I'll try not to make this article an advertisement, so I won't mention any specific VPN service names. I have used quite a few services over the years, I do promote some, so I'll give you some fair warning about that. Though me being associated with VPN service will scare off many people from reading the rest of what I have to say, dismissing it as a ploy to make a commission, I'll remind you that any information you find on the internet about VPN services is most likely going to earn a commission on your click.

If you think that someone is going to sit around in their spare time researching and writing reviews of the best VPN services out there, you're wrong. Even private blog owners are smart enough to monetize their blogs, even if they're not full blown affiliates associated with a specific service.

But working with these companies for the last two years, and actually using their services (I currently reside in China, where VPNs are crucial to staying connected with the outside world) has helped me understand what a new, inexperienced user should look for. So here are some of the main things you should look for when choosing a VPN service provider.

First things first, you should get something with a decent money back guarantee. It seems obvious, but not all services do. Some do, but it's only for two days. It's funny because they put a big logo on their site with exclamations marks and stars around it like its a big deal. Two days is not enough. A seven day money back guarantee is about standard. It's enough time for you to give the software a good test, and it's short enough that the services have time to kick out fraudsters. There's tons of people trying to purchase VPNs with fraudulent credit cards, probably because they use VPNs to hide their cyber crime. Two week or even one month trial periods are out there as well, but not as common.

Other than a good trial period, you should be looking for free stuff. Well, stuff that some services charge for, but others don't. Server switching is a good one. Smaller VPN services will charge you 15 dollars a month for 1 server location in one country, or a few cities in one country. Other services allow you full access to ten or more server with unlimited switching. This makes a big difference on those days when the VPN drags.

Very often, switching servers solves the problem. Another good example is unlimited bandwidth. Some lite packages may limit you to 10 or 20 GB per month. Most of the time you'll get some sort of a discount - maybe ten dollars a year. But ten bucks a year translates to less than a dollar a month, and do you really want to be limiting your upload/download limit because of $1 USD per month? I don't.

Perhaps the most important thing that qualifies a provider as the good VPN service is the quality of customer support. No matter how many bells and whistles you find on a site, how fast a representative gets back to you, and the tone they do it in is important. I don't know how many times I've had issues with different services (because of the firewall in China), and some take DAYS to get back to me. Some, though they have the 'Live Support' widget on their site are rarely around for it to be of any use.

Yet some services get back to me within an hour with the answer to my question. Some services even try to pass the blame on whatever they can before looking to the problem, while some offer a whole list possibilities of what could be going wrong, and if you don't respond, check in a day later to make sure you solved the issue. Now that's quality customer service!