2021 NordVPN Review | Editor’s Choice

NordVPN Verdict | Review Summary

Company name: Tefincom co S.A.
Jurisdiction: Panama
Experience: 8 years

Excellent security and privacy package

NordVPN is undoubtedly one of the best VPN providers in the market today, with its complete set of functionality. Being based in Panama and committing to a strict no-logs policy is one of the reasons why NordVPN brings excellent security and privacy package.

Editor’s choice for best VPN service provider

Together with attractive pricing and 30 days money-back guarantee, it scoops the title of “Editor’s choice”. NordVPN encompasses with an intuitive application that makes it easy for any newbie to understand, taking decisions and operate the VPN service. NordVPN is a perfect choice for streaming services users, with its ability to dupe geo-obstacles, it enables to unblock more than 150 streaming service providers. NordVPN provides KIll switch option to keep its users secure and from the other hand, offer an auto-connect option when joining to Wi-Fi networks.

NordVPN – Not just a promise

“Advanced security. Internet freedom. Complete privacy.” – is not just a slogan of this company, reviewing their set of features, NordVPN holds to this promise impressively.

Is NordVPN Expensive?

NordVPN Pricing & Payment Method Overall (scores 93%)

How Much NordVPN Cost?

NordVPN offers 3 plans: (i) a monthly plan without discount – $11.95 per month; (ii) a 1-year plan with 58% discount – $4.92 per month; (iii) 2-year plan with a 68% discount (!) – only $3.71 per month.

Given the fact that NordVPN comes with the full package including tremendous and amount of servers and strict privacy policy, we don’t see any reason why not joining this company for only $3.49 per month for three years. Plus, NordVPN is so sure about itself that the company offers for all its plans a 30-day money-back guarantee.

How can I pay to NordVPN?

There is a wide range of payment methods depending on your location around the globe, NordVPN receives payments from the most popular credit card, bank transfers, cryptocurrencies, Alipay, gift cards and more. Unfortunately, NordVPN does not accept PayPal payments, NordVPN excluded PayPal from their payment possibilities since they have moved to their self-hosted payment processing solution, which, according to them, reduce security risks. In addition, NordVPN is cooperating with Aiden payments platform.

How to pay for a VPN anonymously?

One of the ways to track a person’s private life is to follow his financial activity, meaning, track his credit card purchases and learn many things about his or her behaviour. In order to pay anonymously, you will need to have a cryptocurrency account. Paying with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum, allows you to stay anonymous online with no ability to track you. NordVPN offers you to pay with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum and keep your identity totally confidential.

NordVPN Plans

Is NordVPN Safe?

NordVPN Privacy & Security Overall (scores 100%)

NordVPN Protocols and Encryption

NordVPN presents extensive features that rank it among the top VPN providers in terms of privacy. NordVPN offers under its “Military-grade encryption” conventional protocols such as OpenVPN (Windows and earlier OSX clients), PPTP and L2PT. IKEv2 is being used in iOS and new macOS app.
Comparing to other providers that request payment as an add-on or a feature, NordVPN includes in its package proxy servers with no extra fee! NordVPN comes with CyberSec that prevents harmful websites from harming your device and blocks annoying ads. CyberSec will block suspicious sites, pop-ups, advertisements and malware.

NordVPN Security

You get as well the critical Kill Switch feature in desktop apps that happen to be important when, from some reason, your VPN is not active, While iOS app including a general KIll Switch, Windows offer a Kill Switch by an app.
NordVPN offers as well IPv4 and IPv6 DNS leak protection, with WebRTC leak protection.

NordVPN Privacy & Security Components

NordVPN Speed Rating

NordVPN Speed Overall (scores 97%)

Is NordVPN Fast?

Speed is one of the essential elements you should check before deciding about a VPN service provider since when using VPN services, you lose part of it. It’s crucial when using streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, BBC player and such. You would like to avoid any buffering while consuming streaming media. As a thumb rule, try to connect to the nearest server to your location,

NordVPN offers an intuitive map for choosing a server. Checking NordVPN brought the result of losing between 20%-30% depending on the location, this an excellent result when comparing to other providers in which we experienced a 65-80% speed drop. We did not experience any disconnections, yet, changing from one Wi-Fi network to another sometimes required restarting NordVPN app.

NordVPN Servers

NordVPN spreads its services with over 5,400 servers in more than 60 countries including continents like Africa and Australia – giving it an impressive global coverage to meet with everyone requirements. All servers allow P2P, and there are some who specialised in it.

In some states, the internet is domestically regulated to the extreme and VPN services that can help bypass censorship are blocked as well. In regions like China and the middle east countries, where the cyber environment is exceptionally complicated, NordVPN comes with a solution that is called Obfuscation Servers; This is a technology that involves hi-tech complexity servers connection, looks for an alternative route to connect to VPN when the conventional system fails. NordVPN users can enable an alternative list of obfuscated servers if the usual way is not working. This solution is dedicated only to heavily restricted regions, and there is no need to use it otherwise.

NordVPN Server Speed

General Remark about VPN Speed

Please bear in mind that the speed is a result of cumulative factors such as your actual internet connection if you are using LAN or Wi-Fi connection, your exact location, the device you are using, whether it is a laptop, desktop or mobile phone, it all have different specifications that influence your speed.

NordVPN Speed Components

NordVPN User-Friendly Rating

NordVPN User-Friendly Overall (scores 100%)

NordVPN offers dedicated apps for macOS, iOS, Windows, and Android with manual setup guides, plus Linux (Ubuntu and Raspberry Pi) and Blackberry 10. NordVPN provides browser add-ons for Chrome and Firefox. You can obtain a pre-configured NordVPN router from Flashrouters. As well, with NordVPN, you can directly enjoy VPN service through game consoles and Kindle devices.

It’s easy and fast to sign up for their VPN service. Once you did, download NordVPN’s software, confirm an email, and you’re good to go. Let the app select the server for you; it will be the fastest from your location and better than a manual choice.

NordVPN Windows Client

The Windows client is a clear, simple to use interface and offers now not only system Kill Switch but a per-app Kill Switch.

NordVPN Mac Apps

NordVPN provides two different Mac apps. Intuitively, we downloaded the app store IKEv2 version that somewhat didn’t work correctly on Mojave 10.14.3, and we were advised by NordVPN support to use the OpenVPN app which can be downloaded directly from NordVPN website. OpenVPN app supports obfuscated servers, CyberSec, custom DNS settings, and overcome geo-obstacles like Netflix.

NordVPN Android App

The Android app seems identical to the Windows client. You will enjoy NordVPN’s complete spectrum of speciality servers with CyberSec feature.

NordVPN browser add-ons

Firefox and Chrome apps connect to a NordVPN’s HTTPS proxy servers. You can dupe your real location and encrypting your connection leaving you anonymous.

NordVPN User-Friendly Components

NordVPN Support Rating

NordVPN Support Overall (scores 98%)

NordVPN provides several ways to contact and use their support system. NordVPN’s customer support is 24/7, and it is done by a ticket system (web form), Facebook, Twitter, or email. There is vast information in NordVPN’s help centre that pretty much answers everything. Our preferred method was the live chat alternative, which happened to be quite fast and efficient.

We tackled several times NordVPN’s live chat with different questions about their best servers lists for different purposes and other technical usage issues, and we always received detailed professional answers.

The only thing we missed is the ability to chat with NordVPN representative before joining their services. Other companies offer this, and we certainly believe this element can be beneficial during the decision-making process.

NordVPN Support Components