- Hi, thanks for joining me.
Today we're running a setup tutorial for ExpressVPN.
I will be purchasing, installing, and using this VPN service
on both my computer and my mobile device to give you
a better idea of if this is the right option for you.
My name's Josh.
This is VPN Video Reviews.
Before we begin, I would like to note
that the links in this video and in the description below
are affiliate links.
However, I keep them constantly updated
with the latest sales and promotions,
so click here to make sure you're not missing out
on any of the best deals for ExpressVPN.
If you'd like to jump ahead to
a specific section in this video,
you can do so using the time markers you see here.
And with that out of the way,
let's go ahead and jump online.
So here we are, I'm in my browser.
I'm going to type in expressvpn.com,
where I will be brought to the ExpressVPN homepage
and click Get ExpressVPN.
As you'll see, they offer three different plans.
A one month, six month, and 12 month plan.
They discount the 12 month plan the most at 35%,
but for the sake of this tutorial,
I'm just going to choose one month.
I highly recommend you look at the year plan, though.
After I enter in my email address,
I'm gonna choose my preferred method of payment.
They offer credit cards, PayPal, Bitcoin,
and a number of international payments as well,
including Alipay, Union Pay,
and a number of the other good ones,
but if you're like me, the easiest way to do this
is to go through PayPal,
and so the first thing that I'm gonna have to do is
login to my PayPal account,
and so I'm gonna click in, login,
and then it's going to give me a summary of
what I'm gonna purchase and I click agree and pay,
and I will be redirected back to the ExpressVPN web site.
Now, once I'm here at the ExpressVPN web site,
you're gonna notice a string of numbers and letters
that is highlighted in yellow here.
That's my activation code.
One of the first things I wanna do is copy
that activation code before I download any of the software,
and you'll see why in a moment.
Once I do that, I will download the software.
It's a pretty small file, only about 13 megabytes,
and once it downloads I'm going to install this package.
Now, it doesn't take too long,
again, probably about 30 seconds
to get this software installed,
and in the end I think all of this has taken me
only a couple minutes to get done.
It's very simple, very easy,
and then I'm going to copy and paste in
that activation code into the ExpressVPN software
and it is launched and ready to go.
Here we are on the computer setup for ExpressVPN.
We're looking at the software right now.
I'm gonna select a location so we can look at the servers.
They've got their recommended servers
that you can choose from.
You can also choose by region or by name of the server.
Any of those you can do.
Let's go ahead and look at the region.
They offer the Americas, Europe,
Africa, and then Asia Pacific,
so let's say I wanna connect to Hong Kong.
I click on that, click connect,
and after a few seconds it will show me as being connected
to the Hong Kong server through ExpressVPN.
So if I wanna disconnect, I can click that button
or I can go up into the top right and click disconnect.
Now let's look at the speed test.
One of the great things that ExpressVPN offers is
the ability to test the speed of
all of the servers that they offer.
Now the good thing about this is
it's a very comprehensive test.
They test the download speed, the latency,
and then they give you a speed index.
The higher the number, the better the server.
The bad thing is is that it does take a long time.
It took me about five minutes to finish this speed test
and I'm not gonna make you sit through all of that.
I'm just gonna go ahead and pass through this,
but it does offer you the ability to really look at
which servers are gonna be best for you
in the location that you're at.
So we're gonna look at the preferences as well.
You can launch ExpressVPN on startup,
you can connect to the last used location.
You can even switch accounts,
but the great thing is here at the protocols,
you can choose what type of protocol,
and this is more of an advanced preference
that you can choose, but if you value speed over security,
you can choose that.
And then here at advanced, you can make sure
that you're not sending any information
to ExpressVPN, even anonymously.
So here we are on the mobile setup.
One of the first things that I need to do is
go into my online account through ExpressVPN
and I'm gonna be using an iPhone,
so that's what I wanna look for,
and the reason is because I wanna find
this password that you see here.
As we login to our iPhone app,
I'm not gonna be using my activation code,
I'm going to be using the password.
So I'm gonna go into my phone right here,
find the App Store, and search for ExpressVPN.
And it's gonna be the first one that pops up.
It's not a very large app,
so it won't take very long to download,
but once I do find the app,
I will just click on download and wait for it to download.
Now that it's downloaded, I'll click on open,
and I'm gonna sign in again using my email address
and then the password that was provided in my online account
as opposed to my activation code.
Now the thing that I really like about the ExpressVPN app,
and I'll tell you this here,
is that a lot of other VPN apps require you to download
individual VPN configurations for
every single server that you wanna use,
so if you wanna switch between San Francisco and Madrid,
you have to download a number of
different VPN configurations, but as you see here,
what I'm doing right now is I am just going to download
one single configuration for ExpressVPN.
This is definitely a huge benefit of using
the ExpressVPN app over a lot of different other VPNs
is it makes it extremely simple, and this point,
they're walking you through just a little tutorial,
but it's very intuitive.
All I'm gonna have to do is choose
which servers I wanna go to,
so let's say I'm here in Seattle right now.
Let's say that I wanna go in and choose from
the United States to connect to the Dallas server,
so I'm just gonna click on Dallas,
and it's gonna connect me to that server.
I don't have to go into my settings app,
which is very uncommon for VPNs.
I wanna tell you that right now.
So let's look at the settings that I've got.
I can auto-reconnect to that, I can change my VPN protocol,
and I can even choose not to share
diagnostic data with ExpressVPN.
All of those I have the option to do.
And then let's say I wanna change servers right now,
so instead of going to Dallas from Seattle,
let's say that I want to connect to,
let's go France, all right, and Paris, France,
so I'm gonna find France, click on the Paris,
and just very quickly, it's with a few clicks,
it's going to disconnect from Dallas
and then it's gonna show me on the map
that I'm connecting to Paris, France.
Again, I really enjoy the app
that ExpressVPN has put together here.
It's very intuitive and very simple.
I hope you found this setup tutorial to be useful.
Again, you can use the links that you see here
to make sure you're not missing out on
any of the special promotions right now,
and if you're still not convinced
that ExpressVPN is the right option for you,
you should check out the other VPN setup tutorials I have
linked to in the description below.
Likewise, there are a number of great
frequently asked questions that I answer about VPNs
that you can watch on this channel.
Don't forget to give this video a thumbs up
and provide your own feedback on ExpressVPN
in the comments below.
Thanks for watching.
(upbeat music)