It doesn’t matter whether you’ve been working from home for years or started this year due to the pandemic: if you’re working remotely, you better have a virtual private network (VPN) to keep your internet traffic safe and protect company resources.
The best solution for this kind of remote access scenario can be either a dedicated business VPN client or a consumer VPN service purchased using a business license.
The upside of a business VPN client is that your IT department will set it up with the same protections you get in the office. It’s like being in the office without the commute. Some offices don’t need that level of protection, though, so a third-party VPN service—where your traffic runs through the provider’s servers, not the servers at your office—will suffice.
VPN Services for Work
For this survey, we ask people to tick a box if they use that VPN for business use specifically. We pull that subset out and crunch the numbers and typically, as with other products, people tend to like the same product for work use that they do for home.
That's the case again this year, as Private Internet Access, which also wins our Readers' Choice 2020 prize, is also on top for Business Choice. The difference is, there are fewer contenders on the biz side, and Private Internet Access' scores are well ahead of them all.
Click through the charts above to see all the ratings. Private Internet Access is the longest bar on all of them with one exception—the setup score is higher for NordVPN and last year's winner in this category, ExpressVPN. Private Internet Access in particular leads with the best scores in overall satisfaction (8.8), ease of use (9.0), performance (8.8), internet speed (8.6), cost (9.0), and trustworthiness (8.9).
It's interesting to note that NordVPN, one of our Editors' Choice VPNs, kept up with Private Internet Access in many cases. It even came within a tenth of a point on a few factors. It was enough of a leap for NordVPN to get into second place this year, and push former winner Express VPN down to third.
Much like last year, any of these top three VPNs are sufficient for keeping work traffic on the internet clear from prying eyes. But the fourth place showing by Norton Secure VPN indicates it is a much-used but seldom-loved service you should probably avoid.
Business VPN Clients for Remote Access
In the past, this award for a remote-access kind of VPN has gone to big names (like Cisco in 2018) and small (Pulse Secure in 2019). This year, NordVPN stepped it up and put those others in its place, with Cisco slipping to second place and Pulse to sixth.
NordVPN's only detriment appears to be a slight performance hit on your computer when in use; three other providers (Palo Alto, SonicWall, and OpenVPN) all have better performance ratings. Otherwise, NordVPN is the top pick on every measure. It's particularly noteworthy for high scores on setup (8.0), reliability (8.9), tech support (8.3), and the likelihood to be recommended to colleagues (8.6).
Are you going to be unhappy if you get the client software from Cisco or Palo Alto? Probably not. But readers this year were definitely happy with what they got from Pulse Secure and Microsoft for their VPNs. Avoid them. Just stick with NordVPN Teams.
For more, read The Best Business VPN Clients.
Full Results
The PCMag Readers' Choice survey for was in the field from August 31, 2020, to September 202020. For more information on how our surveys are conducted, read the survey methodology.
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