The VPN Build-A-Plan: Catering To Your Tastes

Rebecca Rosenberg -

So all your buddies are going out for dinner. It's one of those fancy All-You-Can-Eat Korean BBQ setups; you know the ones - grill the meat on the table, all the meat you can eat, so much meat overflowing on the plates… honestly, just a lot of meat.

The kicker is you just decided to give up meat for a month, and you aren't even really that hungry - but you really want to kick it with your buddies. All you’re going to want is a salad or grilled veggies; are you going to pay for the full All-You-Can-Eat option? Of course not! You’re going to order a few items off the menu that cater to your exact dietary needs.

Can you see where I'm going with this?

Windscribe offers two subscription options for Full Pro Accounts - the yearly option at $69 USD/year and the monthly option at $9 USD/month. You get access to all locations and unlimited data (plus some other stuff we’ll get into later), which is sweet if you want and need it all! But what if you only need access to a few specific locations? Or maybe you don’t need unlimited data? That's where our Build-A-Plan option comes in - skip the All-You-Can-Eat option, and order only what you really need (for as little as $3 USD per month)!

In this article, I’ll take a closer look at what our Build-A-Plan is, and why you should or shouldn’t use it. Not the type to spend ages reading the menu? Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered with a handy flowchart guide at the end of the article!

Ordering From the Menu

First, Build-A-Plan requires a minimum spend of $3 USD per month. But how to spend it? That's up to you!

With our Build-A-Plan option, you can access all Pro data centers in a specific country for $1 USD. For example: you have access to free servers in 8 US locations with a free account; if you purchase the US as part of your Build-A-Plan custom plan, you will have access to the pro servers at each of these locations, plus access to the pro-only locations, for a total of 35 US server locations.

But wait, there's more!

For each location you add to your plan, you will get an extra 10 GB of monthly data on your account. So, let's say you add US and Canada? You get 44 server locations and an additional 20 GB of data for $2 USD.

Can it get any better? Yeah, pal, it can.

For $1 USD per month, you can add Unlimited Data to your account. What's that, you say? No limits on data? That's right, NO LIMITS ON DATA. And when you add Unlimited Data to your plan, you also get full access to our server-side domain blocking feature ROBERT.

Think of the possibilities! There are all kinds of ways you can mix and match your plan, and as long as you are spending a minimum of $3 USD per month, there's nothing you can't do.

Dietary Changes

So your experiment with vegetarianism was an abject failure, and you're back to eating meat, but you already signed up for the vegetarian options. Fear not - you can edit as you go! (This option applies to active subscriptions paid via credit card or PayPal. If you paid via PaymentWall or Crypto and want to change your plan, please check in with Support.)

Customize Your Plan Now

Once logged into your account, the plan on the right will have an option to edit your package. You can then change the included locations and features from there.

When you pay for this new edited plan, you will be refunded for the days you didn't use on your old plan, and the old plan will be canceled. Immediately after that, you'll be charged for the new plan as if you had just purchased it. Consider it a brand new subscription, so the new billing date becomes the day you edited the plan.

Here’s a quick example:

Let's say you purchased 4 locations for $4 on the 1st of the month, and halfway through the month, you decide to remove a location and continue with the plan. You will be refunded $2 on that day since you only used the plan for the first half of the month.

Immediately after, you will be charged for 3 locations lasting a whole billing period. 3 locations for a full month is $3, so you will be charged this price on the 15th of every month.

All You Can Eat VS Á La Carte

So far, so good - you can customize your order and make changes as you go! But what can't you get?

While the Build-A-Plan option offers a cost-effective way to access Pro servers and get unlimited data on your account, there are a few differences from our Full Pro Accounts to keep in mind:

  • Custom configurations: Full Pro Accounts have access to IKEv2, OpenVPN and WireGuard configuration files at all locations. Build-A-Plan will only let you generate config files and credentials for your purchased locations.
  • Static IP add-on purchases: Static IPs can only be purchased under the Build-A-Plan umbrella if you have Unlimited Bandwidth and ROBERT as part of your plan.
  • Ephemeral Port Forwarding: Build A Plan does not give you access to Ephemeral Port Forwarding. This feature is only available to Full Pro accounts.

The Fast Food Edition

I know I have given you a lot to digest, but fundamentally it's simply about building the package that best suits you. If that was all a bit much, take a look at this highly simplified guide to figure out if Build-A-Plan works for you:

And of course, if you have any questions, just holler at us in Support.

Editor's Note: This article was corrected to reflect current pricing on July 8th