Overview
IPVanish is growing a popularized virtual private network choice for people interested in enriching their online browsing sequestration, offering unlimited concurrent connections across a wide variety of platforms, and competitive speeds despite only putting claim to servers.
Compared to its peers, IPVanish has one of the elegant user interfaces, inspiring you to get under the hood and learn the mechanics powering the technology.
IPVanish VPN provides good value, allowing subscribers to use as numerous devices as they need at the same time. It also offers a broad array of servers across the globe, covering some regions ignored by rivals.
While its interface gives you fine-grained control of your VPN connection, it’s neither modernistic nor particularly affable to use.
Spice up your small talk with the ultimate tech news, products and reviews. Delivered on weekdays.
We suggest IPVanish as an adaptable, configurable choice for users who are new to VPNs.
Review Of VPNs
The VPN industry has experienced a significant change in the sometimes many months, with all three of our top VPN choices declaring major changes in corporate proprietorship.
In December, ExpressVPN publicized that it had officially joined Kape Technologies, a company that earlier owns several other VPNs and has raised privacy concerns yesterday. In February, NordVPN and Surfshark declared the two companies were combining, though they’ll continue to run autonomously.
We are in the process of redefining all of our top picks in light of these changes. We’ll modernize our reviews and, if necessary, our rankings to regard for this new competitive geography.
Speed Of IPVanish
- Average speed loss 65
- Number of servers-plus
- Number of server localities 75-plus
- Number of IP addresses-plus
We ran our IPVanish speed tests over the course of three days, in two locales, using both wireless and Ethernet connections– one locale offered slower broadband speeds, and the other offered improved speeds via fiber-optic internet.
Internet speeds in the US vary extensively by state and provider. And with any speed test, results are going to depend on your original structure, with hyperfast internet service yielding improved test speed results.
That is one reason we are more interested in testing the amount of speed lost (which for ultimate VPNs is normally half or more) across both high-speed and slower connection types, and in using tools like speed tests.
Net to even out the playing field. IPVanish performed likewise to other VPNs, achieving only about 20 of the mean 222 Mbps speed achieved on a 1Gbps-able fiber connection during testing, while still maintaining a respectable speed average of around 41 Mbps universally.
We hit a peak speed of 76 Mbps connecting to Singapore servers, where we found the topmost number of results above 65 Mbps among all the servers tested, but also the most uneven experience, with a country standard of around 35 Mbps.
Australian speeds were more even but maintained the lowest average, about 28 Mbps.
New York speeds led the results with a 53 Mbps average, followed by European servers in Paris and Berlin with 45 Mbps averaged for both. UK servers were strong collectively but came in third place for speed averages with 40 Mbps after a couple of tests at peak traffic hours came back at lesser than 10 Mbps.
Compared to high-profile speed players like ExpressVPN, it’s tempting to paint IPVanish’s speeds as sluggish. But IPVanish regularly gives NordVPN a run for its money in the thrice-day-to-day tests conducted by ProPrivacy and was outpacing NordVPN in that race at the time of this writing.
And IPVanish is handing over those speeds with about a third of Nord’s server count. That is nothing to sneeze at.
- Security and Privacy
- Authority United States
- Encryption AES-256, Perfect Forward Secrecy
- Leaks None detected
- Previous logging scandal
- Includes kill switch
One hint as to why IPVanish may be inching past NordVPN in speed tests may lie in its accumulated-plus IP addresses, a factor of contention among the privacy-minded.
While a lesser number of IP addresses can contribute to faster pets, some suckers argue it’s safer to use smaller IP addresses.
More people sharing IP addresses, they reason, dilutes the probability that any individual IP address’ activity will be linked to any individual person.
The core of that question relies on whether a VPN can be trusted not to log operation data. IPVanish vows that it keeps no logs. As with any VPN, it’s nearly impossible to verify that claim.
One way is to determine what a VPN provider is cleanly required to do based on where it’s headquartered (its jurisdiction), and whether it has ever been copped keeping logs.
Flawlessly, the VPN you choose should have experienced– and published the results of– an independent third-party checkup of its operations, including its use of activity logs.
IPVanish is a US-based company. For max privacy, we look for VPN providers with jurisdiction outside of Five Eyes intelligence-sharing agreements– that is, one headquartered out of the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
Back in 2016, IPVanish came through a VPN rite of passage Federal law enforcement came knocking with a warrant (or, more precisely, a Department of Homeland Security records summons), and the VPN’s”zero logs” policy was put to the test.
