PureVPN Review

PureVPN has worked to improve its public image after years of criticism for its aggressive logging policy.

Despite saying all the right things on its website, the actual changes to its logging policy simply aren’t enough.

The PureVPN privacy policy does not mention any efforts to disconnect your account from this information. It is all linked directly to you.

If that seems like a lot of information being collected, that’s because it is. We believe it is enough to be able to link a PureVPN user to activity performed through the service.

Of course, you should never use a VPN for anything illegal. But if you live in a country where the authorities can demand access to your browsing data at any time, using PureVPN would not guarantee your anonymity.

PureVPN Is Based in Hong Kong

PureVPN is legally based in Hong Kong, which means that it is subject to Hong Kong’s laws. As a choice of jurisdiction for a VPN Hong Kong is largely fine.

On one hand, Hong Kong does not enforce any super-intrusive surveillance laws. It also isn’t part of any international surveillance schemes like Five Eyes. It has maintained a relatively open and free internet for a long time now.

On the other hand, pressure on the territory from China is constantly increasing. There’s no guarantee that Hong Kong will be able to keep its online independence for much longer.

PureVPN is fast. That’s the key takeaway here. We tested it on both short distance connections (within the UK, where we’re located), as well as to a variety of overseas servers.

The results surprised us. Historically PureVPN has lagged behind compared to its competitors, but recent speeds are quite impressive.

First, we recorded PureVPN’s speeds when connecting to a server in the same city as us (London, UK). Our internet dropped from 100Mbps to 90.22Mbps.

As a general rule, any VPN which costs you less than 10% of your connection speed is doing a good job. The numbers we recorded show that PureVPN is fast enough to be left on 24/7 without you having to worry about noticeable slowdown.

Long-Distance Speed Test Results

PureVPN also performed surprisingly well on international connections. Take a look at the five countries we tested below:

	Average Download Speed	Average Download Speed Loss
Germany	87.18Mbps	12.82%
South Africa	86.19Mbps	13.81%
Brazil	82.78Mbps	17.22%
Japan	71.47Mbps	28.53%
US	69.63Mbps	30.37%
Australia	67.20Mbps	32.80%

Even when connecting to the far side of the world, PureVPN still managed to put up some very solid numbers in our testing.

Remember, we tested on a 100Mbps dedicated broadband line. If your internet connection is slower than that, then your speeds when using a VPN will also be slower.

That said, we feel confident that the effect PureVPN has on your connection will barely be noticeable. You can still stream, game, and use the web with it just like you normally would.

Something that PureVPN gets absolutely right is its selection of servers.

It’s all too common to see VPNs ignore entire regions, focusing far too much on Europe and North America.

PureVPN makes no such mistake, with servers located in 140 different countries around the world.

It’s refreshing to see so many options in the Middle East, East Asia, Central America, and Africa. With so many censored nations in those regions, it’s especially important to have nearby VPN server access.

While you can’t select individual servers, there is a city level choice in a handful of countries.

6,500 is also a good overall quantity of servers. Quite a lot of them are virtual server locations, meaning they aren’t physically in the country they’re listed as.

That doesn’t make much difference in practice, though. However it could partly explain why PureVPN has such a hard time unblocking some streaming sites.

What’s more, PureVPN also claims to host over 300,000 IP addresses. This is an absolutely enormous number – one of the highest we’ve ever seen.

Having such a high number of IP addresses available means that you’re less likely to be sharing one with another user. In turn this means that you should see fewer CAPTCHAs around the internet.

An interesting side note is how PureVPN achieves its speeds. There’s nothing fancy or bespoke here – just good old-fashioned OpenVPN.

In a time when so many VPNs are adopting the newer WireGuard, or developing a bespoke protocol of their own, it’s interesting that PureVPN can keep up with a tried-and-tested old favorite.

PureVPN has recently removed all of its dedicated streaming servers. You now simply connect to a server in the region you require and begin streaming.

It’s mostly as simple as that. Every UK server we tried unblocked BBC iPlayer, and every US server unblocked Netflix.

However, PureVPN is only capable of unblocking four other Netflix libraries: Australia, Brazil, Japan, and UK. That’s decent, but there are other VPNs which can unblock lots more.

PureVPN also works to unblock:

• ABC
• Amazon Prime
• ESPN
• Hulu
• Sky TV

PureVPN is not a great VPN for torrenting for two reasons.

