Since there is so much criticism here of NordVPN (in general, not for open-sourcing), what are the VPNs that people like?

Hosted on DigitalOcean and the setup was completely automatic, it deletes its own access after its done.

Note you're still beholden to ToS of your host, but tbh they don't seem to care no matter what I do with it.

I know it from here.