Every remote worker or digital nomad needs a good VPN — who’s yours?

Why you need a good VPN provider if you are doing remote work.

Your tickets are purchased. You’ve booked an AirBnB for an extended stay. The mail is stopped, you are packed up and ready to go. All goes well until you hit the ground for your dream remote working trip only to discover to your horror that you can’t connect to your home office. You can’t pick up your corporate email. You can’t log on to the teleconferencing platform. Maybe you are in a new country and picked up a local SIM. Now you can’t even be reached on your phone number that everyone at home knows. In short, you’re dead in the water.

Don’t let this happen to you. Before you even set foot out the door, make sure you have a good VPN (virtual private network) service lined up. VPN will enable you to do essential things like connect to your office or use third party services which may restrict access from outside your home country, but will also help secure your communications on networks you don’t control.

How to choose a VPN provider.

Here’s what I look for when evaluating VPN providers.

1. Do they offer OS and mobile apps?

Although most desktop and mobile operating systems make it easy to configure a VPN, this can be tedious if you want to be able to access a number of different VPN providers or locations. Apps make it easier and also provide extra service, like the display of realtime latency to help you pick the fastest server (see below)

2. Do their apps provide automatic connection on a per-application basis?

VPN is only effective if you remember to enable it. For that reason, it’s incredibly handy if you can earmark specific applications to automatically require VPN before sending any traffic. When you launch those applications, your VPN app will prevent any traffic from flowing across the wire until it has established a secure connection. I use this all the time for email and browsers. When I use these apps, I never want any of the traffic going out over the wire unencrypted. Similarly, other features like automatically reconnecting when on reboot, if the connection fails, or if you are connected to an untrusted network help to ensure that you are connected when you need it.

3. Is there an Internet “kill switch”?

In certain circumstances, you may not want *any* traffic going out from your device if the connection with the VPN server is broken or down. Again, this is a precautionary measure, but a nice feature to have if you need it.

4. Does the provider offer a extensive network of servers across the globe?

VPN can add overhead and latency to your internet experience. That’s already kind of a drag if you are on a slow link in a remote location. The closer your VPN server is geographically and networkologically, the faster you VPN connection may be. VPN providers with big networks of servers will give you the biggest bang for your buck if you travel far and wide.

5. Which VPN protocols does the provider support?

Be aware that there are multiple VPN protocols. OpenVPN will be sufficient for most users and use cases. But if you travel in certain countries — particularly those that have started to block VPN traffic — you may need more sophisticated protocols to ensure your communications are uninterrupted during your travels.

How much should you expect to pay?

I’ve used a lot of VPN services over the years. I’ve found that the bottom of the barrel services (by price) rarely represent a good value. The services can be slow and spotty. In my experience, you should expect to pay between $50 to $100 USD per year for a full-featured, fast, and reliable VPN service.

There are a million VPN providers. Who should I pick?

In the past 15 years, I’ve used a ridiculous number of VPN providers. I’ve even run my own VPN service. That’s just what kind of crazy I am.

Now, I only use a single provider: VyprVPN (Twitter: @vyprvpn) from Golden Frog. Their mobile and OS apps are stellar. Their servers are fast. And their support team — should you ever need to give them a shout — is friendly and efficient. Do note that I’m not an affiliate, just a long time, very satisfied customer.

The VyprVPN iPad app shows a map with servers across the globe and latency times. It’s really slick.

The connection screen of the VyprVPN iPhone app.