Tried out a vpn service for my Raspberry Pi media devices, called PureVPN. Their app works great on OpenElec, however OpenElec doesn’t run on the current Raspberry PI 3B+ hardware, and there is no indication that it ever will.

LibreElec does support the current hardware, however the PureVPN app doesn’t support LibreElec. I contacted PureVPN support, and they were unable to provide any timeline as to when their VPN app would support LibreElec, and I’m not willing to use older Raspberry PI hardware to accommodate PureVPN’s requirements. I was able to get a refund with minimal hassle. If it wasn’t for their inability to support the hardware/software I wanted to use their service on, I would probably still be using their service, as it was a very good value.

I found another vpn service, called Ivacy, and it does install & function. I found that some of it’s configuration settings, such as split tunneling were not intuitive, and their notifications as to when it’s connected and when it’s not connected were not very obvious. I experienced regular connection drops – seemed like every hour, the connection would drop. Getting a refund a week after signing up was straightforward and appreciated.

Now I’m using NordVPN, and I’ve found the connections to be much more reliable – and there seem to be a greater number of servers in some regions to connect to. While it’s not the least expensive option out there, I think the reliability is well worth the extra expense.