About had it with Proton VPN

VPN
1

I decided to switch my VPN provider from Torguard to Proton VPN (Unlimited) a few weeks back and boy do I regret it! I have not made it through a single day without having to figure out why this VPN is not working properly (0.29Mbps download speeds???). From trying different connections, restarting the app, uninstalling and re-installing…it’s a mess! I’m spending more time trying to get this thing to work properly than I am doing anything productive.

Anyone else having any issues?

Edit: I worked with support to get me up and running on a stable connection. Still don’t understand what was going on but it’s working and working well now.

2

Thank you for your feedback. Can you please detail which servers and protocols did you use, OS and app version, to understand your scenario better and maybe debug?

Thanks!

3

Interesting - I wonder what the issue is. I am on an older iPad, in the US, and I picked a server in Zurich. When I run the Google fiber speed test, I see 40-50 Mbps regularly. I am pretty sure that I am using Wireguard - I just installed and clicked on a button.

4

If your on the free tier those servers are at capacity most of the time. Paid servers I have to hunt around and lately haven’t been finding anything under 30% without crossing the continent first.

I’ve been with Proton when ExpressVPN got bought by Kape. Since then the amount of people making the jump to Proton is really showing now with heavy server usage these days.

Time for them to invest in more infrastructure.

5

I moved to Proton around two months ago from PIA and I have been a tad disappointed. It has been perfect when browsing the internet, youtube videos all of that but I have had two issues.

  1. Gaming - The latency is horrendous and games lag. I ended up having to split tunnel my games. Not a big deal for my use case.
  2. IPhone App - When I initiate the VPN on my mobile, 50% of the time it just stays at connecting forever and never connects. No idea why.

Despite poorer performance in comparison with PIA, I will stick it out as my primary reason is privacy and in that sense it is way better than PIA but yeah, I probably expected more. In Australia btw using fastest connection.

6

Could you share what you needed to change to get things working I feel like ProtonVpn at best is pretty inconsistent when it comes to speeds , I have to search for different servers till I find one that works for me.

Sometiimes sites just won’t load at all after a while. I don’t think load is an issue as load is between 25-30 %

7

I’m honestly not sure what you’re talking about.

ProtonVPN has been increadibly helpful for me for a VPN. Often times I have played entire gaming session of several hours without noticing that I was connected to a VPN. Generally it would be laggy and unreliable but Proton is very fast. In some circumstances, where my ISP’s route is broken(uncommon but not rare), my VPN connection speed is much faster than without it. Again, it depends.

Use Wireguard and closest country. Turn off secure core and port forwarding, turn on VPN accelerator(on by default, but still give it a check).

8

Thanks for reaching out! I worked with support earlier today and finally seem to have things worked out. Hopefully with minimal frustrations going forward.

9

Not surprised. I’m on unlimited because I wanted the streaming and p2p, though ironically I get a better connection on the server that’s nearly maxed out than I did on a server that was at 19%. Not sure why that is but I won’t question it now that I’m working good lol.

10

The funny thing about free tier sometimes I can get more consistent speeds then paid tiers , even secure core where am tunneling through Eu sometimes can get better speeds before coming back to US.

11

Good call on split tunneling for games. I need to make sure I do that. I’ve had so many problems with VPN’s on iOS that I always wound up not using it. No issues on the Android side though (with the exception of the original post which seems to be resolved for now).

12

That’s pretty much what they had me do, then make a profile so that I can quickly connect to that one all the time. While it did not really fix the issue of servers just not working properly, I was able to make it through the rest of the day without issue. It was a relief not to be fighting with it all day, though I’m not totally convinced I won’t run into more issues…only time will tell.

13

That’s what was happening to me. The “fastest” server was barley able to load a web page.

14

Can you please report that through the app when that happens ?

15

What was the problem and the solution? Could you update that in your post please?

16

The problem is that it’s probably at 19% because of people switching off of it. It’s a problem with how utilization doesn’t imply quality.

17

I had an enormous amount of connection drops using ProtonVPN on iOS. I switched to Mullvad and no longer have connection drops. Might be worth a try.

18

I wonder if this isn’t an protonvpn issue but vpn wide issue. I remember having to do that when I got my first vpn, which was nordvpn , and I had to actually find a server that I know I was closer to and would give me better connection.

I will have to start paying attention to which servers I am getting consistent connections with.

19

Same here. If that happens, I just manually select a server in a different state.

20

That makes sense actually.