Firstly, not all PureVPN servers allow P2P traffic. Only 57 of the 140 countries with PureVPN servers are compatible with torrenting.

There are large gaps left by a lack of torrenting-friendly servers. For example if you live in the south of Africa, your nearest torrenting server is in Angola – potentially thousands of kilometers away. The same goes for if you’re in South-East Asia.

Secondly, there’s the big issue of PureVPN’s logging policy. You can read more about it here but, in short, we feel that PureVPN still logs too much information for torrenters to feel confidently anonymous.

Authorities could theoretically gain access to your:

• Days connected to PureVPN and for how long
• Total amount of data downloaded in that timeframe
• Country of residence and ISP

From those figures alone there is a distinct chance that you could be identified – particularly if you are with a smaller ISP or in a smaller country.

PureVPN also had issues with logging controversies in its past.

In October 2017 the FBI was able to identify an accused criminal suspect by matching the IP address of a PureVPN server with the suspect’s real IP address.

While we are by no means saying that they could repeat themselves, it simply adds to the risk you take should you choose to torrent with PureVPN.

While it may have once done, PureVPN does not currently work in China. Even on the days where it does, it’s far too inconsistent to recommend.

In order to have a chance at connecting to the outside internet from within China, you’ll have to contact PureVPN’s customer support.

The support agent will then give you a comprehensive guide to setting up PureVPN for China. It can be a difficult process and involves a lot of manual configuration. Even then, PureVPN is not guaranteed to work in China.

Our extensive testing of VPNs from directly within China has found that only a handful maintained more than 50% up-time over the past year. If you live in China, or are planning to visit, then give yourself the best chance at bypassing the Great Firewall with our tried-and-tested best VPNs for China.

If you want to unblock the internet in other countries, like Russia, the UAE, or Turkey, then PureVPN is a solid choice. With such a large server network your speeds should hold up well. There are still better VPNs to choose from if you value consistency, though.

The redesign we mention in the section above isn’t purely cosmetic. PureVPN also completely changed its range of features and settings on its Windows desktop app.

There is now far less customization and connection options than before. For starters, the protocol list has been shrunk.

PureVPN allows you to connect via two protocols: either IKEv2 or OpenVPN (TCP or UDP). Previously it offered a range of outdated and flawed protocols, so we’re glad to see them gone.

On the plus side, there’s an option to activate the internet kill switch. We believe this is the single most important advanced feature a VPN can offer. It prevents your IP address from being exposed should the connection drop accidentally.

On the down side, though, PureVPN has removed the option to port forward from its standard payment plan. If you want to be able to port forward you now need to pay an extra $0.99 per month. It’s such a useful feature for torrenters, capable of greatly increasing download speeds, that charging extra for it really is a shame.

It has also removed split tunneling altogether, another useful feature that we always appreciated. It’s unclear why PureVPN decided to take away these options, but the added usability has come at the expense of features that were no doubt very important to some users.

To make matters worse, the PureVPN website still advertises split tunneling as one of its features. Don’t be fooled if you’re considering a subscription – it is no longer a part of the VPN.

It doesn’t stop there though. PureVPN also used to feature checkboxes for three other features:

• Enable 256-bit encryption
• Only use PureVPN DNS servers when connected
• IPv6 leak protection

All three of those checkboxes can no longer be found in the app, so we reached out to PureVPN customer support for clarification.

The PureVPN website still states AES-256 encryption is used, and customer support confirmed that for us. IPv6 leak protection is also automatically enabled now.

We also ran a DNS leak test while connected. On the plus side, our DNS was properly hidden. However, the DNS server it was replaced with was not owned by PureVPN. Support refused to clarify for us if PureVPN DNS servers are in use, or even exist, anymore.

As you can probably tell by now, PureVPN is far from the most secure VPN on the market. Its questionable past combined with the recent bizarre decision to remove (or provide a lack of clarity around) its features means that we’re sceptical. It’s not an unsafe VPN, but it doesn’t fill us with confidence, either

Following a recent redesign, PureVPN’s app is clean and simple. It’s a huge improvement that makes it much easier to use (and to look at).

We downloaded and tested PureVPN on every platform it supports to see just how well it works. The results were largely impressive. PureVPN may have its flaws, but usability isn’t one of them.

