When comparing Private Tunnel vs Roll your own VPN, the Slant community recommends Private Tunnel for most people. In the question“What is the best VPN provider? ” Private Tunnel is ranked 29th while Roll your own VPN is ranked 75th. The most important reason people chose Private Tunnel is:
Downloadable clients for OSX, Win, iOS and Android.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Clients for OSX, Win, iOS and Android (usable manually by Linux)
Downloadable clients for OSX, Win, iOS and Android.
Pro Prepaid by volume, no commitment/contract
There are many great month to month or annual VPN offerings, but Private Tunnel is (AFIK) unique in offering pricing based on a volume. This is a excellent option for those that don't need regular/frequent VPN service. Prepaid packages never expire and can be used on multiple devices.
Pro Free 100MB starter/demo plan
Offers a free 100MB package to try out the service
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!
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.