Hillary Clinton via WikipediaThere are a load of free VPN services around, like you can see a selection here, but when you really depend on your online communication, it makes sense to pay a few bucks so you do not have to bother about whatever China's censors might think is offlimits.
In the past I worked with Witopia, and they did an excellent job. Last December I switched to 12vpn, for a simple reason: they were cheaper and the reviews of this relative new service were excellent. I then paid US§ 35 for a one year. That was only a difference of less than US§ 5, but as everybody who spent some time in China: you are not even going to spend one cent on something called loyalty. Loyalty schemes are invented by overpaid MBA's (I know them), who have to justify their salaries. They do not add any real value.
12VPN did a really good job, and I was happy to transfer it to a good friend when I left Shanghai in January.
Just now I got a tweet (h/t @kinablog) telling me that 12vpn had increased their fee to US§ 129. The business reason behind it I do not know, but I guessed they must have hired recently an MBA. Nobody who can get Witopia for US§ 39.99 is going to take them serious.
The problem of this pricing strategy is of course that the average internet user in China cannot afford even Witopia. If Hillary Clinton is going to offer this open channel for free (long time ago before 9/11 the CIA offered actually such a service) the whole industry will be flat out. But otherwise, what do you think of this idea? You would have to look into the political and technical ramifications if you going to offer an affordable VPN-service to all 450 million, it should be down to US§ 2, and perhaps you have to organize localized distribution systems for students who can earn an additional buck for their effort. That would be fun.
For a long time Chinese internet users were not really interesting in those VPN-services, since they were pretty happy with the censored edition of the internet they could get. I see some signals showing that the need for a cheap VPN-service might be growing, so you might not have a customer base of 450 million, but with a couple of millions it would also be feasible.
What do you think?
(Earlier published at www.fonstuinstra.net)
12 comments:
Lucky that i just purchased my 12@vpn 2 weeks ago!
As long as they keep their support for China. Some nasty, unconfirmed rumors say China support might be cancelled.
i hope that is not happening.
I have been in contact with Neil working for Anuson limited and I asked him why such a price increase.
This is what he replied:
Hi Pepijn,
We're dealing with a lot of crackdowns currently. The high price is to slow down our fast growth and avoid attracting too much attention.
Best regards,
Neil
another comment from Neil:
Hi Pepijn,
We were blocked twice in China in the last 14 days, but had sufficient resources to make that go unnoticed. We're keeping a lower profile since though. Hopefully these crackdowns end shortly.
Best regards,
Neil
Hi,
Excellent article,
To complet, you can find a VPN Provider list and user reviews (like about 12vpn...) on
http://www.start-vpn.com/
12VPN has always been facing problems in China. it has been blocked several times there and Witopia has also been recently blocked in China.
You can check out this article 12 VPN Blocked
I used Witopia sometime last year, until it got blocked (I understand they solved the problem). Besides that it worked OK most of the time.
Never tried 12VPN, but 129$/year does not seem that much though. Now I`m using http://www.highspeedvpn.com/. Costs 10$/month, so 120$/year, but it`s faster and more reliable than the 60$/year Witopia deal I had, + it never got blocked.
I use personal vpn service vpn account. It costs about 10$ a months. This is good and reliable service and I did not have any problem with it.
my choice for vpn is kebrum.com
Thank you for sharing this information.
us vpn
The problem of this pricing strategy is of course that the average internet user in China cannot afford even Witopia.
I found Superb VPN yo be very affordable. No major server issues with servers I am using and their customer support is great and always ready to help.
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