Quick note on an alternative VPN solution that worked great for me

So I've noticed people on this subreddit can be a bit dodgy on their personal VPN solutions, particularly for the less well known options. However, I thought I'd toss my own in, now that I'm no longer using mine, and found the experience to be the best one I've had in multiple trips to China.

For context, I just returned from 3 months in China, and in addition to Astrill, and a corporate VPN, for this trip I experimented with the Outline platform. Of the 3, I ended up using Outline as my primary VPN throughout my stay. It worked so well that I actually cancelled Astril after the first month.

The basic premise is that unlike the commercial providers that host VPN servers on your behalf, this software allows you to essentially spin up your own private, personal VPN servers on cloud computing services like AWS or Google Cloud. You can choose the location of the server, so it's easy to spin up a few in different countries as contingencies. There's a slight learning curve to doing so, but the software is very user friendly.

The main advantage of this solution is that you theoretically fly under the radar. It's a personal VPN with its own dedicated IP address, unlike commercial services where you're sharing addresses with other users. In my experience it wasn't perfect, and about 1 month in, one of my server addresses did get throttled, but having a backup server spun up and ready to go quickly resolved it.

I also never experienced any lags that typically accompany the commercial vendors, and had no trouble for instance streaming HD off YouTube.

But particularly since I don't see Outline frequently mentioned in the endless VPN discussions, I wanted to encourage you guys to check it out.