IPVanish – Why you Should or Shouldn’t Go for It
Fast, Safe and Private, that’s what IPVanish, the US based VPN giant claims themselves. Are they really supreme in these? I have recently carried out a holistic experiment with IPVanish.
And in this review, I am going to show you the exact results I found testing in all possible means their VPN services.
You will find in the next few pages all the perspectives Security, Speed, Privacy, bypassing Geo-blocking, Pricing, Dependability - everything covered.
IPvanish goes by their tagline ‘Best VPN Service Provider’. You may think while frowning how much reality is in there. You’re right and wrong at the same time. VPN domains nowadays are rapidly facing changes while suffering from stricter geo blocking, new regulations etc. So, you should have a clear idea if your VPN provider is upto the mark as they claim.
I tested every aspect of this killer VPN and that will show you where it is best and where it is absolutely not. I delved myself deep into the stress testing to check the robustness. Because I believe the best means which can deliver so even in extreme conditions.
If you are short of time, here is a gist for you on what I am going to show you in detail.
Security: One of the best in the market. With its AES 256 encryption, impossible to hack in.
A Quick Overview:
Download and Setting Up
You will get both windows and android apps quickly available for download. I have noticed a serious flaw in the ease of use of the Android apk and Desktop app of ExpressVPN. IPVanish does not have such a drawback. You get more or less similar smooth operation for both.
I will now guide with the exact steps to be followed while installing in your desktop. Believe me, it's as simple as the breeze.
Hover to the official website of IPVanish. Navigate to the App section on the right top corner. This will take you to their download page.
For windows, select ‘Download Windows App’. A pop up will come out asking you to save a file. Just go for it and save wherever you want.
Just install the app by double clicking it, and following the steps. No one reads their ‘Terms of Services’. If you have time, I would suggest to a go through.
It will ask for a file location to select next. Click on the install button next. Within a minute or so, you will see the following screen and you are all set to go.
Enter the User id and password while running the app, you will straight be taken to the dashboard.
For the first time, you will be thrown with a tutorial. You can just skip it. Next, You need to select the servers of your choice by selecting the country first and then the city. I will advise you to leave the task of finding the best server on IPVanish itself.
Leave the third option for ‘best server’ and hit the connect button.
For the first time, you may get a message ‘TAP Device not installed’. Don’t get frightened. It’s just your windows firewall that needs a TAP device driver to be installed so that it can administer the VPN connection well. This will let you see those splendid graphs and statistics in the App while staying connected.
Hit install and you will see another pop up asking you for ‘Network Adapter’ to get installed. This will take a few seconds to get finished.
Hit connect and VPN will be live.
This is a snapshot of the moment after connecting. You can see my bare IP is visible (Don’t search for me with it, I am no longer there 😊) on the left top corner. On the right top corner shows the server of the IP where it is connected. It selected a Phoenix server as the best server available.
I see periodic IP changes specifically useful. It allows you to get fresh IP after a definite interval. This helps you from getting choked when others start joining the same server.
To set up periodic I change hover to settings. Tick the box as shown below and specify the minutes. I find 45 minutes as standard time.
Though the only drawback is, at the time when the change of IP takes place, you see ‘No Connection’. But it’s momentary.
Servers
For specific usage, I always use custom servers, to avoid geo block or to access some site not available at my location.
For that, you have a pretty cool interface to select the desired server from the list. You can also apply some filters. There is a map option available for ease.
Usage Statistics
Once connected you can find the graphical presentation handy. This gives you historical download and upload speeds. Also, you can find the time since when you are connected to your VPN client.
Speed
Right at the moment, IPVanish has more than 1400 dedicated servers spreading over 95 countries. I didn’t find the number impressive as NordVPN can give you 5300+ servers. 3000 plus servers are there from ExpressVPN.
You may think, ‘I will use only a few, who cares about those numbers?’ VPN servers cater a lot of customers at the same time. when you are selecting a Chicago based server, there might be ten to hundred people accessing exactly the same server. Use common sense, it will decrease your speed of VPN. So, the greater the option, the better speed you get by using a less crowded server.
I executed speed tests at different occasions of day on servers in North America, Europe, and Asia. Over all occasions and areas tried, normal download speed was 30 Mbps. That is about normal for VPNs in its value extend.
