NordVPN
Sidst opdateret: 07/06/2024
Introduction
Our impression is that NordVPN is a very strong all-rounder that can fulfill the requirements of most people. The VPN provider offers a secure and 100% anonymous VPN service. The VPN provider offers servers in 59 countries, including a number of servers in Denmark, making the service optimal for Denmark.
The amount of servers is also something that impresses us. This also makes the service optimal for streaming such as Netflix in other countries. The service is also very good for streaming Danish streaming services such as DR TV and Viaplay. The service has an extremely large number of servers, especially in the largest countries such as the US, UK and Germany. We often also experience the speed very fast.
NordVPN has a zero-logging policy which makes the security of the service very good. The registration of the company in Panama outside of US and EU jurisdiction has also made this a very secure VPN provider. NordVPN is also becoming a great alternative to torrents.
In terms of pricing, NordVPN is pretty average. Not among the most expensive, but not the cheapest either. For around $10, you can get a monthly subscription. But if you commit for a longer period, the price will be much cheaper.
Speed
Speed is a crucial factor when choosing a VPN provider. Like any VPN, there will be a cost associated with using a high-speed VPN, but the faster the VPN, the closer you are to getting maximum speed on your network.
NordVPN is very consistent in delivering extremely high speeds on all its servers. The server speeds are some of the best we’ve seen. Almost no matter which server location you choose, you can rest assured that you can stream HD videos and download files without pause. Short latency also contributes to strong performance, making NordVPN a great choice for gamers.
NordVPN gets a big plus for its fast speed. The only thing we give NordVPN a small minus for is that it can sometimes take a little long to connect to the different servers. This is no more than a 10/15 second difference compared to ExpressVPN, which is by far the best in this area, so it’s not the end of the world. This is something many VPN programs are a bit poor at, but it’s not that crucial for usage.
Security and privacy
NordVPN is a good choice for users who are concerned about privacy. The company is located in privacy-friendly Panama, away from EU and US jurisdiction, and is therefore not required to collect information about users.
This allows them to operate with a strict zero-logging policy. This means that if a third party wants to see your browsing history, NordVPN would have nothing to show them. NordVPN prioritizes data security, and we like this in the VPN portal.
NordVPN offers as kill switch and DNS and IPv & leak protection as standard. This means that if the VPN connection unexpectedly drops, your IP address will not be revealed. NordVPN also offers double VPN or TOR over VPN with an extra layer of protection if you handle sensitive information. NordVPN also offers other security features. Overall, we are very satisfied with NordVPN’s security.
Servers in different countries
NordVPN offers over 5,000 servers in 59 countries. In itself, NordVPN is no different from other VPN providers on the market. Many other VPN providers also offer servers in more countries than NordVPN. However, 59 countries is more than enough for most people, and NordVPN offers more countries than we can imagine exist.
The server selection, on the other hand, is very good. The most popular countries have many server options, and this is one of NordVPN’s strengths. Which means the more servers the faster the speed.
You can also choose specific servers based on the purpose you want to use the VPN provider for. For example, if you want to use the VPN to watch TV, you can choose custom servers in the US and UK so you can watch fast TV in HD format.
The servers also have a number of other features, making NordVPN a very favorable VPN provider. Our only complaint is that you can’t choose specific cities, which can be convenient for some purposes. But there are ways around this.
How much does NordVPN cost?
Like almost every other VPN, NordVPN has different pricing packages based on how long you choose to commit for. If you commit for a short period, it will be more expensive, and if you commit for a longer period, it will be cheaper.
If you sign up for just one month, the price of NordVPN is quite average compared to other VPNs. The price tends to vary slightly, so it may be slightly different from the picture as you read this text. Usually, the price of a monthly package is just under $100. This is really neither expensive nor cheap, and ExpressVPN, for example, costs around 10% more for a monthly package.
If you commit for a longer period, it will be significantly cheaper. For example, a 2-year subscription costs no more than $25, so it’s cheaper than a cup of coffee. Of all the providers we tested, NordVPN’s longer-term packages are the VPN deals that give you the most value for money. On the other hand, not everyone may be interested in committing for such a long period of time, and many only need a VPN service for traveling abroad and the like.
NordVPN also has a 30-day money-back guarantee. This is nothing special about NordVPN as the vast majority of paid VPNs have this guarantee. Nevertheless, it is a very useful guarantee as you can ask for a refund at any time without giving any reason. This way, you can take advantage of NordVPN without taking any risks and choose another VPN service if you are not satisfied with NordVPN.
If you’re interested in completely free VPN services, you can read about why we don’t recommend them here.
Ease of use
We’re thrilled with the ease of use of NordVPN. While other VPN products have long lists where you have to look long and hard for each country you want to use an IP address from and then find the best server, you don’t have to do this with NordVPN. NordVPN has a world map that you can easily select your country on. Simply browse the map and select the country you want. Most of us will probably connect to Denmark. Anyway, it’s incredibly easy.