Find the device you’re planning on using PureVPN with below to see what it looks like and how it works.

Windows PC

Windows users get the most complete PureVPN experience. As is the case with most VPNs, this is the platform with the most features and is always the first to receive new updates.

The PureVPN app is extremely simple, with a clean and easy-to-use design. You can toggle the kill switch (called IKS in the app) and change protocols.

Other than that, there are no real extra features to speak of. Having FAQs and the ability to submit a support ticket built-in to the app is a nice touch, though.

Apple MacOS

Good news for Apple users: the PureVPN MacOS client is now practically identical to the Windows app.

That means that it’s just as clean and usable, plus there’s no missing features.

You can download it straight from the PureVPN website (not the Mac app store), and install it with a couple of clicks.

We’re also glad to see that it’s not a Menu Bar app. Many VPNs decide to create a more compact version of their app for Mac that extends from the Menu Bar. These are usually much harder to use – not the case with PureVPN.

That said, the old version of the app didn’t tell us that we were due for an update. We instead had to uninstall it and then re-download the installer from the PureVPN website. If you’re a Mac user and your app doesn’t look like this yet then you should do the same.

Apple iOS

iPhones weren’t left out of the redesign either. It’s a lovely, clean iOS VPN app that’s super simple to use. The ability to sort the global server list by ping, popularity, and alphabetical order is a very nice touch.

There’s a minimal set of features to play with. However, there is one that we strongly recommend you take a look at.

Open the menu and then tap Settings > Advanced > Connection Protocol. Switch the toggle from Automatic to Off.

We recommend this because one of PureVPN’s protocols is IPSec, which is seriously outdated and potentially insecure. We don’t know for sure how often the app would try to select it, but it’s best to remove all doubt.

Of the remaining options, IKEv2, OpenVPN UDP, and OpenVPN TCP are all great choices.

Google Android

Another clean and easy-to-use application, PureVPN for Android is a great experience for anyone intimidated by the idea of using a VPN.

Be sure to take a look at the split tunneling option within the menu. It’s a feature that’s unique to the Android app – in fact it’s not even available on the Windows version, which is unusual.

Split tunneling allows you to decide which apps do and don’t pass through PureVPN’s encryption.

It won’t take long to set up PureVPN’s proxy browser extensions for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Microsoft Edge. Just click ‘Download Extension’ on PureVPN’s website, add the extension to your browser, log in, and connect.

Perhaps the best feature is the list of 31 streaming services the PureVPN extension can unblock. Just click on the one you want to access to connect to the necessary location. It’s not 100% perfect, and it is an unencrypted proxy connection, but it’s still very useful for streamers.

PureVPN offers around-the-clock live chat support. You can speak to an agent at any time of day, seven days a week.

We’ve always found them to be polite and punctual, even if they aren’t the most knowledgeable. If you have a simple problem you should certainly be able to get it resolved, though.

This isn’t an issue, as PureVPN handles more complex issues via its huge selection of online guides.

Its selection of online resources is absolutely vast – it’s incredibly impressive. There are hundreds of step-by-step walkthroughs for every platform and process you could imagine.

There’s so much material that it almost seems impossible that you’d encounter a problem not already addressed (complete with images to help guide you).

PureVPN accepts a wide range of payment methods, including some more private options:

• Credit and debit cards
• PayPal
• AliPay
• Loads of cryptocurrencies through CoinPayments, including BitCoin
• Loads of international methods through PaymentWall and BlueSnap

PureVPN recently launched a seven-day trial service for $0.99 to test the service before buying into a plan. A PureVPN subscriber can also give up to 24 free monthly accounts to friends.

You can also test out the PureVPN software for 31 days risk-free with its money-back guarantee. This is genuinely no questions asked, with no hidden data caps or restrictions. If it is due to a technical issue customer support will try and fix it first.

After your PureVPN refund request is processed and your account canceled, it can take up to 30 days for the refund payment to appear in your account.

In short, we don’t recommend PureVPN. There are simply too many better VPNs with a more trustworthy past available at a cheaper price. PureVPN isn’t terrible, but there’s no real reason to choose it over a competitor.

It may be much faster now, but the recent app redesign has done just as much harm as good, and it still can’t be fully trusted not to log your data.

Additional research by David Hughes