When comparing Roll your own VPN vs oVPN.to, the Slant community recommends oVPN.to for most people. In the question“What is the best VPN provider? ” oVPN.to is ranked 58th while Roll your own VPN is ranked 75th. The most important reason people chose oVPN.to is:
Three 'shared slots' providers with retention 40 - 1200 days. Four 'private slots' providers with retention 1100 - 2900 days. Shared providers are not available from outside, only internal with running oVPN / oSSH. Private providers can be reached from outside our network with 'Private Slots'. Usenet is free of charge but think about fair use.
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Pros
Pro Single IP
Quite often with VPN services you get a shared IP, here you get one all to yourself. This means you are far less likely to be blocked.
Pro Cheap
Depending on your use case, a cheap unmetered VPS can cost very little.
Pro You control everything
"Is there logging?" "Do I get my own IP?" So many questions, easily answered by running your own service!
Pro Usenet access
Three 'shared slots' providers with retention 40 - 1200 days. Four 'private slots' providers with retention 1100 - 2900 days. Shared providers are not available from outside, only internal with running oVPN / oSSH. Private providers can be reached from outside our network with 'Private Slots'. Usenet is free of charge but think about fair use.
Pro Good support
You can chat or use IRC, there are tickets as well as a board, lastly you can use eMail (which uses PGP).
Pro SSH tunnel
Pro Multiple devices
Connect 1 device per openVPN server. Possible to connect 2nd to same openVPN server with special IPv46 or IPv64 configs. Number of devices is limited by count of servers. Connect SSH/SSL or SOCKS5 as you need. There is no limitation.
Pro SSL SOCKS5 / SSL HTTP proxy
Stunnel wrapped around SOCKS5 or HTTP proxy.
Pro openVPN
Windows with custom open source client software. MAC OSX with Tunnelblick or Viscosity. Linux with standard (but latest) openVPN 2.3.x. Android with openVPN App by "Arne Schwabe".
Pro SOCKS5 / HTTP proxy
Pure, not encrypted, SOCKS5 or HTTP proxy.
Pro No logs kept
Cons
Con One location only
Unless you set up multiple boxes, you have to think about where you are getting your server. The advantage of many VPN services is that you can pick your location to get around geo-blocks.
Con Tougher to set up
OpenVPN in particular is not exactly trivial to set up.
Con Higher price than others
