Are There Are Any Vpn Clients For Mac

Just overwrite the FlowVPN server address with any server and it connects. You can type inside the dropdown menu if you place your cursor in it.” You don’t need to be a FlowVPN customer to use their PPTP client. As long as you have your own valid VPN credentials, you’ll be able to use their client.

Public Wi-Fi is a great way to download podcasts, movies, and music when on the go without burning through your data cap. Even checking Twitter and sending emails can start to add up if you’re away from home a lot. Public Wi-Fi isn’t always secure, though.

Editor’s note (August 30, 2017): Cloak recently underwent a brand change, which means the new name of the service is Encrypt.me. Apart from the name, not much has changed, but we will continually review the service as more features and changes are released.

Most technology enthusiasts have probably heard the term VPN. It’s especially thrown around the enterprise IT world. In fact, “per app VPN” is one of the key enterprise features of iOS 7.

Are There Are Any Vpn Clients For Mac

So what exactly is VPN? VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. In short, it connects a client device (Mac, PC, iPhone, etc.) that is using an unsecured Wi-Fi or wired connection to a secured network before transmitting data.

Apple has great support for VPN built right into Mac OS X and iOS. With Apple’s recent renewed interest in the enterprise through it’s partnership with IBM, VPN is a critical solution for customers of all sizes. iOS devices send and receive a lot of personal data, and public Wi-Fi isn’t as safe as many of us would like to believe it is.

While many companies offer VPN solutions for Mac OS X and iOS, Encrypt.me is our favorite. TunnelBear is a close second.

With its “set it and forget it” approach, Encrypt.me is the easiest VPN to use. It automatically connects to the VPN from any Wi-Fi network except the ones you have white-listed. TunnelBear has more competitive pricing, but it requires you to manually connect when you want to secure your connection.

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Why is a VPN important?

So why is VPN important for Mac and iOS users? For one, iOS makes it really easy to connect to guest WiFi. While LTE connections are very fast, it’s always ideal to connect to WiFi when possible to avoid eating into your cellular data cap. On the Mac, when you are away from home, you really have 2 options for connectivity: cellular tethering or guest Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi, for all its great qualities, can be insecure if deployed incorrectly. How do you know that someone isn’t sniffing packets on your local coffee shop’s Wi-Fi? How do you know what security measures are put into place at the hotel you are staying at? You don’t.

Man in the middle attacks and rogue access points are among the security concerns you face with Wi-Fi. My rule of thumb is that you should never connect to a Wi-Fi network that you didn’t install without using a VPN. This includes Wi-Fi that requires a password. The existence of a password does not mean that it is secure once you connect to it.

Using a VPN

For Mac and iOS users, what are the options? We want to use free WiFi when it is available, but how do we stay secure? There are so many VPN services to help ensure your browsing is secure, but I’m going to focus on 3 for the purposes of this article.

The home-made VPN

On the scale of ease of use, this is the most difficult. It’s going to require that you know how to set it up and make it work. This can include running it on a server you have at the house, a Mac mini at Mac mini Colo, or a general third party service that uses the OpenVPN app from the App Store.

While the other two options I am looking at are more “consumer driven” type services, these are more manual. If you’ve got a spare Mac mini, the folks at Mac mini Colo have a nice blog on configuring it with Mavericks Server. As you can see, it requires a decent amount of setup. As I mentioned, the OpenVPN app for iOS is free. For the Mac, I really recommend Viscosity. It’s frequently updated and is fairly easy to use. Again, OpenVPN and Viscosity are just applications. The applications are worthless without the actual VPN service. Are these services hard to setup? It really just depends on your knowledge of VPN and servers. The Mac makes it a lot easier than other platforms. If you’ve got a static IP address and a Mac that is always on at home, you could even set this up for very little money out-of-pocket.

TunnelBear

TunnelBear is a VPN service that supports PC, Mac, Android, and iOS. The thing that TunnelBear does that more generic services don’t is that it’s built for regular people, not IT administrators. Pricing is fairly simple, but check their pricing page for the most up-to-date information.

