Fayetteville is the 3rd largest city in the state of Arkansas. It is located on the outskirts of the Boston Mountains, deep in the Ozarks. Population for the city is approximately 73k. It is also the largest part of the 463k for the Northwest Arkansas Metropolitan Statistical Area. Several things drive the local economy, but most of the city focuses on the University of Arkansas Razorbacks. If you are going to take a trip to Fayetteville, you are probably attending a school function. For those planning on using public WiFi, you should definitely connect to a VPN first. Before we give you more information about that, please take a look at our list for the best VPNs for Fayetteville.
| Rank | VPN Service | Our Score | Server Locations | Visit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  | 9.8 | 160 |  |
| 2 |  | 9.4 | 76 | |
| 3 |  | 9.2 | 95 | |
In 1828, George McGarrah settled at Big Spring, founded the town of Washington, and starting work on the courthouse. To avoid confusion, the postmaster, Larkin Newton, changed the name to the Fayetteville Courthouse in honor of the councilmen from Fayetteville, TN. Its namesake was named after Fayetteville, NC, which was named for General Lafayette. He was a French general that helped the colonies gain independence for the American Revolutionary War. Like some of the other universities of the time, the legislature founded the University of Arkansas as a public land-grant university in 1871.
The Fayetteville economy runs mostly on supporting the university. However, there are several other factors. Despite being extremely close to Bentonville (home of Wal-mart), the city would rather associate itself with the university. Other Fortune 500 in the state include J.B. Hunt, Tyson Foods, Murphy Oil, Windstream, and Dillard’s. Of course, there are some museums and historic sites you can visit in the town while there.
If you find yourself in the city, there is a good chance you will use public WiFi at one of the establishments. That is great, but you want to secure your data with a VPN. Cybercrime is everywhere, and you can bet that someone is waiting to take advantage of vulnerable data. By connecting to a VPN, you create a secure and encrypted connection to the server of your choice. Since the information is encrypted, you’ll make it much more difficult for cybercriminals to steal your important data.
Another reason to consider using a VPN while in Fayetteville is to help you get around network and geo-restrictions. Those are the firewalls you may run into imposed by schools, organizations, businesses, and even some countries use. When using a VPN, you can trick the blocking software into thinking you are someplace else. That way, you can view everything as you normally would.
No matter if you are trying to protect your privacy or get around network and geo-restrictions, a VPN will help you meet your goals. Any provider you choose will give you many different protocol choices. The two best ones to use are IKEv2 and OpenVPN. Not all providers offer the first option, but both will work just fine. When selecting OpenVPN, providers may give you a choice between the TCP and UDP versions. If so, UDP is faster while TCP is a great choice for those with connection issues.
1. Best VPN for Fayetteville: ExpressVPN
While visiting Fayetteville, you can take advantage of ExpressVPN’s fast VPN service as well as their MediaStreamer feature. Using the two together act as a Smart DNS service. In other words, it will help you get out geo-restrictions and blackouts. If you are a sports fan, you know all about those. It will also help you encrypt your connection. By going to the ExpressVPN website, you will find a list of the latest live entertainment and sporting events like Cowboys football.
| Countries | Locations | USA Server Locations |
|---|---|---|
| 94 | 160 | Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New Jersey, New York, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Monica, Seattle, Tampa, Virginia, Washington, DC |
The table above shows that ExpressVPN has a substantial VPN network. In the United States and beyond, ExpressVPN boasts about hundreds of servers in important areas to help protect your privacy. You can use their network to do that, unblock censorship, and follow your favorite sports teams from anywhere you are.
The ExpressVPN app lets you choose the city you want to use. However, you can’t pick the specific server. Instead, that is chosen by the software to help balance out the server loads. If you want to connect to the best option for Fayetteville, you will want to choose a Dallas server (since it is the closest area). There are two ways you can find one. Once you open the client, click on the “choose location” button. If you click on recommended and select the United States section, you will find it there. You can also go to the All section and type in Dallas in the search box. From there, you should be able to choose the Dallas server location. As you can see, we tested a server in Dallas and the speed was 59.20 Mbps.
The ExpressVPN service is higher priced than other services we talk about. However, we feel their network size and features produce a highly valued product. Device-wise, you can connect via computer, router, handheld device, game console (SmartDNS) with just a single VPN account for just $6.67 a month with an annual subscription.
2. Best VPN for Fayetteville: IPVanish
Fayetteville has some great things to visit including the University of Arkansas. In this case, we chose to use a server in Dallas, TX because of the speed and closeness to the location. It will perform quite well, no matter where in Fayetteville you are located. Since the VPN service has more server locations in the United States than the other companies on our list, they are a go-to VPN in Fayetteville.
| Countries | Locations | USA Server Locations |
|---|---|---|
| 63 | 89 | Ashburn, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Phoenix, San Jose. Seattle, Washington DC |
Along with a large footprint in the USA, IPVanish hosts servers in every continent other than Antarctica. The network has consistently been the fastest VPN in North America and Europe in our speed tests. You will find multiple server locations in countries like the US and UK. You can select a location or an individual server.
IPVanish hosts 36 servers in Dallas and you can choose to connect to any of them. We suggest selecting one that starts with “a” in the server name. For example dal-a01.ipvanish.com. In most cases, you will find the “a” servers to be the fastest. We tested an IPVanish server in Dallas, dal.a29, and found the speed to be 43.24 Mbps.
