Proton VPN Reviews 

After a year of using Proton VPN I have found that it is turned off more than it is turned on.
I use Apple devices (iPhone, Mac Pro and iPad) and frequently they just ‘hang’ when I have it turned on. So I end up turning it off to get to the web site. This is not my provider as once Proton is turned off then everything is fine.
My second complaint is that it blocks email download when using Apple’s native email app configured to my Yahoo email account. Downloads on the Yahoo email app are fine. I’ve tried all sorts of configurations to no avail.
So in summary it is not worth the money as I have it turned off more than on and I can’t wait for my contract to end. In fact I may ditch it and pay again for something more reliable which is both costly and a shame as Proton looked so good!.

Terrible service, deceptive infrastructure, and months of support lies. Proton VPN’s server pools suffer from severe routing failures, frequently leaking or misidentifying locations and routing traffic to completely wrong countries (like Switzerland) instead of the selected regions. When confronted with undeniable proof from controlled isolation tests showing that their newer server infrastructure is broken, their customer support responds with endless gaslighting, blaming external services like Google, and dragging users along for months with absurd excuses instead of fixing their faulty network routing. Even their public replies here are an automated PR stunt—asking for ticket numbers publicly to look helpful while in private emails they completely refuse to acknowledge or fix their misconfigured exit nodes. For a company that markets itself around privacy, security, and trust, running deceptive server pools and gaslighting paying customers is completely unacceptable. Stay away.

I personally hate applications that say one thing and do another. It's almost the only thing that disappoints me everywhere I go. The windows app layout is made in SUCH A WAY that you may feel like that you have MANY options to choose from. But, if you are on a free plan or new to it without a subscription, get ready...
1. You can't select a custom server of your choice,
2. not even a profile of your choice,
3. you can't enable P2P,
4. you can't enable NetShield,
5. you can't enable data porting.

You can practically do NOTHING.

For a website that boasts about giving unlimited data and good coverage to free users, it's extremely limiting. And, you are better off with a VPN that steals your data if you are a brokie like me. It feels like it was designed in a way to push subscription plans down your throat if you actually want to use it for your safety. Which, I get it. They wanna profit. But 80% of the things you will see inside the app force you into a payment wall.

And instead of the experience getting better... They just get frustrating. I would not recommend this app for that reason, since it's way too expensive to use in my country.

VPN plus doesn't actually work. Useless company with useless software. Just stops working

Dunno what's happening with this company but paid for a VPN until August 2027 and now they are trying to charge me again for a service I've already paid for. What's that about?

Absolute scam of a company.
Charges a decent but expensive deal for a 1 year VPN, then silently extends it for another year, even if you never really use it, without warning, for an insanely high price.

Do not use their services ever. Avoid at all costs.

Used them for a year service was superb no complaints then the renewal price was about 68% higher than what i had initially paid I said if you match that I will subscribe they said no can do so I left and moved to Nord VPN. So to clarify the VPN was excellent the service and renewal was awful for which I expect the leadership team to be held responsible

# Disappointing customer service – punished for signing up on Protons own sight.

I signed up for Proton VPN Plus two days ago and was genuinely happy with the VPN itself. The performance was good, port forwarding worked well, and I was considering committing to a long-term subscription.

Then I saw a Proton advertised on a Black Friday deal that hade been available for more than a week:
**€2.49/month for 24 months (€59.76 total).**

Since I had only subscribed few days earlier for 1 month just to try it out, I contacted support to ask whether I could switch to this offer. I wasn't asking for a free service or special treatment. I wanted to pay Proton for two years instead of continuing with a monthly subscription.

The response was that the offer was strictly for new customers with no payment history. No exceptions.

Support told me that other Black Friday deals for existing customers would become available within the "next ten days", but couldn't tell me what those deals would be or whether they would be comparable.

I then asked about their 30-day money-back guarantee. Instead of helping me explore the alternatives, the support representative immediately processed my refund, terminating my VPN Plus access while we were still discussing my options.

When I asked whether I now could create a new account, I was then warned that creating multiple accounts could be considered abuse of their service.

So, to summarize:

- I subscribed just two days before.
- A Black Friday promotion that wasn't shown on their own sight, was available at that time.
- I wanted to commit to paying for another 24 months.
- Proton refused to offer me the advertised price.
- Support processed my refund before we had finished discussing my options.
- My VPN was down graded to FREE immediately that made it useless for me.
- I was told my options were to wait for an unspecified promotion or subscribe again at the regular monthly price.

**The irony is that Proton successfully turned a happy customer who wanted to pay for two years into a frustrated customer without a paid subscription.**

I understand that companies have promotional terms and conditions. But there's a difference between enforcing a policy and providing good customer service.

A reasonable solution would have been to offer a price adjustment, account credit, or at least a meaningful alternative for someone who subscribed only a few days before the promotion.

Instead, I got rigid policy responses and no real attempt to retain me as a customer.

**The VPN technology deserves praise. The customer experience does not.**

It's disappointing to see a company that promotes itself around user trust and fairness handle a straightforward customer request this way.

Ticket number: [JMYNJ0-5J99N]

Just a scam with an out of touch CEO. Stay away from companies and CEO's like this. Gross and will be suggesting other people cancel and move anywhere else but this.

