There’s no need to be a privacy nerd or VPN guru to have heard about NordVPN. After officially entering the market back in 2012, the provider is arguably the most famous VPN name out there.
Test after test, TechRadar’s reviewers remain confident that this popularity isn’t just good marketing. Our experts currently rank NordVPN as the best VPN on the market for most people, in fact, thanks to strong privacy, security, and performance.
Yet, there’s a considerable part of the web that really doesn’t like NordVPN – and it’s pretty vocal. So, when I had the chance to sit down with the team, I put some of the most recurring complaints directly to the people behind the product. Here’s what they replied.
Why is NordVPN’s marketing so aggressive?
If there’s one key reason why NordVPN is the most popular provider on the web, it’s the company’s aggressive marketing. Most of which is conveyed by the most followed YouTubers and Twitch influencers.
While that’s absolutely a legitimate form of advertising that many competitors also use, NordVPN’s activities on this front don’t sit well with all commentators, who often mention it as the main reason to avoid the service. The NordVPN team, however, strongly disagrees with this conclusion.
According to NordVPN’s CTO, Marijus Briedis, great products cannot be alive without marketing. “We have a great product, we know that, but the competition is so fierce that we need a really good marketing strategy as well,” he added.
As Briedis explains, marketing has been a crucial part in enabling the team to keep growing over the years. Something that allows the company to develop even more products, such as its password manager tool, NordPass.
Nord Security’s Head of Online Reputation, Zilvinas Abarius, also believes that marketing their product via influencers has been advantageous for increasing cybersecurity awareness among the general public. However, some researchers have previously warned that YouTubers selling VPNs may pose a security risk instead.
All in all, Abarius said: “Critics could believe that if you market yourself, you cannot be a proper product. But we want to break this myth. We want to show that we can create cool things, while having a strong marketing.”
What about the Nord breach in 2018?
Another very contentious – and recurring – comment against NordVPN surrounds an event dating back to 2018: the NordVPN security breach.
On that occasion, one of the provider’s VPN servers was hacked due to a bug in the data center’s system. The provider is said to have teamed up with a cybersecurity expert to patch the vulnerability on the very next day, while shutting down all servers to ensure users’ data was protected.
“No data was leaked in the end,” Nord Security’s head of PR, Laura Tyrylyte, points out, as hackers did not manage to obtain any user information or credentials.
No data was leaked
Laura Tyrylyte, Nord Security’s head of PR
Yet, NordVPN’s critics are more concerned about how the company dealt with the incident. NordVPN would wait over a year before coming clean and explaining to its users what happened. The web never forgets, and such a behaviour has stained NordVPN’s reputation to this day.
Tyrylyte admits that the team made a mistake in waiting all that time. She said: “We were a different company back then, and yes, we made a mistake. But it was also a very good learning opportunity for us.”
The team also explains that, since then, the company has not only introduced various cybersecurity processes to ensure similar incidents cannot occur again, but they have also taken many steps to boost transparency on the way.
Why is NordVPN auto-renewal misleading?
Perhaps the most voiced concern of all regards the way NordVPN deals with its users’ subscriptions. NordVPN is indeed among the many providers that work under an auto-renewal payment system.
On paper, auto-renewal allows users to decide to opt out if they wish to do so. Yet, a mix of difficulties in doing so and incidents where users lamented that the providers allegedly did not respect their choice have helped consolidate the idea among angry customers that NordVPN is “shady” or “scamming.”
Alleged “deceptive” auto-renewal pricing is the reason behind the legal complaints the provider is facing in the US, too. Similar lawsuits have also been brought forward against the likes of ExpressVPN and Surfshark.
While the judge will have to decide whether NordVPN’s conduct can be considered legal or not, such a payment model is surely scaring away many VPN enthusiasts.
So, is the company taking note and planning to fix its most annoying downside? Not exactly.
“This is common in the whole market. We call it a subscription because it’s a subscription by the very sense of it, and like with Spotify, Netflix, or any other online service, you never have plans that do not recur,” said Abarius, arguing that users can cancel subscriptions within a couple of clicks.
Indeed, auto-renewal subscriptions are certainly widespread across the VPN industry, but they are far from being the only option.
Abarius also ensures the company is “very flexible with refunds,” despite analyzing each case individually. This may be why some disappointed ex-users have flocked to NordVPN’s TrustPilot page to leave a negative review after their request was refused.
Why did NordVPN remove Meshnet?
Around three years after its launch, NordVPN was set to kill its Meshnet feature starting from December 1, 2025. The reason? Lack of usage, said the provider.
The team built Meshnet to give users a simple way to connect up to 60 different devices at once over encrypted private tunnels. A unique tool across the VPN industry that developers hoped would transform how users utilize NordVPN forever.
The decision to remove Meshnet sparked a wave of disappointment on online forums among the scant but vocal portion of users who have been benefiting from Meshnet’s added value.
Some suggested this may have been simply a “bait-and-switch tactic” to get more users on board, while others considered an appeal to the provider to keep Meshnet alive.
The public pressure paid off, and the team has now announced that, no, Meshnet is not going anywhere.
“Over the past month, many of you have spoken up about how much you value Meshnet, whether for tinkering with private networks, sharing files securely, or just gaming with friends. Your passion made us take a hard look at our decision,” wrote the provider in a blog post.
NordVPN’s product director, Domininkas Virbickas, ensures, however, that the lack of usage (less than 1% of NordVPN subscribers) was the only reason behind the decision to remove Meshnet, a feature that requires a lot of maintenance.
Meshnet apparently makes it more troublesome to maintain the core functionality of the VPN client and slows down the team, making the process of developing other features (like the provider’s distinctive Threat Protection Pro tool) much slower.
While these issues persist, all Meshnet features will stay live and supported. The team is now busy looking into ways to reduce development friction and get a wider audience on board. So, stay tuned for more news on this front!
Bottom line
Whether these responses will make you change your mind about NordVPN, it’s hard to say, nor was that the intention. Any one of us would have to draw our own conclusions and choose the company that most aligns with our personal values.
That said, if the reason for you to walk away from NordVPN is the Meshnet removal, you can now be sure that the company has a plan to save the feature. So, no need for you to look into alternatives.
If auto-renewal practices are what most disturb you from the provider, bear in mind that among the top services out there, only MullvadVPN currently offers no recurring plans. Proton VPN, however, is among the providers with no active lawsuit against its own auto-renewal practices.
Yet, on the privacy and security front, TechRadar experts rate NordVPN among the best, and you can see why by reading the full NordVPN review yourself. The provider regularly undergoes independent audits, too.
What’s undeniable is that NordVPN offers all the basic protection you’d expect from a good VPN, along with some extra features like Double VPN as well as malware and scam protection via its Threat Protection Pro. If that’s enough for you to give it a go, you can do so risk-free for 30 days with NordVPN’s money-back guarantee. So, why not try?
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chiara.castro@futurenet.com (Chiara Castro)