Mac and iOS pricing:

  • 500 MB/month: Free
  • 1 month unlimited: $9.99
  • 12 months unlimited: $59.88

iOS-only pricing:

  • 500 MB/month: Free
  • 1 month unlimited: $3.99
  • 3 months unlimited: $9.99
  • 12 months unlimited: $29.99

Setting TunnelBear up on iOS is incredibly simple. You download the app and then create an account. Upon first login, you are prompted to install an iOS configuration profile. It’s important to note that iOS handles VPN configuration itself. One of the great things about iOS is that Apple is building various toolkits that companies can plug into. This creates a uniform solution for end-users. Once it’s installed, you are likely to not use the TunnelBear app again unless you are purchasing a plan. To activate the VPN, you go to Settings.app → VPN → Choose your VPN server, and then flip it on.

On the Mac side, you drag the app to the Applications folder and then sign into your account upon first launch. The app is extremely simple to use. Once you are logged in, you can select the country you want to use and then flip the switch. Once that switch is flipped, all your traffic is secured.

You’ll notice that there are different countries. Why is this helpful? Let’s say that you are traveling to another country, but want to enjoy your Netflix subscription. By connecting to a US-based server, you’ll be able watch US-based content. Depending on how much you travel and visit places with open Wi-Fi networks, it’s possible the 500 MB plan might be enough. If you are doing more than general web browsing, you will likely burn through it pretty quickly. One of the nice bonus options that TunnelBear offers is a 1 GB Twitter bonus that you can do once a month. If you combine that with the 500 MB free plan, you’ve got 1.5 GB for free.

TunnelBear is a really nice service and works as advertised. Using any sort of VPN connection is slightly slower than a direct connection, but I barely noticed it. It’s a fantastic service.

Encrypt.me

Encrypt.me is another “set it and forget it” type VPN service. Like TunnelBear, it’s aimed at regular consumers rather than IT professionals. On the surface, it looks similar to TunnelBear, but just more expensive on the unlimited plans:

Through iOS In-App Purchase:

  • 1 Week Pass: $3.99
  • 30 Day Pass: $9.99
  • 12 Month Pass: $99.99

Through the Encrypt.me website, you have several account options at varying price points. They outline all the options and prices on their Pricing page.

  • Passes: These are short-term passes that offer unlimited data during the term. These range from a week, a month, to a year.
  • Subscriptions: Subscribing on a monthly or yearly basis gets you unlimited data.
  • Families: Same thing as subscriptions, but for up to 5 members.
  • Teams: A convenient way to centrally manage, administer, and pay for a team of members. As you might expect, you get price breaks as you add more users.

There’s also a Mini Plan that offers 5 GB of data for $2.99 a month, which is a good deal if you only need to use the service lightly.

Encrypt.me also offers a similar tweet bonus that Tunnelbear does if you are on the 5 GB plan.

All of these plans are unlimited. So if you compare prices, TunnelBear is quite a bit cheaper per year than Encrypt.me on the unlimited plans. You might be asking, why would anyone sign up for Encrypt.me at those prices?

Encrypt.me has one killer feature: it automatically connects and disconnects based on the Wi-Fi network you are connected to. Here is how this might work in practice: Your home network and your work network are set to trusted. When you are connected to those networks, your VPN is off. When you visit your local coffee shop, Encrypt.me will automatically connect and secure your connection. When you leave that Wi-Fi connection and switch back to LTE, Encrypt.me will disconnect (you can set cellular connections to untrusted if you want to).

Why is this important? It’s because it makes security automatic. With OpenVPN-based services and TunnelBear, you have to remember to turn the VPN on whenever you need it. With Encrypt.me, unless you have specified the Wi-Fi network you are using as trusted, it will connect. When you connect to Target’s guest Wi-Fi, it will connect. When you connect to Starbucks’ guest Wi-Fi, it will connect. When you connect at home, it will not connect.

Installation of Encrypt.me for Mac and iOS is extremely simple. On the Mac, you download the application and drag it to your Applications folder. Once you launch it, you log into your account and you are off and running. Encrypt.me makes it very easy to modify trusted networks vs. untrusted, and it also includes an option to always trust non-WiFi based networks (ethernet, etc).

