#the fact they have this geofenced is dumb

[techfacereview]

Surfshark vs NordVPN vs Private Internet Access: what is the best VPN for multiple devices

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It’s with great pleasure that I can officially announce to the entire internet that the bad old days of having to pay per device for your VPN are long behind us. As the average number of devices that people owned proliferated, it became a massive disincentive to VPN services to try and force customers to pay for every single device they wanted to use on that VPN. And then IOT came along and the number of internet connected devices that are single person and increase by an order of magnitude.

Think about it: your phone, your tablet, your laptop, your smart watch… Most people are slowly becoming a walking cloud of Wi-Fi and 5G connectivity. And the number of connected devices that we all own is only gonna go up as we say hello to things like smart trainers and other wearables. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else there wasn’t working on smart dentures that can tell you exactly how many times you chewed before you swallow…

In any case, with all this sensitive information flying around privacy is no longer an option in my opinion: it’s a necessity. And we’ve all seen that no government is above actively spying on its citizens, and even many tech giants aren’t beyond wholesale selling your data to the highest bidder – regardless of whether you’ve opted into that or not. So for me, and for you, the first line of defence in ensuring that your business online remains your business is a good VPN.

With all that said, let’s jump into the main comparison between the three best VPNs for multiple devices.

Surfshark VPN Is The Best All-Round VPN For Multiple Devices

With support for unlimited devices on a single account connection, military-grade encryption, low price and all the features you’d expect to find on a VPN that costs twice as much, Surfshark VPN gets my vote for the best VPN for multiple devices. It’s crazy that there’s no slow-down when you add more and more devices and I find it pretty impressive that the experience on different platforms is pretty much the same.

You are probably going to get a few more random disconnect/reconnects on this than on some of the other VPNs but the Surfshark reliability has gone through the roof in recent years so its not so much an issue as it used to be.

The pricing is pretty nuts too; you can get 81% off Surfshark VPN if you sign up to the 2 year deal. That works out at a hair under $2.50 a month.

Go to Surfshark.com and get 81% off

NordVPN Is The Best VPN For Multiple Devices If You Run A Business

If stability is the most important thing for you then NordVPN is the IBM of the VPN world. Yeah, you will pay a (tiny) bit more for it and you’re limited to 6 devices per-account, but their connection stability is legendary and you won’t even notice that you’re running through a VPN. In fact, because of NordVPN’s crazy infrastructure, you might find that some services run faster than your regular internet because of lower resource-contention once you’re connected to their network.

Plus, if you’re a business, you might enjoy their 24/7, worldwide support which is, by all reports, better than the Surfshark support.

Go to NordVPN and get 68% off

Private Internet Access Is The Best VPN For Multiple Devices If You Are On A Budget

Having been around since 2010 means that Private Internet Access has seen some steady growth over the years, and their focus on reinvesting in their platform has helped them bring prices down, and the fact that you can connect up to 10 devices also goes a little further on the per-device-per-month calculation.

Like-for-like the Private Internet Access 12 month plan is significantly cheaper than the NordVPN 12 month plan. Meanwhile Surfshark doesn’t even have a 12 month plan so if budget is important to you then PIA is the way to go.

Go to Private Internet Access and sign up

What Is A VPN?

VPN stand for ‘virtual private network’, And that risk of sounding dumb they do exactly what they say on the tin.

Virtual: The virtual partner VPN means that It exists in the software layer – Whenever a VPN is established there aren’t any new physical cables or wires that connect the devices on the network. But it’s done in such a way that when you’re connected to a VPN your computer literally cannot distinguish between the VPN that you’re connected to and a real physical network.

Private: Privacy is one of, if not the big selling point for VPNs. Information sent across AVPN is encrypted which means that even though it’s travelling across the open internet, All anyone would see you if they decided to try and read the information would be a bunch of garbled mess. This doesn’t mean that anyone who uses the same VPN as you can see what you’re sending across the internet in the clear: Every devices connected to a VPN sets up its own encryption keys and as that connection is uniquely encrypted that, information is only readable between that device and the VPN service provider.

Network: You know, network. Like a bunch of computers that can talk to each other.

VPNs are pretty old technology that gained popularity in the late 90s and early noughties where large multi-office businesses want it to be able to share information and resources across the internet without having to go to the trouble and expense of laying physical cable between their offices.

VPNs have gained huge popularity recently. This is due in part to the proliferation of online services that we now use as a part of our day to day lives. Services such as Netflix Amazon prime com cast on a whole host of other activities search is torrenting and online gaming Have created the demand and the incentive for people to want to use the internet privately but also to use it from different locations.

And if you throw in things like remote working and international business travel you can quite easily see situations where being able to browse the internet as though you’re in a different country might be advantageous. This is about more than just getting around the Netflix content geofencing.

Best VPNs For Multiple Devices: Why Is It Important

Let’s take a step back and think about the VPN business model: VPN service provides encrypted geo-agnostic connections to the internet for your device and you give them money in return. Well, work has to be done in order to encrypt a single device therefore it stands to reason that more work has to be done to encrypt multiple devices.

And that’s not taking into account the other costs going into supporting multiple users – The more devices are user has the more chance that something doesn’t quite work with that device more chance that will be on the phone to support where you’re paying support engineer of princely sum to try and figure out exactly what went wrong and where.

So if you’re a VPN business then charging per-device, (or at least limiting the number of devices you allow people to use per account) isn’t just a way of making extra money – it’s a legit way to keep your business afloat and stop you incurring losses.

What To Look Out For If You Want The Best VPN For Multiple Devices

There are a few things that you need to look out for when you’re looking for the best VPN for multiple devices. As you’re connecting to another network, albeit a virtual one, you’re going to be bound by the rules of networking in general. Think of traffic across a network like water in a pipe (stay with me here). When you connect to a VPN its like there’s a pipe inside that pipe and it’s only carrying your water. No matter what goes on in that inner pipe, you’re never going to be able to get more water down it than you could down the main pipe itself. So don’t go expecting a VPN to magically boost your internet speed.

Also, the more taps you run in your house is the slower the water is going to flow. That’s your bandwidth being used up there.

Now some VPN providers have clever ways of managing the demands and raising the pressure in the pipe if you start turning on taps and flushing toilets and stuff. That’s one thing that’s key to look out for – does your connection slow down more than usual the more devices you connect to the VPN? And remember that encryption that I was talking about earlier? Think of that like the thickness of the pipe. That plus all the ultra-secure things that modern-day VPN providers have to do to make sure your connection stays safe and secure have an effect on the speed and quality of your internet connection.

And another word on quality: a good VPN should have the same quality connection whether you’re using one device or multiple ones. If you start experiencing more frequent disconnects or other types of internet problems it might be a sign of your VPN service being unable to handle that many connections.