Once you’ve selected your preferred country, NordVPN will automatically choose the fastest and least busy server in that country. This makes the process very easy – especially for beginners, so you don’t have to choose from a number of servers and guess which one will be best.
It’s also very easy to switch servers if you wish. Simply search for a country in the main menu and you can choose a server based on speed and similar features.
Otherwise, the NordVPN software is easy to maneuver around. If you want to change settings, tap Settings at the top of the menu. You’ll see various options that you can turn on and off, such as automatic kill switch, invisibility when connected to the LAN, whether you want an internet kill switch (so you can only connect to the internet while connected to a VPN), whether you want to have your own DNS servers, protocols and the like. All of this is easy to find in the NordVPN menu.
You can also easily get in touch with customer support through the app, and it was also relatively easy to communicate with them. NordVPN is not a Danish VPN service, as many people think, and therefore there is no customer service in Danish. But it’s really not a problem, and communicating with customer support in English goes well. Read more about customer support below.
NordVPN for iPhone and Android
When it comes to apps for iPhone, Android or tablet, we also found that these were very intuitive and worked well. When it comes to installation and the like, it’s extremely quick. Simply install these via either the Apple or Google stores and log in with the user account. We actually spent less than a minute doing this.
The system itself looks similar to the PC platform. You can maneuver around a world map or scroll up the menu to easily select a specific country. Tapping on a specific country gives you the option to select Quick Connect or choose a specific server to connect to. NordVPN will automatically choose a server for you.
There are also several options from which you can easily select different features by pressing the settings icon in the left corner. Here you can choose between the different features. To us, it looked like some options were missing on the mobile app, such as the kill switch and a few other important features, which was a bit negative. We’re not sure what the reason for this is.
Overall, the NordVPN app works well and we found it almost easier to use than the PC platform. If you want to use NordVPN for iPhone or Android, we recommend this.
NordVPN for Netflix
We are seeing an increasing number of people purchasing a VPN to access Netflix in countries other than Denmark. As you know, the American Netflix is known to have a much larger selection than the Danish, and the reason for this is that Netflix simply puts more resources into the American market.
By connecting to a US server, Netflix can be tricked into thinking you’re in the US. That way, you’ll have access to all the blocked content.
Netflix blokerer fortsat VPN servere, og det betyder at alle VPN-tjenester løbende bliver nødt til at opdatere og forbedre deres servere, så de ikke forbliver blokeret. Derfor er det kun de bedste tjenester på markedet, der kan klare det.
In our tests, the different servers in Denmark also worked very well. The speed was good and the connection was also robust in terms of the servers not going down or anything like that. Overall, NordVPN works well when it comes to watching American Netflix.
NordVPN for Danish channels
Besides using VPN to watch American Netflix, many Danes also use VPN to watch Danish TV abroad. As you know, Danish TV is blocked outside Denmark due to rights restrictions. We are in the process of removing this within the EU, but it will continue to apply globally for a long time to come.
Basically, NordVPN is a very favorable VPN service compared to Danish users. The reason for this is that the service has invested heavily in the Norwegian market and operates with many servers in this country.
We connected to several Norwegian servers and accessed streaming services like DR TV and TV2 Play, and watching these channels was painless using NordVPN’s servers. The speed was also very good.
NordVPN gets more than approved, also in relation to watching Danish TV abroad.
Special features
NordVPN has a number of specialized servers for security and other things. Among other things, NordVPN has an Onion Over VPN feature that provides all the benefits of The Onion Router (Tor), combined with the added security of a VPN tunnel. In short, this is an extra security feature for your VPN if you need to browse “The Dark Net” or similar.
NordVPN also has a Double VPN feature. This means you can hide your asset behind two servers instead of just one. This is also called a VPN server chain. The way this works is that your traffic first goes through a VPN server and is therefore encrypted. After this, the traffic then goes through another VPN server, which means your traffic will be even harder to track.
NordVPN also has special features for a so-called dedicated IP. A dedicated IP feature means that the IP address will only belong to your account, as opposed to hundreds of other users also using the same one. The Dedicated IP feature is relatively expensive to offer and therefore unfortunately currently costs an extra $70 per year.
When it comes to all the special features, NordVPN differs significantly from many of the other VPN providers targeting Danish users.
NordVPN for torrenting
Although NordVPN gives you access to a much better library of American Netflix, Hulu and the like, many people in Denmark use a VPN to download files. This can be illegal and therefore many people want to hide their IP address (note that we do not encourage illegal VPN use).
NordVPN has several P2P servers that are optimized for downloading torrent files. This makes it very good for torrenting. We downloaded several files from The Pirate Bay and others, and NordVPN hid our IP address 100%. We didn’t experience any speed issues either.
