Pure VPN Review
Pure VPN
Pure VPN
- Quick Summary (TL;DR)
- Features
- Servers & Countries
- Reliability & Speed test
- Pricing & Payments
- Support
- Policies & Logging
- Expert Recommendation
Pure VPN In a Nutshell
PureVPN provides an unlimited VPN Service with 750+ servers in 140+ different countries, and supports all major protocols and devices. The PureVPN software is very easy to use and has tons of great features including a traffic log chart, auto-reconnection, a killswitch, and the ability to split select traffic through the VPN and other traffic through your local network, known as Split Tunnelling.
Unfortunately, PureVPN’s customer support is horrible. We’ve contacted them on multiple occasions only to receive week-late replies or no replies at all. So if you were to have any issues or need to cancel, you’d be out of luck!
Overall, PureVPN offers a great service. However, their poor customer support leaves us no choice but to not recommend PureVPN at this time. If you’re searching for a comparable VPN with excellent support, we’d recommend IPVanish or VyprVPN.
Reliability & Speed Tests
PureVPN is faster than most VPN providers we tested. They own their entire network and control their own servers. They have no third parties interferring, and are thus able to ensure fast servers on their own with no outside interference. When connected, you can typically expect speeds with 90% of your maximum without a VPN. This compares well to most other VPNs, and puts them in the upper range speed-wise.
Pricing & Payments
Pure VPN has one of the most extreme pricing plans that we have seen:
-
- 2.19 per month on a 2 year plan. You will sign up with them for 2 years with all payments upfront.
- $8.95 per month on a 6 month plan. You are billed in full every 6 months.
- $11.95 per month, billed monthly.
Features
The Pure VPN software is easy to install, and comes in a configuration for any type of OS or device you care to name, and a few you likely don't know.
The software also has some great features built into it, and they're quite easy to use:
- Antivirus/Antimalware
- Ad blocking
- Internet killswitch
- Split tunneling
- NAT Firewall
- DDoS protection
These are all great bonus features, while they still have essentials like a VPN killswitch.
Servers & Countries
Pure VPN has always been noted for their large network. With over 750+ servers worldwide, and servers in over 140+ countries, they have an impressive network. They are sure to concentrate their server numbers in the UK, USA, Canada, and many Asian countries.
Also notable about their network is the fact that it is entirely owned and operated by them. This means that they do not rent servers from third parties, and they control each and everyone of their servers.
Support
We have nothing against PureVPN, but after recently experiencing horrible customer support and receiving complaints from customers, we have to rate their support poorly.
We contacted PureVPN in regards to an issue. They sent us an automated reply right away telling us that we should expect a reply within a few hours. We never did. We decided to contacted them again using our alias (that we used to purchase their VPN) regarding a similar issue... Silence again! We contacted them a 3rd time, this time posing as a potential customer. BAM! A response came right away.
In short, our experience showed that their Customer Support is there. However, they’re only there to sell their service and will ignore you if you have an issue. The logic behind this makes no sense, but this fact alone ruins everything else that was good about this company.
PureVPN support methods
PureVPN have support, when they respond, in these ways:
- FAQs & Tutorials: One of the most extensive tutorial and FAQ sections we've found. If your question isn't answered here, good luck to you.
- Email Support: Email tickets are the primary way of contacting them, and were what we had a serious issue with. Good luck to you if you need to contact them through it as our experience is that they are more sales staff than support staff.
- Live chat: Not to be used for anything serious, can be more trouble than it's worth.
Again, support is their weakness, and is why we rank them so lowly.
Policies & Logging
PureVPN offers a 7 day money back guarantee on their VPN service. While we have not needed to request a refund, many users who have requested refunds have had a few issues. Talking to their customer support can be problematic at times for some users.
Anonymity
PureVPN keeps you anonymous and secure whenever you’re online, and only log a minimal amount of information. PureVPN logs server connection attempts only to track abuses. They do not log which websites you visit or outgoing traffic. According to PureVPN:
“We only log the times you connect and disconnect from our service. We do not log what activity you get up to behind our VPN service, such as what websites you visit and who you talk to.”
Technical Assessment
Expert Recommendation
We want to recommend PureVPN as they were the best options for SSTP (a very secure encryption method), offer dedicated IP addresseses, and a few other awesome features. Unfortunately, we cannot recommend a VPN with bad customer support – which is the case with PureVPN.
We would not recommend PureVPN for most users, especially those who are not tech savvy and frequently need help. There are plenty of alternatives that you’ll find in our Top 10 VPN list. If you absolutely need some of their unique features, we’d say tread carefully as their features are available on other VPN providers with better customer support.
User Reviews of Pure VPN
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I have had PureVPN for maybe a year now. Got it for streaming purpose. Most of the channels are working fine. The speed is good as compare to other VPNs.
I have been using PureVPN for an year now. The service is great. The ping is low and there are no lag or buffering when streaming videos. I once had a problem my netflix wasn't working. They were really helpful and helped me to fix the netflix issue. I don't my people are promoting bad word about pure. Nevermind but I can grantee you there no problem with the service and customer support is very friendly.
I don't know why there are so many negative reviews, I guess maybe it was for parts of the service I don't use. I did not try to use their 7-day refund policy because the service works for my purposes. All VPN services are going to lower your speed, it is the cost of increased security with server hops overseas. PureVPN still has a good speed compared to other VPN services. I use it to hide my location when browsing or downloading sensitive data and it has worked fine for that. My biggest complaint is that sometimes the servers will disconnect during use and there is no automatic re-connect option. I docked a star for that. I do think it would be bad for PureVPN to not honor their money back policy, and I have a feeling that is why most of the negative reviews exist. I am still happy with my purchase.
Six months ago PureVPN worked well and support would help if were persistent. Twice, after asking, they used TEAMVIEWER to go hands-on and remotely correct problems after their links would not work. There were limited number of people who could/would remotely make corrections.
In the last two week stream speeds had dropped to extremely low levels. Servers may now have some metod to quickly ID vpn user then lower speed. This is only a guess.
I would not recommend it now.