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.
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.
Unless and until the U.S adopts/imposes EU style privacy laws I’m willing to pay something, perhaps only a little, for security, privacy and anonymity services and products that provide a daily benefit such as password manager, U2F, TOTP, email, VoIP and VPN. The trend among my relatives and friends is moving in this direction too. We aren’t alone in not wanting to be the unwitting product in the surveillance economy.
Thats my big problem with the VPN subscriptions in general. Providers have not proven trustworthy enough to make me want to lock-in for 1-2 years but you end up being gouged because of it.
What in Proton’s past history would make you uncertain of where they will be in a year or two? Proton isn’t perfect but they are pretty consistent and well established.
If you want another VPN provider that has simple/flat pricing structure, Mullvad is a strong candidate. $5 a month whether you pay for a month, a year, etc.
People believed and said the same things about OVPN and then, all of a sudden, they are not the same company as before.
Maybe “reliable” would of been a better word choice, even for companies like Mullvad or IVPN. You never know when a service they provide (port forwarding comes to mind) might dissapear and then all of a sudden you need a new provider.
After reading my terms and conditions, what I will make a habit anyway, the decision was made to use a VPN, because that cramp (;-)) really is a theat.
What I agreed to them to log and advertise and on what Chanel’s.
Any way I can object but will they stop? I have more trust in proton not logging my data…
Don’t want to lock your $$$ in 1 - 2 years. I can understand that, in that case try a vendor that has monthly plans.
Me on my part got sold on the transparency of Proton (as far as I can tell).
Since the $ where already locked for 1 year in the email plus plan I just upgraded.
Will it still be the right decision in 7 months?
I don’t know.
If yes good. If no so what?
People marry the wrong partner and end up bankrupt. Now THAT’S a problem…
For now I think I’m better off routing my traffic through protons servers than trough my ISP ^^