Absolute rubbish. It's like using dial-up internet speeds. Australian VPNs run at a snail's pace. Horrible.

They also cut out on an almost daily basis. I've contacted support many times but they fob you off with 20 technical questions, which, when answered, lead to nowhere. They essentially just tell you to try other settings - but a VPN is not a complex technology, it's just a computer sitting between yours and the web host, so it shouldn't require the customer to be a network engineer in order to use it.

In any case, it's rubbish and I don't recommend. It's inoperably slow and cuts out, and their support sucks.

Example: upload speed of 0.09mbps (to leave a single comment on facebook takes around 1 minute of loading).

Also, they never alert you when there's an outage. For example I needed the VPN for online shopping and sports, and there's just approximately a ~24 hour outage with no updates or ETA on a fix. Do I just have to purchase another VPN service so when Proton goes down I have a backup? It would be nice if they had a status page or sent email alerts when there's an outage. Instead they treat you like you're not going to notice or just too stupid to care.

Also, even when it works, often watching a facebook reel at double speed (i.e. when you long-press the side of the video to watch it faster), it buffers because of ProtonVPN, as soon as you turn the VPN off (which is inconvenient and not always safe), then the video works perfectly, proving it's the VPN at fault.

Also, it would be remiss not to discuss the gas-lighting reply from ProtonVPN below this review. Funny how they become interested in solving your problem when you review them. They've had numerous support tickets, take days to reply, and honestly it's easier to just use ChatGPT to diagnose any issues. Once you tinker with 5-10 settings to narrow down the cause, ChatGPT will say it's basically ProtonVPN's fault (since you can rule out all other possible causes). Proton's support isn't as useful as ChatGPT because it takes them days to reply, and when they do they have massive walls of questions which even if you respond to (I did due to my naivety) they just come back with more ridiculous questions. 10 minutes with ChatGPT is superior to 7 days back and forth with ProtonVPN's support. Also, if you take the support route (which I naivety did several times), YOU end up doing all the work yourself, just to arrive at the conclusion that ProtonVPN was having an outage which they've fixed only because back-and-forth with support took days to fix.

They're absolutely hopeless.

It was great at first! Did exactly what it needed to. I didn't mind the small selection of countries for free users. However, one day my power got cut out while the VPN was on and it entirely broke my iPad's WiFi until I deleted and reinstalled the app. Ever since then, it's been horrendous. The WiFi randomly cuts out for minutes at a time VERY often making browsing nearly impossible. I have tried to put up with it for at least 6 months but it keeps getting worse, longer, and more frequent. And guess what? Whenever I delete Proton, the issue goes away. When I reinstall, it comes back. It is a shame.. It used to work great. I don't want to pay OR use a shady VPN, but it seems the shady ones are my only choice now.

SCAM... I was deceived. While using Proton VPN, my online game wouldn't update at the end of missions. I requested a subscription cancellation, but a refund was DENIED. So, these SCAMMERS can take the money and shove it up their own asses.

Avoid this company at all costs. The customer service is appalling.At first everything went well. I congratulated myself (too soon) on choosing a good company and recommended it to others. Then, after I passed the 30 day period for which you can get a refund, I couldn’t logon. There were problems with the update. I let them know on 7th of October. It took them on average four days to reply to my messages. Even if I answered straight away. They kept sending me a link to troubleshoot, ignoring the screenshots I’ve sent them showing the problems I encountered. It felt at times I was talking to a robot. They kept using the same set pieces over and over again no matter what I asked. I definitely would not recommend this company to anyone. Their customer service is frustrating. If I sent a trail of the Email responses, it would be like a comedy show. A stand-up comedian could have a field day with their responses. It kills your time and your patience. Unfortunately, I paid £82 for two years. That’s how they make their money. Avoid at all costs. They told me I have no rights as I’m outside of 30 day period.

7.11.26: To give an update: as of a week ago, it has been working well . Once I posted my review I got a helpful answer to my initial query and it is now working well

very bad service provided by collage to the students, noot good collage to join, i don not recommend any one to jion any ipu collage they are fraud

Had issues signing up using a friend's referral code, paying and account creation failing with an error.

Raised a chat session to a Ai bot that took details ans passed them on.

Have chased the Support ticket twice over the past 4 days ask8ng them to help and nothing..

Don't bother and go elsewhere!

EDIT TWO

So they did reply, asking for details that I had in part already supplied and 4 days later, they have not responded...

Says it all really..

The best VPN i have tried! I have tried them all but noone was perfect until I found Proton. Tried proton vpn free before upgrading. I have lightning speed, a lot of servers to choose from and port forward! Excellent service. Figuring I want to move my entire ecosystem to Proton privacy.

vpn works, terrible support

but this is definitely a scam, for any reason they can cancel you account and the "refund" is just credits that can be only spent in their crappy services which are really expensive within the app.
even if you pay, customer support is just pure bots
avoid when possible

Be very careful before giving your credit card details.

They maintain very dubious policies where they cancel subscriptions you paid for during a promotion, transfer it to credits and then force you to pay full price.. scam website

I had an issue where after paying for a subscription through Google play my acount was still locked in the free version. Ive had to wait for a day for most emails from them and I haven't heard back in 2 days after I provided them with info they requested. Currently I have still not had a resolution so ive paid for a service that hasn't been provided.