On iOS, installation is simplified even further. You download the app from the App Store and it walks you through the installation process. It’s a very similar process to TunnelBear since you install an iOS configuration profile. As I mentioned earlier, the secret sauce of Encrypt.me is that once you tell the app your trusted networks, you no longer have to interact with the app. It will turn itself on and off automatically.

So, what’s the best option?

Encrypt.me and TunnelBear each have 2 distinct advantages. TunnelBear is cheaper on the unlimited plan, but Encrypt.me has the auto-connect feature.

If you are the type of person who frequently uses public Wi-Fi (traveling, coffee shop meetings, etc.), I recommend Encrypt.me. If you are the type person who spends the majority of the day at home and work (and you trust your work Wi-Fi), then TunnelBear is probably a better choice because it’s 50% cheaper on the yearly plan (or 70% if you only use iOS).

Encrypt.me offers a 14-day free trial and TunnelBear offers a free 500 MB a month plan, so there is no reason not to try both and see which one works best for you. Both companies offer a “tweet” bonus, where you can tweet about their service for a quota bonus.

Encrypt.me is our favorite based on its ease of use. It’s still inexpensive for everything it offers. Once you get your “whitelisted” networks setup, you’ll likely not need to use the app again unless you are managing your account. It’s is truly a “set it and forget it” type service.

Whatever you do, if you use Wi-Fi that you don’t manage, make sure you are using a VPN.

Wait. There’s a Bonus….

Custom Productivity Templates

We have a set of custom productivity templates that work well with the iPad app, GoodNotes. And if you want to try them out, we’ve put together a free guide that can help you.

We’ll show you…

  • How to create and save custom page templates in GoodNotes.
  • How to use those page templates to transform GoodNotes into your own productivity notebook (or any other type of notebook replacement).

Plus, we also have included a couple of our custom productivity templates for you to get started with. These templates are right out of our popular productivity course.

The custom templates and the guide are available for FREE to our email subscriber community. And you can get it right now. By joining the Sweet Setup community you’ll also get access to our other guides, early previews to big new reviews and workflow articles we are working on, weekly roundups of our best content, and more.

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are more popular than ever. They are an important weapon in the ongoing fight against cyber-snooping and can even unlock some geo-blocked apps and websites.

Different VPN providers specialize in different areas; it can be difficult to choose the right supplier for your needs. But once you’ve selected your provider, you still have decisions to make. Specifically, how do you know which VPN client to use The Best VPN According to RedditBut with so many VPNs on the market, how do you decide which one to use? We checked Reddit's best subreddits and threads to get the best VPN recommendations. Read More ? Should you use your VPN provider’s proprietary app, or a flexible solution that can connect to several different services?

If you’re not sure where to turn, keep reading for the best free Mac VPN clients you can use right now, and a few other options you might not have considered.

Free Open-Source Clients

Here are the top free VPN clients you should consider.

TunnelBlick

TunnelBlick is an Apple-specific VPN client. It works on macOS and iOS. There is no Windows or Linux version. It works with any VPN provider which offers OpenVPN support.

Because the app is completely open source, you can be confident it’s not secretly tracking your internet usage in other ways and thus negating the benefit of using a VPN. It is more transparent than proprietary apps.

Interestingly, TunnelBlick logs all your session data by default. This is not unusual — all OpenVPN clients do the same thing. If you want to turn off session data logging, all you need to do is add verb 0 to the app’s config file. Remember, this is not linked to whether the VPN provider itself is logging your data.

Finally, the app has a vibrant support community. If you encounter difficulties, head to the Google Group discussion forum and someone will quickly step in to assist.

OpenVPN

The OpenVPN project began back in 2002. It is probably the most well-known of all the free VPN clients. In addition to a Mac version, the app is also available on iOS, Windows, and Android.

The app itself supports lots of different VPN configurations, including remote access, site-to-site VPNs, and enterprise-scale deployments.

The app isn’t as easy to use as proprietary apps — or even some other OpenVPN clients — but it’s established a name for itself thanks to its feature-rich menus and unflinching reliability.

