Black Friday is no longer just about GPUs and routers. For many sysadmins and IT teams, it has also become the moment to lock in licenses for critical tools: backup, monitoring, password managers… and increasingly, high-end VPN services.
This year Proton VPN is pushing hard with a 75% discount on its 24-month VPN Plus plan, at the same time as VPN usage keeps growing in countries like Spain, where sports-related blocks and other restrictions are driving more users to look for neutral, encrypted routes to the internet.
For system administrators and infrastructure teams, the real question is no longer whether to use a VPN, but which model fits best: self-hosted VPN, ZTNA/SASE platforms, or a privacy-focused commercial VPN such as Proton VPN.
A very aggressive Black Friday offer
During the 2025 Black Friday campaign, Proton VPN’s VPN Plus (24 months) drops from €9.99 to €2.49 per month, billed as a single upfront payment of €59.76, with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
From a technical perspective, the plan includes several features that are attractive for admins and power users:
- 15,000+ servers in over 120 countries, useful for testing geolocation, CDN behavior or regional routing issues.
- Support for up to 10 devices per account, enough to cover a laptop, mobile phone, test machines and a lab box or two.
- Strong encryption (AES-256 or ChaCha20) for all tunnels, suitable for admin work from hotels, co-working spaces or client networks.
- Advanced options such as split tunneling, double-hop routing, custom DNS, LAN access and profiles tuned for streaming or P2P/BitTorrent.
- Built-in ad-blocking and malware protection, adding a security layer for less controlled environments and test machines.
- Open-source, audited apps and a strict no-logs policy, which is especially relevant for privacy-conscious professionals.
- Priority support and live chat for paying customers.
Proton VPN is headquartered in Switzerland and is part of the broader Proton ecosystem (Mail, Drive, Pass, etc.), which already has more than 100 million accounts. The company leans heavily on Swiss jurisdiction and transparency as its main differentiators against more consumer-oriented VPN brands.
Why a VPN still matters for sysadmins in 2025
Enterprise environments often rely on more complex remote-access solutions than a classic VPN client: identity-aware proxies, ZTNA, SD-WAN, SASE platforms and so on. Still, a good VPN remains a very practical tool for many teams, especially in small and mid-size organizations.
Here are a few reasons why services like Proton VPN still make sense for sysadmins:
1. Secure access from untrusted networks
The old story still applies: you need to check an SSH bastion, a web panel or a ticketing system from an airport, a train or a customer’s guest wifi. A properly configured tunnel significantly reduces exposure to sniffing, rogue access points and other local attacks. For quick fixes or emergency interventions, having a reliable VPN client installed is almost mandatory.
2. Separation of identities and contexts
Many IT professionals use the same laptop for personal browsing, corporate accounts and access to customer platforms. Using a separate VPN profile for administration tasks helps compartmentalize IP addresses and traffic, avoiding that everything appears to come from a single residential connection and reducing unnecessary tracking.
3. Testing from different regions
CDN behavior, firewall rules tied to geography, regional licensing, different search results… Some problems only appear when requests originate from certain countries. A VPN with a wide server footprint allows teams to reproduce issues from multiple locations without relying on third parties.
4. Extra layer against over-blocking and filtering
In Spain, court-ordered blocks against domains linked to football streams and other protected content have become frequent. Although those measures target specific sites, they can sometimes cause collateral damage on unrelated services or entire IP ranges.
A VPN does not turn illegal activities into legal ones, but it can help users and professionals avoid side effects of overly broad filters and maintain a more neutral route to the internet.
5. Labs, training and freelancing
For freelancers, trainers and small consultancies, running a self-hosted VPN for every lab or workshop is not always worth the effort. A commercial service with native clients for all platforms lets them focus on the content and tests instead of patching yet another VPN gateway.
The Spanish angle: privacy, blocks and routing freedom
In Spain the discussion around VPNs has moved beyond niche circles. Teachers recommend them to students who travel, journalists use them to protect sources, and remote workers rely on them to secure connections in cafés and coworking spaces. On top of that, blocks related to La Liga streams and other content are making more people aware of how fragile open access to information can be.
From a legal standpoint, using a VPN is allowed in Spain and in most European countries. What remains illegal is using any tool, VPN included, to commit activities that are already unlawful (copyright infringement, fraud, etc.). For sysadmins, the focus is on security and resilience, not on bypassing the law.
In that context, a service such as Proton VPN is gaining traction because it:
- Is independent from local ISPs when it comes to implementing blocks.
- Makes it easy to switch between exit nodes in different countries if a particular route degrades.
- Offers maintained clients for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS and browser extensions, which simplifies protecting both workstations and mobile devices.
Trade-offs that a technical audience should keep in mind
No tool is perfect, and a critical audience knows it. Even with a very attractive Black Friday deal, there are some trade-offs to consider:
- Latency and throughput: any VPN adds overhead. Proton VPN’s Accelerator mitigates this, but very latency-sensitive workloads (competitive gaming, certain VoIP setups) will feel the impact, especially when using distant servers.
- Trust model: using a commercial VPN shifts part of the trust from your ISP to the VPN provider. Open-source clients and no-logs policies help, but it is still essential to review documentation, audits and business model before deploying it widely.
- Integration with corporate policies: in organizations with strict SIEM, DLP or access controls, third-party VPNs should be aligned with the security team. They might only be suitable for specific roles (frequent travellers, contractors, incident response) rather than for every employee.
Conclusion: a Black Friday worth considering for people who live in the terminal
For sysadmins, devops and security professionals, Black Friday can be a good excuse to experiment with services that normally stay off the budget radar. Proton VPN’s 75% discount on the two-year plan brings the cost close to what it would take to maintain a small DIY VPN instance in the cloud—without the maintenance overhead and with a far larger pool of locations.
It will not replace a well-designed corporate remote-access solution, but it can become a useful tool in the personal kit of any admin, especially for secure remote work, multi-region testing and more private browsing in an internet that feels increasingly filtered and monitored.
FAQs: Proton VPN and sysadmin use cases
Does Proton VPN make sense if a company already has its own corporate VPN or ZTNA solution?
It can, provided it is used within security policies. Corporate access solutions are ideal for reaching internal resources. A commercial VPN like Proton VPN can complement them for personal devices, labs, travel scenarios or region-based testing.
How does Proton VPN compare to running your own VPN on a VPS?
Self-hosting gives full control and may be preferable for closed environments, but requires managing servers, patches, keys and monitoring. Proton VPN offers maintained clients, thousands of servers in 120+ countries and extras such as ad-blocking and double-hop routing. The trade-off is that outbound traffic goes through infrastructure you don’t operate.
What is the performance impact for SSH or RDP sessions?
Typically you’ll see slightly higher latency and a small reduction in maximum throughput. For shell work and light remote desktop usage, it is usually acceptable, especially when connecting to nearby VPN servers. For heavy file transfers or graphics-intensive sessions, testing is recommended before relying on it in production.
Is it legal to use Proton VPN in Spain to avoid over-blocking or censorship?
Using a VPN is legal. It can help reduce the impact of technical blocks or misconfigured filters, but it does not legalize access to content or activities that are otherwise unlawful. Responsibility for how the VPN is used always lies with the user or organization.
