So my current year-long sub purchase with Mullvad is almost up. Trying to figure out what to do. Honestly, not quite as happy with Mullvad as I was a year ago. Between the port forwarding business, some servers becoming less reliable on speeds, and the fact that their VPN has become more popular leading to constantly getting flagged by websites for captcha’s or being blocked altogether, I’m wondering if perhaps there are better choices available. It’s a shame, a year ago I would have said nothing compares to the quality of Mullvad. Now I’m just not so sure. Even bugs in their desktop app (like the gui suddenly turning to all white a few times a day – going on for months) don’t get fixed. Support has become weird-- some guy there tells me to turn off my firewall to troubleshoot problems. I don’t know anyone who feels they need a VPN that’s going to turn off their firewall, not even for a minute!
Thoughts? Suggestions on viable other options? Need to figure out what’s next.
are you trying different servers around? the ones in my region were getting flagged more and more, but they added a whole new series if the numbers are accurate. sometimes I’ve got to click between a few, but certainly not as often as I had to with Nord, and it’s infinitely more reliable as far as staying connected compared to Nord as of 2 years ago.
those are the only two paid VPN that I’ve used, and i prefer Mullvad
Try different servers. And I found that for some reason (probably related to some privacy-oriented extensions I have installed) I get endless captchas on some sites… but one or fewer if I revisit in a Private window.
The are a vanishing handful of truly privacy-focused, high-quality VPNs out there (for me that includes iVPN and ProtonVPN) but they tend to have at least as many of the problems you cite. I’m a few years in with Mullvad and I don’t see myself dropping them.
But if you can’t get the response you need try a few other VPNs on a monthly basis to see if any of them better meet your needs
Yes, take, or retake, one of those “do I really need a VPN?” self-testing gimmicks, they’re apparently underrated. If only for a reminder as to the surprising opportunities to save a few bucks now and then, not to mention increased gross productive time, and transfer rates. Nothing you mentioned explains why you’re using or started to use one to begin with. The essential point of a VPN is encryption. Integrity of traffic, just that. And just that would ever make you worry. It’s not and never will be about getting around captchas or site blocks, reliable speeds, getting a magical boost in bandwidth or latency, or doing exotic port forwarding setups. It’s also not about anonymity: I’m tempted to say merely using Mullvad makes you stand out like the proverbial lighthouse even more so than Tor, it’s sobering to see how many APIs can now reliably tell your IP, not just being behind a VPN (trivial), but Mullvad VPN AB in particular, and I’m talking about the rented servers. It makes you super-reidentifiable, brandmarked, all the time. And all the talk about anti-fingerprinting, frankly, in a way (on ~8/10 sites I visit) snake oil. That’s nothing you complained about, though some others may care. You should only really care about the essentials a VPN is expected to provide, and this is where Mullvad remains top-notch.
If you look at this from pure privacy perspective torrentfreak wrote an article about this. It covered all major vpn providers. 
No major complaints here for the price. Lots of their servers are blocked by various banks, websites, etc., but the app makes it easy to connect/disconnect as needed, so I only find it to be a fairly minor inconvenience.
Go with PIA. Has port forwarding. Has the best Linux app in the business, the only vpn with split tunnel on all 3 platforms (macOS, Linux, windows), no device limit, and also cheap.
I had Mullvad for a month but opted out for NordVPN. Haven’t regretted it since, it’s also cheaper on a monthly basis if you get a longer plan (check on here: https://www.reddit.com/r/nordvpn/comments/1092kti/best_nordvpn_deal_2023_tested_and_working_coupon/ )
You will always get catpcha with a VPN, get a dedicated IP if you insist on using Google with a VPN.
Funny, I just had to turn off Mulvad even to login to Reddit. Wouldn’t even let me login here. I was on a Canadian server, but have had the same thing with numerous servers. With torrents, I can download to my heart’s content but without port forwarding I can’t upload squat.
Yes, I’ve tried many different servers, different countries. The experience I’ve had is mostly the same on most of them. Interesting to hear your take on Nord, as I’d been thinking of them as a possible alternative. My reason for considering them was that they have such a higher server count that I thought you’d be more likely to be able to locate something that works well for you.
I totally agree that it’s getting tougher and tougher to find VPN’s that seem to actually do what you hoped they would do. The port forwarding thing is a perfect example. One folded, and next it was like a domino effect where almost all of them folded. I don’t generally use ‘private windows’, but based on what you say maybe I should take a closer look at that avenue. Thanks for the ‘try-it-for-a-month’ suggestion, likely a good one.
I’ve heard several recommendations for AirVPN. Have you been happy with the change to them? Some people have also recommended Proton. Thanks for weighing in on it!
Yeah, I’ve been pretty happy with AirVPN (still using Mullvad too). It doesn’t play nice with things like Google Search (every search requires solving a captcha). But port forwarding again is nice.
I hear a lot of recommendations for PIA. My only concern with them is they’re U.S. based, right? I get a bit worried about U.S. based VPN’s being able to thwart off intrusions by the U.S. government.
Good to know, thanks for the info. Nord is probably the alternative I’ve been looking at the most, but I do hate to get into these lengthy 1 or 2 year agreements. It can start out great, and then sort of like my experience with Mullvad, then turn into something less than great. When I purchased a 1 year sub for Mullvad, it was only a few weeks later that they cut out port forwarding. Lesson learned.
I’ve been using VPN services for over 10 years. I’ve tried 5 different ones at this point. You don’t always get captcha’s with a VPN. I didn’t even always used to get them with Mullvad. I do now. It’s as if just about every internet entity in the world has a list of their server ip addresses. BTW, my experience had nothing to do with “using Google”. I was referring to general use all around the web.
if you use UK or Poland server you can bypass it
my issue with Nord was just it constantly disconnecting, both on Android and Windows, but again it’s been 2 years since I used it. both Nord support and people on Reddit seemed to think it probably had something to do with another aspect of my setup, so I just switched to two different VPN and then never had the issue again so I dunno
