Gainesville, Florida is located in the northern part of the state. It has a population of approximately 127k, but a metro area of 337k. In 2007, Cities Ranked and Rated voted the best place to live in the US, and it is the home of the 5th largest university campus by enrollment, the University of Florida Gators. The school is by far the largest employer in the city. If you are going to visit Gainesville, you want to be sure to use a VPN when using public WiFi. We’ll tell you more about that after you have a look at our best VPNs for Gainesville list.
If you are familiar with US history, you may already know that Paleo-Indians inhabited the area of Gainesville 12,000 years ago. When Hernando de Soto passed through the area in 1539, the Native Americans had little resistance to European diseases. Because of that, the diseases decimated the native populations. Spanish revolt suppression also reduced the population. The Spanish converted the remaining population to Roman Catholicism and organized in into missions.
Today, there several things that draw people to the area. That includes the Florida Museum of Natural History, Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida College of Arts, as well as 2 large art festivals, theatres, music festivals, and more. As we mentioned, the city is home to the Florida Gators. Their football team is one of the most dominant in the South Eastern Conference.
No matter what your reasons are for visiting the city, there is a good chance you will use public WiFi at some point. Before you take that step, it is important to use a VPN first. While everyone loves free WiFi at area businesses, the criminals love it, too. You can bet that there are cybercrooks just waiting to take advantage of anyone that comes on to a public WiFi network unsecured. If you look around at the place you are, someone with a laptop could be stealing your information as you look at them. By using a VPN, you create a secure and private connection to the server of your choice. That makes it extremely difficult for anyone to get ahold of your sensitive information.
The second part of using a VPN is to help you get around network restrictions and geo-blocks. Those have many names including firewalls and blackouts. If you are on a network and you encounter a message saying what you are trying to see is blocked, that is a firewall. Similarly, if you are trying to watch a football game online, you will be blocked because they are showing it on TV. By connecting to a VPN server, you can make the blocking software think you are located someplace else. Additionally, the traffic is encrypted so it is hard to block what you do not know about.
If either one or both of those reasons make sense to you, a VPN has you covered. No matter what provider you sign up for, the providers will provide you with many different protocol choices. The two best ones to use are IKEv2 and OpenVPN. Though not all providers offer the first option on all platforms, 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 Gainesville: IPVanish
Gainesville is a great place to visit, has a number of attractions, and has great weather. However, there are no servers located in the city. That is why you should connect to a server in Atlanta (since it is the closest city in the area). When you do, you will find that the connections in the city are fast and should work just fine for your needs. That makes IPVanish one of the best choices to use while in Gainesville.
| Countries | Locations | Servers | Protocols | Software | Month | 12 Mo. | Refund |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 60 | 89 | 1,200 | OpenVPN, IKEv2, L2TP, PPTP |  | $7.50 | $58.49 | 7 day |
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 the US for our speed tests. You will find multiple server locations for the country all over the region. You can select a specific location or an individual server.
IPVanish hosts 50 servers in Atlanta (the closest server in the region) and you can choose to connect to any of them. We tested an IPVanish server in Atlanta, atl-a47, and found the speed to be 129.95 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.
2. Best VPN for Gainesville: ExpressVPN
The combination of ExpressVPN’s fast server access and MediaStreamer act as a Smart DNS service to unblock content that is geo-blocked. Not only will the service help encrypt your connection but it will also unblock live sporting events. There is even a list of the latest live entertainment and sporting events on the ExpressVPN website.
| 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 |
As you can see in the table above, ExpressVPN manages a very large VPN network. Beyond the USA, the ExpressVPN network boasts hundreds of servers in key locations to help protect their user’s privacy. You can use their network to protect your privacy, unblock censorship, and watch your favorite teams from anywhere.
The ExpressVPN app allows you to select a server location down to the city but you can not choose a specific server. Instead, the client will select a server in your chosen location. You also need to know that some cities are not shown on the recommended tab inside the client. You will want to select the “All” tab, open Americas, and then open the United States. At this point, you can select the USA – Atlanta server location. As you can see we tested a server in Atlanta and the speed was 68.01 Mbps.
While ExpressVPN is sold at a higher price point than the other services in our list, the value is high given the size of their network and service features. You can connect a computer, handheld device, router, and game console (SmartDNS) with a single VPN account for just $6.67 a month with an annual subscription.
3. Best VPN for Gainesville: CyberGhost VPN
CyberGhost was founded in 2001 by 7 enthusiastic young team members in Bucharest, Romania. Since that time the company has grown into one of the largest VPN services in the world. The team of 50+ members is focused on protecting users privacy. Robert Knapp, co-founder and CEO, continues to lead the team even after they joined the Crossrider group in 2017. Since that time the CyberGhost network has expanded quite a bit.
| Countries | Locations | Servers | Protocols | Software | Monthly | 18 Mo. | Refund |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 60 | 80 | 2960 | OpenVPN, PPTP, L2TP/IPSec |  | $11.99 | $49.50 | 45 day |
CyberGhost offers a nice mix of server locations, strong encryption, and the ability to unblock popular streaming services like Netflix, YouTube Red, and Amazon Prime. Some of the channels even let you unblock geo-restrictions for multiple regions. For example, you can access Amazon Prime video content in the US, Germany, or others. The Windows client also gives you the option to surf anonymously, protect Wi-Fi, torrent anonymously, unblock basic websites (Google, Facebook Instagram, etc.), and choose a server.
Since we wanted to test a server near Gainesville, we opened the Windows client and clicked on the “Choose My Server” option. From there you can expand any country and select a specific server. The CyberGhost network includes a number of servers in Atlanta. We connected to one of them and tested the performance. As you can see, our download speed was 122.51 Mbps.
The CyberGhost VPN client is one of our favorites. It is very easy to use and includes a number of advanced features to help protect your online privacy. They have a development team in Germany that is continually adding features to the client and mobile apps. You can sign up for full access to the CyberGhost network from just $3.50 a month during their current promotion.
4. Best VPN for Gainesville: 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 length of time. 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 a number of servers in Atlanta (because it is close to Gainesville). Unfortunately, the client does not show the city of the server. However, they have kindly provided us with the server numbers for Atlanta. 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 server in Atlanta and found the performance to be 98.41 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.
5. Best VPN for Gainesville: 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 28 countries. As you can see below, the PIA team has organized their servers by region, country, and city. They listed the server locations in alphabetical order by country. Once you select a location, you can connect easily to locations in Atlanta.
| Countries | Locations | Servers | Protocols | Software | Monthly | 2 Years | Refund |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 | 47 | 3282 | OpenVPN, PPTP, L2TP | | $6.45 | $59.95 | 7 day |
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 126.47 Mbps when connected to a Jacksonville server (the closest to the area).
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 Gainesville. Private Internet Access offers VPN from just $2.50 a month.
Even though we feel we have provided you with the best options available, you can always take a look at our top 10 VPN services list. Our choices are based on speed, reliability, price, and security. We also looked for providers with servers located in or around the same region of Gainesville. That way, you can get the best speeds available. Of course, all of our options have great networks. Speed is important if you plan on downloading or streaming content. Watching a live sporting event can be frustrating if it buffers during an important play. The providers we mentioned above are the best options for doing that, no matter which popular services you want to use. By using our guide, you can find the best option for your needs.