I’m using Nordvpn just over 1,5 year and there are times that none of their servers work or are really unreliable. In the beginning I had no problems with their servers but since they advertise all over the internet (and also Tv) theirs service went downhill. When my subscription ends I will definably pick an different VPN provider.
I use Mullvad, but it's not something I run full-time. Only for activities where I don't want to be tracked. They are very privacy minded, to the point that they will accept payments of cash shipped with the relevant account number, and apply the payment toward the account. Like, you could send 5 Euros in a plain white envelope with no return address and just write the account number inside it. (They also accept more traditional payment methods.) They have servers in the US and EU, and I haven't looked elsewhere. Using a nearby server, I don't lose any of the bandwidth I normally have from my ISP. They have useful setup guides on their website for various things, like OpenVPN on android, setting up a router VPN for your whole network, etc. I will note that certain services like hulu or Netflix will block the Mullvad IPs, this is because those services don't want to allow people to bypass region restrictions on content, and because the Mullvad proxy servers have relatively static, known external IPs.
i think i’m nearing the end of my 3 year Nordvpn deal, and i’ve never had speed or connecting issues. but… for certain games (where everything happens on the server and the game locks up when lagging) it’s not ideal, but i’m not sure any VPN is to be honest.
But that’s not what i use it for anyway… when my sub expires i’ll most likely get another x year deal from Nordvpn.
It’l probably differ from country to country how reliable a VPN service is too.
VPN is mostly unnecessary except for very special situations or if you have more trust in such a VPN company than your internet service provider. When surfing in the WWW most websites use encryption and the only visible metadata from the outside is which server you’re connecting to. So even hotel or other public WLAN is not a problem.
I use VPN when I want to access my home or company network from the outside or for special maintenance purposes. Using a commercial VPN provider is not necessary in most cases (and I don’t trust them more than the network I’m connected to).
I frequent a forum that always fails with a 403 error, but only from my home network, wired or wireless. For years it worked normally, but two yrs. ago the 403 error failures began. The mods and Admins either don't know how to fix it, can't, or won't. They claim they don't see any reason for the 403 error failure. Theirs is the only site that has ever failed with a 403 error in my 23 yrs. of browsing from home on dialup, DSL and now fiber. The site works on my cell connection, and works fine from any other network or location. My ISP indicates the problem is on the forum host's end. Swapping routers has no effect, as my internet-facing IP always stays the same. No other forum members report similar failures, but I have to wonder how many potential members are stymied by 403 failures we never hear from.
All that to say I run the free VPN in Opera for access to that site and only that site. It's a clunky remedy, as 95% + of my browsing is on an old iPad that's too old to run the version of Opera needed. That limits me to one PC running Opera & it's built-in free VPN.
Those VPN Extensions for browsers like you mentioned work good too. Good to use when you need to hide quickly for a moment. Might not have all the choices for servers but it works for what it is.
