Being very satisfied with Mullvad, I have paid for one full year now, again by sending the money to one of their partners in an anonymous envelope. I paid in cash for one month by sending the envelope with the money to one of their official resellers (check the Mullvad homepage!) and evaluated their VPN service for these 30 days. I’m not interested in bypassing geo restrictions for Netflix streams (other VPN providers are better in that than Mullvad), but I wanted a VPN provider with focus on privacy. From these four considerations, Mullvad was the one that I picked. For months I have been reading/studying on the different VPN providers, such as the “review series” here at ghacks some time ago, recommendations and experience reports at respected sites focusing on privacy, user reports, etc.Īnd finally I came to the conclusion that only Mullvad, IVPN, ProtonVPN, or Cryptostorm are the options. It is a bold decision, one that reduces the amount of data that Mullvad stores on its servers. The decision to drop recurring payments for new and (eventually) existing customers will certainly impact revenue.
While that is higher than the price of many other VPN products, Mullvad is regarded highly in communities that value privacy. Mullvad is available for €5 per month, regardless of subscription period. The majority of VPN services give customers discounts the longer they subscribe. Mullvad VPN has a flat pricing model, unlike most VPN services. The company has not announced a specific date or period, after which subscriptions will no longer be processed. Existing subscriptions "will be processed for at least 6 months" according to Mullvad. Non-recurring payments, also called one-time payments, are not affected by the decision. The company is aware that the removal of the option makes using the service less convenient for some of the users. The removal of recurring payment subscriptions at Mullvad VPN remove the link, as payment records are not kept for longer than "the first few weeks" according to Mullvad. While convenient, recurring payments link a user's identity to the VPN account.