IPVanish handed over authorities’ information that led to the identification and arrest of a child predator.
To be clear right now, my beef is not with a VPN company helping cops catch a child abuser via use logs; it’s with a VPN company lying to its clients about doing so. VPNs are multinational operations.
The lie that helps law enforcement in the US catch a child abuser is the same lie that helps law enforcement in China arrest a person for using a VPN at all.
Things may have changed for IPVanish when the company was purchased by StackPath in 2017. With new proprietorship came renewed promises of a “no logs” policy and a purported StackPath checkup.
IPVanish does offer a kill switch, which appears to perform without a hitch– preventing network data from leaking outside of its secure VPN tunnel in the event the VPN connection fails.
No IP address, DNS or other potentially user- relating data leaks were detected during our testing. Even so, we recommend some caution right now. In 2019, critics at CNET’s sister publication ZDNet detected a partial IPVanish DNS leak during testing.
“While they did not reveal my home DNS server, they did reveal that I was using an IPVanish host. That means that associations that want to block VPN traffic can effortlessly do so,” wrote reviewer David Gewirtz.
“Far worse is the allegation that if you are trying to hide the fact that you are using a VPN from government authorities, IPVanish does not do so.
This could be catastrophic, for example, if you use the service from the UAE, which sentences jail time and extreme fines for VPN usage.”
What Do You Get for Your capitalist?
IPVanish places no limit on the number of devices you can connect concurrently, as opposed to most other VPN companies that limit users to just five biases.
This makes IPVanish a sensible value (you can literally defend more devices for your money). In addition, the resources necessitated to police device limits often come at the cost of client privacy.
Along with IPVanish VPN, only Avira Phantom VPN, Ghostery Midnight, Editors’ Choice winner Surfshark VPN, and Windscribe VPN place no limits on coincidental connections.
IP vanish Price
Usability Fun, configurable, clean.Platforms iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Linux, Routers, Amazon Fire devices, any Android-based media device.
IPVanish VPN costs$10.99 per month, which is slightly above the average bimonthly price of$10.14 among the field of VPNs we have tested. Numerous services charge more than the standard, but if they back up that price with extravagant features, it’s still a good value.
Price$ 10.99 per month and$ 80 for a period (IPVanish is also running a special rate for CNET readers, bringing the bimonthly cost down to$5.20 when you subscribe up for a year.)
As with most VPNs, IPVanish offers discounted yearly subscriptions. Then, too, IPVanish has tweaked its pricing, and not for the better.
A yearly subscription costs$53.99 — significantly lesser than the standard of$70.44 we see across the VPNs we have tested. Still, that price jumps to$89.99 for the different periods and all years after.
IPVanish VPN is upward-front about this change, and it’s a practice common in other types of subscription services. Still, we are not fans and wonder if some consumers will see the price jump as a cruddy surprise.
Kaspersky Secure Connection VPN offers the most affordable yearly plan we have seen, at just$ 30.
Still, consider a free VPN, rather, If price is a significant concern. TunnelBear offers a free subscription, but limits users to just 500 MB per month.
ProtonVPN has the elegant free option, placing no data limits on free subscribers. It also offers flexible pricing, making it truly accessible.
You can pay for the service with any major credit card or PayPal.However, prepaid gift cards, or some other anonymous approach of payment, If you are looking to use Bitcoin.
Editors’ Choice winners Mullvad VPN and IVPN both let you pay for subscriptions anonymously with cash sent directly to their respective HQs.
The Last Words
We had no issues penetrating Netflix or other video streaming sites, and no issues using torrenting customers while running IPVanish.
In terms of interface, my only complaint is that IPVanish’s desktop customers have been known to get stuck in a circle. This occurs in both Windows and Mac apps. Otherwise, this has become one of my favorite user experiences with a VPN customer.
The settings menus and features remind me of the experience of learning Windows 95, in that they’re perfect for learning about the fundamentals of this type of application.
Their configurability is organized neatly and without extreme animation. The customer seems to encourage user trial and a sense of playfulness without being babyish or cartoonlike.
This makes IPVanish an ideal customer for those who are interested in learning how to understand what a VPN does under the hood.
Although it changed its policy this time to offer a full 30- day money-back guarantee, at$ 10 per month and$ 80 for a period IPVanish’s pricing has become less competitive.
On the bright side, still, offering unlimited simultaneous connections does up the value for users looking to use the service across a wide array of compatible devices.