Private Internet Access VPN Service Review

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PIA is one of the leading VPN services, and perhaps the most popular. Here's our reader-based assessment of PIA, and results of our own hands-on testing.

Four-Star Reader Ratings

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☆ Rating: ★★★★✓ Pros: The speed and anonymity.✗ Cons: The windows client itself can be a little clunky to use at times, particularly if running in a sandbox VM. You often have to close and reopen the client to get it to connect when starting up your VM.☁ Comments:PIA works as advertised. With a little bit of setup, you can even use a bit torrent client and use about 90% of your available bandwidth.
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☆ Rating: ★★★★✓ Pros: It worked every time I used it. The torrent download speeds are good. Offers multiple locations within US, UK and other countries to choose from.✗ Cons: Doesn't work with Hulu as they are able to identify PIA servers and prevent streaming services. But in PIA's defense this is an issue with HULU preventing access.☁ Comments: PIA offers OpenVPN, PPTP and IPSEC/L2TP. The prices are reasonable and cheaper than the competition.
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☆ Rating: ★★★★✓ Pros: Works smoothly.✗ Cons: Some configuration options are restricted to the official application. Those options, like AES-256, RSA-4096 cannot be configured through pfsense, for example. There is also a lack of support for non-nist certified encryption for openvpn, e.g CAMELLIA-256-CBC.☁ Comments: Great service and price. Minus one star for lack of advanced configuration options for pfsense/router vpn setup.
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☆ Rating: ★★★★✓ Pros: PIA's price is very competitive when compared to similarly featured VPNs. One subscription allows for as many as 5 simultaneous connections across many OSes. Nodes are available throughout the world and don't increase latency too severely.✗ Cons: Speed is reduced no matter how you slice it. This isn't the biggest problem, nor is it unexpected, but it is a drawback. This is a little frustrating when downloading *ahem* large files, but isn't a issue for most streaming or online games.☁ Comments: Good anonymity for a reasonable price, but speed leaves something to be desired.
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☆ Rating: ★★★★✓ Pros: Many dispersed geographic locations plus locations in my area. Supports multiple clients (don't have to put it on a dedicated server or router)  Reasonable cost  No transfer limits. ✗ Cons: The 'native' client seems to have overhead issues (activity on the link when no traffic is flowing).  I use the OPENVPN access to move my GitHub traffic (pulls, syncs etc.) for my firmware projects.☁ Comments: This is an easy-to-use VPN service with many possible end-points.
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☆ Rating: ★★★★✓ Pros: Price is great in my book.  I like the number of locations they have in the US.✗ Cons: My main complaint is that they do not have an API where you can stop some applications from running if the link is down. They will stop all traffic but I would like more control.  The other issue is that they do not auto connect all the time. Wish the software would auto reset to try to start the session again.☁ Comments: I have been very pleased with this service. Have used it for a couple of years and find the price to be very reasonable.


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