StrongVPN Review – PCMag
Switching on a VPN routes all the traffic on your machine through a secure connection to a server controlled by the VPN provider, thus shielding your online activities from your ISP and making you harder to track. StrongVPN does that, and lets you use almost three times the average number of devices on its service. It also boasts VPN servers in regions often ignored by other VPNs. Beyond that, however, StrongVPN has an awkward interface and doesn’t offer enough additional privacy or security tools to challenge our top VPN choices. It’s not cheap, either, for what it offers.
Since StrongerVPN is already slightly on the pricey side, if you’re willing to pay a bit more money, NordVPN offers both many more privacy-related features and a more modern (though still sometimes cramped) interface.
(Editors’ Note: StrongVPN is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag’s parent company.)
How Much Does StrongVPN Cost?
StrongVPN costs $10.99 per month, which is a bit more than the $10.55 average we’ve seen across all the VPNs we’ve tested, as mentioned above. That said there are many good, cheaper VPNs that rival StrongVPN. Editors’ Choice winner Mullvad VPN, for example, costs just €5 ($5.66 USD at time of writing) per month.
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As with most VPNs, StrongVPN offers a discounted rate if you sign up for a longer-term subscription. An annual plan with StrongVPN costs $79.99 per year. That’s quite a bit higher than the $69.10 average and much higher than the most affordable services we’ve reviewed—a tie between Kaspersky Secure Connection VPN and Ivacy VPN, both of which cost $29.99 per year.
One thing we don’t like is StrongVPN’s first-year introductory price of $43.99, which jumps to $79.99 per year the following year and all subsequent years. This increase is clearly communicated at signup, at least. We’ve seen more and more VPNs offer such deals. We’re not fans of this practice, which we’ve seen other VPNs implementing.
While long-term subscriptions will absolutely save you money, we recommend against starting with one. Instead, sign up for the shortest subscription available so you can test out a VPN in your home environment to make sure it will meet your needs before committing to anything.
If that’s all too rich for your blood, there are some free VPNs worth considering. Foremost among them is Editors’ Choice winner ProtonVPN, as it is the only VPN we’ve tested yet that doesn’t restrict the data …….