We also had the Kill Switch feature turned on so that the internet was turned off in case the VPN connection disappeared (which it didn’t). However, this can be smart if you choose to use the VPN for this purpose, otherwise you risk your IP becoming temporarily visible to authorities and the like.
Can you get NordVPN for free?
If you’ve read around the internet where people say that you can test NordVPN for free, this is unfortunately not true. In the past, you could actually try the service for 3 days. Back then, all you had to do was enter your email, where you would be sent a password and gain access to all of NordVPN’s features. This caused several people I still know today to create multiple emails just to avoid paying when they needed a VPN. Smart, but still not 100% legal.
Unfortunately, NordVPN has discontinued this feature. Now, they just market themselves as free in terms of it being risk-free as you have a 30-day money-back guarantee. Of course, this is not a true free version, as you have to pay to use the service (the exact opposite. Still, you can ask for a refund over time and therefore effectively test the service for free. Either way, the answer to whether NordVPN can be tested for free is basically no.
NordVPN for the Chinese firewall
Many people use a VPN to bypass geoblocks while traveling. China is one of those countries where VPNs are always needed, so a good test of any VPN will be how well it manages to bypass China’s firewall – the so-called Great Firewall. This is an advanced firewall that the authorities have created and sites like Google, Facebook, Instagram, Wikipedia, Snapchat, YouTube and the like are blocked.
NordVPN is known to work really well for bypassing the firewall in China. In some cases, connecting to a normal VPN server is sufficient. The level of blocking in China is currently variable and in many cases this will not work.
NordVPN is known to work really well for bypassing the firewall in China. In some cases, connecting to a normal VPN server is sufficient. The level of blocking in China is currently variable and in many cases this will not work.
Customer Service
We did several tests with the customer service at NordVPN and overall we have to say that we are very satisfied with it. No matter what question we asked, Customer Service answered almost immediately. We found this to be very impressive indeed.
You can see a screenshot where we spoke to a helpful person about whether NordVPN worked with US Netflix. She answered right away and gave us a complete answer. Of course, this all helps to give NordVPN a better impression.
Another thing was that the customer service was also very helpful in helping us to cancel the subscription. In our experience, many companies are very bad at this deliberately, making it difficult to unsubscribe. We tested how the 30-day money-back guarantee actually worked and sent NordVPN an email saying we wanted a refund.
The response from customer service was that this was of course no problem and that we would have the money in our account within two business days. They also welcomed us back. In the meantime, we’ve heard that some customers had to explain why they wanted to cancel the subscription, so it might be a little different depending on who you talk to.
All in all, we have to say that NordVPN’s customer service is top notch. Nice, helpful and patient are appropriate adjectives to characterize the employees in our impression.
Of course, the only downside of NordVPN is that it’s not a Nordic VPN service, as many people think, and therefore there is no customer support in a Scandinavian language. But this isn’t really a problem, and communicating with customer support in English works just fine.
NordVPN for use in the UK
In our test, how NordVPN performs in the UK is of course important. Some VPNs are particularly good in certain countries. GooseVPN, which is from the Netherlands, works particularly well in the Netherlands as the service is a lot of resources in the country. Of course, it doesn’t help Danish users much if NordVPN is a very good service overall but doesn’t perform well in Denmark.
Fortunately for Danish users, NordVPN works very well in Denmark. The service has 70 servers in Denmark, which is probably the most of any VPN provider we’ve tested. In fact, NordVPN has more servers in Denmark than many VPNs have worldwide. In our tests, the different servers in Denmark also worked very well. The speed was good and the connection was also robust in terms of the servers not going down or something similar.
Although ExpressVPN has come out on top on a general basis on our sites, we would highly recommend that you use NordVPN if you only use the VPN service in the UK. In our experience, NordVPN works surprisingly well in the UK.
How to install and use NordVPN
NordVPN is very easy to install and use. The first thing you need to do is go to the NordVPN website. Just click through one of the many places on the website until you get to the different payment packages. Here you choose different plans depending on how long you want to use the service (the longer you commit for, the cheaper the service becomes).
Once you have selected a package, simply fill in an email address and choose your payment method. You can pay with everything from credit cards, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay, cryptocurrencies, Alipay and the like. Once you’ve paid, you’ll get a user and then simply download NordVPN. This is extremely fast and you’ll have the program installed and ready to use in minutes. Then simply log into the program on your PC with your credentials and connect to a server. NordVPN is ready to use. In our experience, most people actually complete the whole process in under five minutes!
Summary
In summary, NordVPN works well for most things. The service has many servers, fast speed, a lot of security features, no logging, safe connections with a kill switch in case the connection drops out and the like. The service also works very well for watching American Netflix and bypassing China’s firewall, for example.
