First time poster in this sub so please point me in the right direction is there is a better sub to ask this in.
My wife and I are semi-retired IT folks and will be travelling internationally, mostly in Asia but later in Europe, for the next year or so.
In addition the usual uses for using a VPN, I’m particularly looking for a VPN that isn’t blocked in China or anyplace else that bans 90% of the internet. We also subscribe to NetFlix, Amazon Prime (for movies in this case) and have an Xfinitity account for TV (web based). This will be used on Windows 10.
As a bonus, if they have a client for the Apple ecosystem (iPhone and iPad specifically) that would be helpful but not required.
I’ve already read the reviews from the usual sources but am hoping for some first-hand experience from actual users.
You need to be careful with China. As soon as people start confirming online that a VPN isn’t blocked there… it gets blocked soon after. The way to work out what won’t be blocked is to review something like ShenzhenStuff or a similar Chinese expat forum and look for a VPN that hasn’t been mentioned when people ask about VPNs… you may find it challenging to get this working with Netflix and Amazon.
China is not as bad for VPN blocking as some people think but it can change its mind on a VPN at the drop of a hat. Which is why many people have two separate VPN accounts when they are there. Particularly if it’s critical for your work.
NordVPN is the first one I’ve tried. Bought premium for 2 years. Works like a charm for what I need. I’m rather impressed.
Here’s the best advice I ever received about VPNs in China: anything you read about the “best VPN for China” is completely bull. Why? Because the internet in China, contrary to popular belief, isn’t one, cohesive entity centrally controlled by one office in Beijing. Each region and city controls its own internet (under the direction of the central government of course).
What this means for you is that whereas VyprVPN may work great for one user in Beijing, it sucks for somebody else in Shanghai. Likewise, that person in Shanghai may say that NordVPN is the best but it doesn’t do squat for somebody in Chengdu.
And no, just because people online start confirming a VPN isn’t blocked, it doesn’t get blocked. China is not that uninformed that they need to rely on online forums to figure out which VPNs to block.
So…here’s my advice. If you really want a good VPN experience, get a couple VPNs that have 30-day money back guarantees (ExpressVPN and NordVPN both do…VyprVPN does with some links). Get them installed before you leave for China and then figure out which one works best for where you’re going to be located. Return the one that doesn’t work well or, better yet, just keep them both as backups.
Set one up yourself is the best answer, then you can work around issues and not be seen as a VPN user… however it does take some effort to get things working in China.
VyprVPN hands down. Get the premium version. They use their own custom protocol which is basically OpenVPN with headers scrambled. Many “advanced” firewalls like in China or Turkmenistan use deep packet inspection to check for these headers. VyprVPN makes VPN traffic indistinguishable from other. Had no problem accessing facebook and other restricted sites in both of these countries, while my friends’ VPN’s crapped out. Especially in Turkmenistan for some reason.
I appreciate it, but this is a 4 year old post 
I went with ExpressVPN which works fine in China, but they have since been bought out my a famous “ex” ad malware company (Kape Technologies which has also bought other VPN companies) so I plan on changing soon. Likely will be ProtonVPN (same company that makes ProtonMail) which I know works in China and won’t be bought by Kape Tech.
Many thanks - will check out that sub too!
Thanks - rather humorously the posts asking about VPNs on ShenzhenStuff the usual single reply to the post is “don’t ever mention VPN brands or it will be banned”.
Point taken. I’ll pick two and go with that.
Thanks! I have (just arrived yesterday but set it up in HK). So far so good but brother in law said that things are lax during the holiday week so we’ll see.
I went with ExpressVPN which works fine in China, but they have since been bought out my a famous “ex” ad malware company (Kape Technologies which has also bought other VPN companies) so I plan on changing soon. Likely will be ProtonVPN (same company that makes ProtonMail) which I know works in China and won’t be bought by Kape Tech.