When it comes to value, IPVanish is hard to beat. They offer unlimited access to their VPN network and custom software for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Amazon Firestick and more for $7.50 a month or $58.49 a year. That works out to just $4.87 a month on the annual plan. Members are covered by a 7-day money back guarantee.
3. Best VPN for Fayetteville: PIA
Private Internet Access (PIA) gives users a few different options. Unlike in the past, you no longer have to set up a profile for each VPN server. Now, you can connect to any of their server locations in 25 countries. As you can see below, the PIA team has organized their servers by region, country, and city. The server locations are listed in alphabetical order by country. Once you select a location, you can connect easily to locations in Dallas (since it is the closest).
There are a lot of torrent users who love Private Internet Access. The service includes a feature that will stop your system from communicating if the connection to their service drops. Meaning if your encrypted VPN access is dropped for any reason it will keep you safe.
PIA’s Windows client is very straightforward. You won’t find much to it as far as usage and set up goes. However, you won’t want to underestimate it. PIA offers different levels of privacy protection depending on your needs. You can control encryption levels and find the right balance between privacy and speed. As you can see, our speed test showed that PIA was running at 42.36 Mbps while connected to Dallas.
When it comes to their Windows client the PIA team has included an Internet kill switch. The kill switch will kill your Internet connection anytime the VPN fails. That can really come in handy for those wanting to ensure anonymity in Fayetteville. Private Internet Access offers VPN from just $2.50 a month.
4. Best VPN for Fayetteville: HMA
HideMyAss was brought to life in 2005 when Jack Cator, a 16-year-old student in England, decided that he wanted to create a service to help people avoid censorship. Specifically, Jack was unable to access social media sites and online games because they were blocked on the school network. HMA added hundreds of thousands of users the first month and has since grown into one of the largest VPN services in the world with over 350 server locations. Privax, the parent company of HMA Pro VPN, joined the AVG team in 2015.
| HMA Pro VPN Network - USA Server Locations |
|---|
| Anchorage, Ashburn, Asheville, Atlanta, Baltimore, Bath, Bedford, Billings, Boston, Cheyenne, Chicago, Columbia, Columbus, Dallas, Des Moines, Grand Forks, Honolulu, Idaho Falls, Jacksonville, Lansing, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Louisville, Madison, Magnolia, Miami, Montgomery, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Philippi, Phoenix, Portland, Providence, Rutland, Saint Paul, Salt Lake City, San Jose, Scranton, Seattle, Souix Falls, South Bend, St Louis, Trimbull, Washington DC, Wichita, Wilmington |
If your goal is to find the VPN with the most server locations then HideMyAss is your best choice. Just keep in mind that HMA logs user activity which is a concern for some VPN users. HMA hosts 175 VPN servers in the United States including several servers in Oklahoma City (because of the closeness). To connect to a server in there, you will want to go into the “Location Mode” and select “Change Location” to get started. Then click on the “Cities” tab and search for Oklahoma City. From there you can select the USA, Oklahoma, Oklahoma City server location. We connected to a server in OKC to test and found the speed to be 40.41 Mbps.
In 2016 HMA and a few other leading VPN providers led the way in simplifying their custom client software. The result is a full set of custom apps that make it easy for any user to connect to the HMA network and encrypt your connection. They have software available for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS. You can also connect to HMA through your router. HMA offers unlimited VPN access from just $6.99 a month and offers all new users a 30-day risk-free money back guarantee.
5. Best VPN for Fayetteville: NordVPN
NordVPN is based in Panama which some users prefer to using a VPN company that’s actually headquartered in the United States. You will find that NordVPN has a strong presence in the US with servers located throughout the country. Members have full access to their network in the USA and beyond for a very good price.
| Countries | Locations | USA Server Locations |
|---|---|---|
| 61 | 80 | Atlanta, Buffalo, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Jose, Seattle, St. Louis, Washington DC |
You will find that NordVPN has perhaps the best mix of services for the price if you subscribe to an account for a longer term. All users have full access to their network and custom software. You can connect using the VPN client for Windows or Mac. They also have an easy-to-use mobile app for both Android and iOS (iPhone, iPad) devices.
NordVPN hosts 35 servers in Dallas (the best location to connect from Fayetteville). Unfortunately, the NordVPN client does not show the city of the server. However, they have kindly provided us with the server numbers for Dallas. You will want to connect to one of the following servers: 381-384, 633-644, 793-800, 837-838, 839, 1027-1030, 1037-1040. The easiest way to select a specific server number is to select the “Servers” tab in the app and then sort the results in alphabetical order. You can then scroll down and select any of the server numbers we have listed above. You can see the load time percentage and the distance to each server. We tested the United States #381 server in Dallas and found it to be fast with a download speed of 31.45 Mbps.
Want to access streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, or BBC iPlayer from anywhere in the world? If so NordVPN is a great choice. They are one of the only VPN services that can still unblock Netflix. You can sign up for unlimited VPN and SmartDNS service from just $3.99 a month with a 2-year membership.
You can always feel free to consider our list of the top 10 VPN services if you would like other options. That said, we provided you with solid choices so you can’t go wrong. We made decisions based on speed, reliability, price, security, and those providers with servers in the Fayetteville region. That way, you have access to the best speeds available. If you plan on downloading or streaming any sort of content, speed is an important factor. Just be sure to choose a provider with a good reputation. Hopefully, we can help you make the best decision to fit your needs.