What’s surprising is that the service is actually very cheap in terms of price. A number of smaller new VPN services have recently emerged that focus on aggressive marketing and thus attract many new customers. Examples include SurfSharkVPN, UltraVPN, PrivateVPN, GooseVPN and the like.
These services are often similarly priced or even more expensive than NordVPN, which is actually very cheap. As such, it’s sad that many consumers are almost misled into choosing far inferior products at the same or more expensive price. NordVPN has been in the business for a long time and knows its stuff after all!
What our experts say about NordVPN:
Jarle
“NordVPN has been one of the leading VPN services on the market for a number of years, and I have many friends and acquaintances who use it on a daily basis.
I’ve mostly switched between PIA VPN and ExpressVPN, only because it’s been a matter of habit and not because they’re necessarily the best. I was therefore looking forward to doing a thorough test of NordVPN, where the focus on speed and security were important parameters.
We tested many different factors such as speed, security, ease of use, speed of connecting to different servers, customer service, advanced security features, price, and the like. Overall, I can say that I’m incredibly impressed with how NordVPN provides such a solid service across the board.
It doesn’t stand out incredibly positively on any one parameter, but overall it’s a very good and stable VPN service. You also get what you pay for, as the service is actually relatively cheap. Other services such as ExpressVPN are significantly cheaper, especially if you want to commit for a longer period of time.
All in all, I highly recommend NordVPN. I’m so satisfied that I’m even considering switching to the service when my subscription with PIA VPN expires in a few months.
If I had to give a grade, I would give NordVPN 8 out of 10 stars. What drags down is that it can sometimes take a little long to connect to each server. ExpressVPN, for example, is a lot better here. I also find it annoying that you often get different reminders from the service, although it is of course something you can turn off.”
Andreas
– “I was the one who convinced the others that we should conduct a larger test of NordVPN. I’ve been using the service myself for over 4 years and am therefore a dedicated fan.
Therefore, you could argue that I’m not the most objective, but I did the test together with Jarle and Anne-Marte, so they became the more controlling factor while I was a little dog in the candy store.
What I really like about NordVPN is the large number of servers, especially in Norway. This means that you can always feel safe since there are enough servers in case one of them goes down.
Personally, I use VPNs to stay more anonymous and avoid surveillance, so having many servers to choose from in Norway is great – the worst thing is having to connect to a server in another country, which you sometimes have to do with free services and the like.
We tested NordVPN and compared it to ExpressVPN and PIA VPN, which are Jarle’s favorites. NordVPN came out of the test very well. In terms of speed, the three VPNs were almost equally fast. NordVPN actually scored slightly worse than ExpressVPN in terms of how long it took to connect to a VPN service, which was a little disappointing. Despite this, there wasn’t much to talk about.
NordVPN was the best value for money of the three, and it was also the one we found to be the best in terms of ease of use. The service has a world map you can choose servers on, which works really well.
NordVPN also works great with US Netflix, unlike PIA VPN. Watching Norwegian TV abroad with a Norwegian server was also no problem (we had a friend of Jarle’s who lives in Spain check for us).
Overall, the test went as expected for me and I can definitely recommend NordVPN. When it comes to rating, I give the service a 9/10. A slightly slow connection time is a bit of a drag, as Jarle has already pointed out. This can be annoying in the long run, although it’s not a big problem.”
Anne-Marte
– “Like Andreas and Jarle, I am generally satisfied with NordVPN. I won’t repeat what the others have written, but I also lean on the fact that the service delivers incredibly fast speed, security, ease of use and advanced features for cheap money.
In that sense, NordVPN is a very good choice for those who want me- “Like Andreas and Jarle, I am generally satisfied with NordVPN. I won’t repeat what the others have written, but I also lean on the fact that the service delivers incredibly fast speed, security, ease of use and advanced features for cheap money. The service actually delivers on all levels, which can’t be said for all VPNs.
Overall, I was very satisfied with NordVPN, as I said. However, I would like to add a few factors that I found a tiny bit annoying. First, as Andreas and Jarle have already pointed out, it can take some time to connect to the different servers. I’ve been using ExpressVPN for a number of years and it’s extremely fast. At the moment there’s no more than a 10-second difference, so it’s not a huge problem.
Furthermore, I find it a bit negative that NordVPN doesn’t offer me different servers based on what I want to use them for. For example, CyberGhost offers very specific servers based on whether you want to use the service to watch Netflix, download anonymous content, browse the web anonymously, or something similar. This isn’t a big problem, but there is still room for improvement.
I didn’t renew my subscription after a month as I already have two other VPN subscriptions. Then I got a series of reminders from the service, which became a bit pushy. Therefore, I uninstalled the service.
I just wanted to make some negative comments because I feel the service has received so much praise. All in all, I am super satisfied, and if I had to give a grade, I would give 8 out of 10 stars.”
