VPN accelerator, LAN connections, split tunneling, and Moderate NAT, most important being able to select a country (US, Japan or Netherlands) now you have zero choice and get put in a country with no data privacy laws for example.
The marketing people really hit Proton hard over the last few years you see more and more features being eroded away from free users. I thought the paid users supported the free users in their business model? was that not the ethos of Proton VPN years ago? Everyone has the right to privacy?
The blatant limitations being imposed makes you wonder where this is going in the future, similiar path of Tunnelbear vpn when they sold themselves out
If someone have time, please contact them to ask to revert changes. If there will many requests, they should make some consensual changes
ProtonVPN is always an awful deal unless you pay for 1–2 years. €10 per month if you don’t lock your money in for 1–2 years? Absolutely unacceptable.
What do you expect from a free VPN? Mullvad and Ivpn do not offer free tiers, and Windscribe gives you 10 gb monthly. Tell me trustworthy VPN which offers a better free tier.
Otherwise, nobody will pay Proton if you are entitled to the same features, right?
Btw, jurisdiction does not matter so much in vpns.
In terms of Free VPNs there isn’t really a better option. There’s some VPNs hosted by The Calyx Institute or Riseup.net, but I think those don’t compare in capacity/bandwidth
Proton is popular now and they don’t want the majority of their customers to be free users. The only way to create an incentive for free users to switch is to put popular features behind a paywall.
Personally, the way thing are going, it seems smart to budget for a VPN as good free VPNs don’t seem to be a part of the future.
“Everyone has the right to privacy” is not the same as saying “everyone has the right to freely use a service which costs real money to operate”.
It is always frustrating when a free service becomes more limited, but as a service becomes more popular this is often unavoidable. Services cost money to run and free users cost the service provider money. This is especially true of VPN’s where there are a limited number of free options and a ton of users who would use the free options and a ton of people who want to use them.
I’d suggest rethinking how you think about these things. Possibly I am misreading your tone, this post comes across as somewhat entitled. I respect the VPN provider’s who do offer some form of truly free plan, but I don’t expect it to come without limitations, and I don’t feel entitled to it, because I understand it costs money to run and that those costs are carried by Proton and Proton customers.
edit: also, to be clear, I can empathize with your disappointment about these changes.