a VPN while also providing alternative angles with cons so we can avoid being biassed:

Pros

Let’s start positively by walking through some of the main advantages of VPNs:

Enhanced Privacy and Security

VPNs encrypt all data transmissions, protecting user privacy and security from potential threats.

Access to Geo-Restricted Content

VPNs bypass regional restrictions, allowing users to access content from around the world. For example, if you’re a big music lover and your favourite artist is releasing an album on a certain date but it’s not actually out yet in your region, you can ease your cravings by creating a streaming service account in a country with a time zone that’s reached that date.

Oftentimes, countries like New Zealand, which has a 13+ hour time difference from the United Kingdom, can be good options here.

Anonymity Online

VPNs mask users’ IP addresses, enhancing anonymity and privacy while browsing the internet.

Cons

Although VPNs are primarily a positive service to use, they’re definitely not without their limitations or security concerns, so let’s touch on a few of the disadvantages of using a VPN:

Potential for VPN Connection Drops

VPN connections may occasionally drop, exposing user data to potential risks if not promptly re-established.

Cost of Premium VPN Services

While some VPN services offer free options, premium VPNs typically require a subscription fee, which may deter budget-conscious users.

Reliance on VPN Service Providers

Users must trust VPN service providers with their data, raising concerns about how private your data actually is/security breaches.

Performance Impact

VPNs may slightly reduce internet speeds due to encryption and routing processes, although the extent of this impact varies depending on the VPN provider and server location.

To wrap things up, pretty much any of the options we’ve outlined above are going to be fantastic choices if you’re looking for something affordable that’ll help you both stay anonymous online and be able to reach content that’s blocked in your region.

Having said that, they can obviously still feel slightly pricey for something with benefits that may not feel immediately clear – especially if you’ve been using the internet for a long time already and haven’t felt the need for any extra kind of protection (having steered clear from any dodgy sites where maligned individuals are going to be interested in your data in the past, for instance).

Furthermore, if budget constraints really are an issue for you, you can always opt for one of the many free VPN options available, but just bear in mind that these are often far inferior to the paid versions.

Ultimately, any decision to invest in a VPN is going to depend entirely on your individual needs and priorities. If you’re someone who only really browses social media a few times a day, you might be okay, but if privacy and access to geo-blocked content are top concerns, definitely consider getting a VPN for a quick solution.