Best early Black Friday VPN deals 2022: Surfshark, NordVPN, and more available now
A VPN is an essential tool for maintaining privacy and security online. And they are also useful for simpler tasks, like unlocking geo-restricted content or peer-to-peer file sharing.
I love finding a good deal, but when it comes to VPNs that can be tricky. The prices for VPNs are rarely straightforward and are often listed at what seem to be amazing discounts. Most VPNs offer subscription plans with discounts for longer commitments and these “deals” are regularly advertised at 40% to 60% off or more. The reality is, these “sale” prices usually are always available.
Also: What is a VPN and why do you need one?
However, occasionally, there are legitimate discounts, and all of the Black Friday deals we’ve rounded up are actually cheaper than what you’d typically pay. They’re not just discounted from an artificially inflated price.
Best early Black Friday 2022 VPN deals overall
Below are the five best early VPN deals we could find.
- Current price: $1.64/mo
- Original price: $2.05/mo
Atlas VPN is a solid service from top to bottom with native app support for all of the most popular devices and operating systems. It also has a handful of additional features you may find useful, including split tunneling, a data breach scanner, and a blocker for ads, trackers, and malware.
To get the cheapest average monthly price you’ll need to subscribe to the two-year plan, which has an upfront cost of $49.19. This is the same lump-sum payment you’d pay for the regular non-sale price, but the Black Friday deal comes with six additional months for free, which brings the monthly cost down to $1.64.
- Current price: $1.99/mo
- Original price: $2.30/mo
In my review of Surfshark VPN, I found it to have the speed, performance, and security of other top VPNs, but at a fraction of the cost. It has apps for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and others, so you’ll have no problem setting it up on just about any laptop or mobile device.
The savings on this deal (13%) are just under the threshold for what ZDNET typically considers a good deal. However, this is the lowest price I’ve seen recently for a service that is one of the cheapest VPNs, so it’s worth at least giving Surfshark VPN a test run if you’re interested.
- Current price: $2.99/mo
- Original price: $3.69/mo
NordVPN isn’t just one of ZDNET’s best VPNs overall, it also has a fairly robust iOS app making it one of the best iPhone VPNs as well. NordVPN has everything you should look for in a VPN service: A larger server network, no activity logs, fast download speeds, and user-friendly apps.
The best NordVPN Black Friday deal is for the two-year plan, which comes with three free months. You’ll pay $80.73 upfront, making the average monthly cost $2.99 per month.
- Current price: $3.99/mo
- Original price: $4.99/mo
The Swiss-based Proton VPN is an excellent service with unbeatable privacy and security features. It’s fast and easy to use. And Proton VPN is always developing new features to stay at the forefront of cyber security. It recently rolled out what it calls Stealth VPN, which is a VPN protocol that obscures your VPN connection and helps to bypass government censorship.
Proton VPN isn’t trying to be a budget service and I’ve rarely seen special deals for its premium service. If you can’t justify $3.99 per month, it does have a useful free VPN service that has no data limits.
- Current price: $3.99/mo
- Original price: $4.99/mo
Hide.me VPN is an independently owned service with a no-log policy and 75 server locations. It supports a number of VPN protocols that vary depending on the platform, but include WireGuard, OpenVPN, SoftEther, SSTP, and IKEv2. Hide.me VPN also has other useful features such as split tunneling, and double VPN.
In the past, Hide.me has offered two-year plans, which had a lower monthly cost than the current $3.99/mo offer. However, right now I’m only finding annual plans, and this deal is priced lower than previous one-year subscriptions.
For these Black Friday VPN deals, we only considered reputable and trustworthy VPN providers. There are no shortages of VPNs out there, but there is a limited number of companies that provide secure and user-friendly VPNs.
Finding true VPN deals can be a bit tricky because the prices change frequently and with various subscription lengths and add-ons, it gets convoluted. Most VPNs charge less for longer subscriptions and the standard price for service is often advertised as a huge discount. But if the VPN is always available for 63% off, then I don’t consider that a sale. For the offers listed in this roundup, I based the discounted price on what I’d consider the standard offer rather than an imaginary inflated price that you’ll never have to pay.
We didn’t include free VPNs in our roundup because free VPN services are a mixed bag. It takes money to run a VPN and if you’re not paying then you could be bombarded with ads or stuck with a subpar service. That’s in the best-case scenario. The worst free VPNs could make money by selling your data, so it’s best to stick with a paid service if you’re taking your privacy and security seriously.
Black Friday is always held on the Friday after Thanksgiving, which is on the fourth Thursday of November each year. This year Black Friday falls on Nov. 25.
Cyber Monday is the first Monday after Thanksgiving. This year it falls on Monday, Nov. 28.
ZDNET is scouring the web for the best deals ahead of Black Friday, so check back here for a list of our deals roundups. We will also have a live blog starting at 4am ET on Nov. 23.
Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/early-black-friday-vpn-deals-2022/#ftag=RSSbaffb68