While testing speed without VPN I found around 30 mbps download speed and 5.51 mbps upload speed. I got an ICPM delay of 9 ms.
As I connected to another CA server, the results were amazing. I only saw a drop of nearly 1 mbps download speed. Whereas, upload speed was affected only by .3 mbps and ICPM delay increased by 20 ms.
The delay was almost negligible with VPN connected.
I could just stream 1080p video ceaselessly to support. At the point when we played a couple of matches of Brawlhalla, a cool online battling game, execution ran from somewhat laggy to practically unplayable with the UK server and playing on European servers connected. It may differ in your case, however I would suggest serious online gamers just avoid utilizing the VPN while gaming.
While the VPN was not the quickest among all, it is amazingly steady. Not once did the VPN connection drop during my trial. Credit goes to the "Best Server" choice, which naturally takes you to the quickest server once you select the country and the city. I never ran into a down server using 'Best Server'.
Security
Other than once an account is registered, IPVanish retains no record or log of VPN usage. If you sign up via a burner or fake email accounts with another service which pushes your IP, like Tor or a different VPN, then also you can sign up without any issue.
As Bitcoin is there as a payment system, you can also make anonymous payments, provided that you go for properly blended bitcoin.
IPVanish has 256-bit encryption over the OpenVPN protocol. All of these are up-to-date and 100 percent protected encryption standards. It also ensures that traffic data can't be decrypted even when a hacker or somebody else gets the access of the decryption key and tries for MITM attack.
The company operates its own DNS servers and DNS leak protection is built in.
For DNS Leak test, I used dnsleaktest.com and found absolutely no leak, here’s the proof:
For IP Leak Test I used ipleak.net. The results were good here as well
There is another important check, known to be a web RTC check, which involves leaking of your actual IP while you're being connected to VPN via your web browser. VPN service providers provide safeguards against such possible leakages. I usually check webRTC leakage at browserleaks.com.
For IPVanish, I found the webRTC peer connection and data channel both protected by it.
IPVanish is based in the USA. This might raise concerns for you that they may covertly spy on people with the support of the NSA, FBI, and other law enforcement or intelligence agencies. You don’t need to be that paranoid as this is only apprehension without any basis. The firm has no record of anyone hacked or being detained because of using its services so far.
Often, your ISP carries out snooping to gather information and control your internet usage. This is Deep Packet Inspection. You find sometimes your internet speed to be slow due to heavy usages and these are done based on this DPI. IPVanish offers a great protection against such snooping. Your privacy from your ISP remains.
Zero Log Policy
‘Your Privacy is our priority’ says IPVanish’s privacy page. There is a lengthy policy which you can find here. They have tried to convince their customers in every possible way that they don’t keep logs. This accepts the users visiting their sites and this includes your access to your account using its Webpage.
They have a declaration which I found fair enough that they can’t furnish information if they receive any such information since they don’t have it in the first place. Also, unless legally compelled, they don’t handover the data (user data) to someone else.
If you are too sceptical about your information being shared, they don’t share the basic user information to anyone else like some third party like UpSellit (Cart Abandonment Integrator), SendGrid (E-Mail Integrator), MaxMind (Fraud Detection) etc.
You should not be worried about such information sharing because these are typical. Some VPN providers declare, some don't. It’s basically a good marketing strategy to publicize such a declaration by IPVanish. It would make them appear more trustworthy.
Auto Kill Switch
Kill switch is a mandatory option that you get on almost all VPN. Its feature includes disconnecting all active internet connections from your machine in the unlikely event of VPN not working. I advise using ‘auto kill switch’ always in order to get protected with your real IP address.
Windows, android and Mac versions of IPVanish come with this feature readily. You can turn it on with a single click.
Important Note:
When your VPN is disconnected, your internet access will shut down and won’t resume again unless you either:
Reset settings at windows network adapter via troubleshooting or
Manually connect to the VPN again
People most of the time forget about this part. Don’t forget, and so will save you your frustration when you try to figure out what’s wrong with your net.
