ProxMate to discontinue free offer

ProxMate is a popular browser extension for Firefox and Google Chrome that adds VPN-like capabilities to the browser to access content on the Internet that is geo-restricted.

This enables users of the service to access services such as Netflix or Pandora in the United States even if they are residing in other countries.

The service is being offered for free currently but that is about to change according to a new announcement on the official company blog.

The company plans to discontinue the free offering and turn ProxMate into a subscription-based service instead "to get serious about making Proxmate bigger and better" and work on the service "in a full time capacity".

ProxMate earns revenue through donations currently exclusively and incentives this by offering additional servers and packages to donators exclusively.

The monthly fee has not been revealed in the announcement, only that existing free users will get one month access to the service for free so that they can test it.

Update: ProxMate will run a special limited offer that provides access to the service for $0.99 per month.

The switch from free to subscription-based goes along with other changes that the ProxMate team highlighted in the blog post. Among the most notable ones access to an additional 100 channels, more Netflix locations, a service to request unlocks for channels and "high strength encryption".

Channel refers to an offering on the Internet such as Netflix, Amazon Prime video or Hulu. The current version of the ProxMate browser extension works by adding so-called packages to the extension which unlock support for services.

Once you have installed a package you may access the service's website from any location in the world without being blocked from accessing it.

The new version will introduce support for more than 100 additional services on the Internet that subscribed users can unlock using ProxMate.

Existing benefits such as unlimited bandwidth and data transfer, no logging of activity and a strict no-ads policy remain in place. The company expects to roll out the change in mid-October. It is likely that it will announce the costs for subscribing to the service then on its website.

Now You: Are you using ProxMate or another free browser extension currently?