VPN clients traditionally virtualizes your network interface entirely. Everything acts as if your are actually physically present because it's virtualized nicely. It's great because it "just works".
These "non-VPN" solution seem to use a client on your machine that change any DNS lookup through the OS layer by hooking into gethostaddr() and returning the same IP for all domains if they are in the list of hosts that should be virtualized. Then only the traffic to domains that are needed is virtualized, anything else is untouched. YouTube and Netflix won't get piped over your company network, as an example.
Disclaimer: I don't really know that this is how it works but this is how other providers do it.
These "non-VPN" solution seem to use a client on your machine that change any DNS lookup through the OS layer by hooking into gethostaddr() and returning the same IP for all domains if they are in the list of hosts that should be virtualized. Then only the traffic to domains that are needed is virtualized, anything else is untouched. YouTube and Netflix won't get piped over your company network, as an example.
Disclaimer: I don't really know that this is how it works but this is how other providers do it.