The main criticism of OpenVPN is its VPN configurations limit. By default, you cannot have more than 50 saved. It is possible to recompile the app to remove the limit, but it’s a complicated process and beyond the scope of this article. It’s also important to be aware that the OpenVPN app only supports the OpenVPN protocol.

SoftEther VPN

SoftEther VPN is possibly the easiest to use multi-protocol VPN app on this list. It runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. The open-source app is entirely free, regardless of whether you’re going to use it in a personal or commercial environment.

It supports almost all VPN protocols, including L2TP/IPsec, OpenVPN, MS-SSTP, L2TPv3, EtherIP, and most impressively, VPN-over-HTTPS.

If you use the developer’s own SoftEther VPN protocol, you can expect faster surfing speeds than OpenVPN. In testing, the SoftEther server was 103 percent faster than Microsoft’s Windows implementation of L2TP/IPsec and up to 117 percent faster than OpenVPN.

Additional features include support for packet filtering, dynamic DNS, and UDP hole punching.

Service-Specific Apps

Some providers offer their own apps. The apps themselves are free, but they only work with the providers’ services.

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Here are a couple of the best free provider specific apps. Remember, the quality of any provider’s app has no bearing on the quality of the actual VPN service, but they often offer more pleasing interfaces than the open source options above.

NordVPN

NordVPN is widely considered to be one of the best VPN services available The Best VPN ServicesWe've compiled a list of what we consider to be the best Virtual Private Network (VPN) service providers, grouped by premium, free, and torrent-friendly. Read More . It always scores highly on privacy tests thanks to its lack of logging and Panamanian jurisdiction.

The Mac app was recently overhauled. You can choose from hundreds of servers around the world on the app’s interactive map, chat to tech support via live chat, and quickly jump between server locations with a single click.

The app also has a kill switch that prevents data being revealed to snoopers if you unexpectedly get disconnected from your VPN. Lastly, it includes shortcuts to servers specifically designed for streaming and P2P downloading.

You can download the NordVPN app on macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, and even on some smart TVs and gaming consoles.

ExpressVPN

ExpressVPN is another well-known VPN provider Enjoy a Secure and Easy-to-Use VPN With ExpressVPNWhy should you choose ExpressVPN? Well, we've given it a try, and quite like what we've seen so far. We think you will, too. Read More that been around since 2009. It’s headquartered in the British Virgin Islands, thus giving you peace of mind regarding anonymity and data disclosure. It’s also one of the fastest VPN providers and offers unlimited bandwidth.

The Mac desktop client supports OpenVPN (UDP and TCP), L2TP, and PPTP protocols. The app lets you bookmark your favorite servers for easy access and chat with the tech support team.

It also provides a way to set up one-click connect and, like NordVPN, has a kill switch in case you lose your connection. The app is free to download and use, but it will only work with ExpressVPN’s service.

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For a Small Fee…

There’s one paid app that deserves a mention in this list.

Viscosity ($9)

Like the three free solutions I discussed, Viscosity is open source. It costs a one-time fee of $9. It’s also cross-platform — you can run it on Windows as well as macOS.

Viscosity undoubtedly wins the design award. Its user interface is much more polished than the free alternatives, and it’s incredibly easy to use and navigate. If you’re new to the world of third-party VPN clients and aren’t au-fait with terminology The Short MakeUseOf Guide to VPN TerminologyThe need for a secure internet connection has never been more vital. A VPN is a great way to stop unwanted snooping in your internet traffic. We're here to cut through the VPN jargon. Read More , it’s $9 well spent.

From a technical standpoint, the app gives you a complete traffic breakdown of your connections, integrates with Keychain to keep your details safe, and works with macOS’s advanced DNS system.

On the downside, the app only works with the OpenVPN protocol.

Which VPN Client Do You Use?

Each VPN client has different advantages and disadvantages. Which one you choose to use will depend on which protocols your VPN provider offers and your familiarity with setting up and using VPNs on third-party apps.

Which is the best free VPN client on macOS? Do you use one of the apps I reviewed, or have you found a better app that did not make this list? You can let us know which app you use and why it’s so good in the comments section below.