Own Hardware
This point may seem unimportant, but it’s not. IPVanish is one of very few VPN providers that owns and operates its physical hardware, instead of leasing it. They are bought by IPVanish whereas VPNs rent servers around the world. This comes with both pros and cons. IPVanish maintains control. But possessing servers makes flexibility under certain conditions, like when a data centre lowers safety criteria or their privacy. It's much easier to terminate an existing lease and opt for another one somewhere else than it is to relocate a server.
Traffic Obfuscation
Traffic obfuscation is a useful tool to let you hide from your ISP. It scrambles the traffic of yours in a way that your ISP can not determine the type of traffic that you have. Also, they can not understand that you are actually using a VPN. Many countries including China have its policy to inspect the packets by snooping in and traffic obfuscation may help you to avoid such situations.
You can however can not avail obfuscation from Chinese servers since they are already blacklisted.
Email suppliers are used by iPVanish for others and support communicating with clients. The information available is users' email addresses. No client information is accessible or stored.
Compatibility
IPVanish has its apps for all major OS including Windows, Android, macOS, iOS, Fire TV, Windows mobile and tabs, Chromebook, Linux etc. Like others, you can install IPVanish on your router as well. But you need to configure your router manually for this.
With a single account you can connect up to 10 devices. For large families, medium sized business and tech enthusiasts like me its good news indeed.
This is one of the best features of IPVanish since other premium VPN providers will allow only 4 to 6 devices against each account.
Unblocking China
There are very few VPNs that unblocks Chinese sites. IPVanish is not on that list. The best VPN I found unblocking Chinese sites was ExpressVPN and ProtonVPN.
VOIP over IPVanish
VOIP of Voice Over IP is the protocol of providing the base for telecommunication technology to operate using the web network. I find this feature useful as when I need to connect with my business partner over France via Vonage, I prefer to change my location using IPVanish, and this minimizes the VOIP charges a lot. Consider this as a hack and use it in a cool way.
Customer Service
When you need support with your VPN connections or IPVanish App, you will get three options- chat support, e mail ad helpline. There is a knowledge base, full of articles and ‘How to’ guides and tutorials, although some of them aren’t that much useful and are written with redundant examples like comparing VPN with driving a car.
Compared to other services, IPVanish's knowledge base articles are not the best, but they are handy and useful covering the mostly asked topics.
The live chat feature would throw up some bot initially and when you ask about the help explicitly, then only some human will come to your help. You will receive an instant auto generated e-mail response as soon as you drop mail to them, but the actual response will take time.
They claim their support to be working 24*7, but I sometimes need to wait during late night to get someone responding over live chat.
The representative on chat I found to be knowledgeable, friendly and quick to my queries. I have got no complaints about their support.
Torrenting
Content producers may find it difficult, but IPVanish doesn’t only allow torrenting and other peer to peer file sharing, they in fact encourage.
Torrent lovers like me, will give this feature a big thumbs up. They claim to provide secure and safe torrenting and P2P sharing.
I prefer using VPN while downloading copyrighted stuff over torrent. It protects me from my ISP as My IP address gets replaced with theirs. ISP will never thus know that I am actually downloading illegal torrents.
I will advise always to choose servers while torrenting from one of the following countries
Spain
Mexico
Switzerland
Netherlands
These are the countries known to be friendly towards torrent users comparatively.
I personally use Netherlands servers most of the time. Though the only drawback is the sheer volume of torrenting that happens particularly at that location. You may find the speed a bit slow sometimes.
IPVanish also provides a free SOCKS5 proxy which you can configure with your torrent client. It covers even further layers to your security while torrenting.
For getting a fresh list of SOCKS5, you need to log in to your IPVanish account at their website and navigate to SOCKS5 Proxy tab. You need to write down the username password associated with each such proxy.
Does it Unblock Netflix
Until back sometimes, most VPN users were able to unblock Netflix from any part of the world. Then gradually production studios began to pressure the VOD giants to block VPN users from streaming their content. This was a clever move for production house profits, but an unfortunate result to internet freedom. It made offerings provided by Netflix in each country to be further limited. Also, travellers started to face issues as they were unable to watch their home country’s streaming service.
IPVanish don’t say anything specific on whether they unblock Netflix on their site. I didn’t expect this as the majority of VPN providers are making this very clear. The VPN customer base is constituting heavily from the group of online streamers. Also, most VOD streaming giants are employing cutting edge to try to detect VPN.
But these detections are primarily based on the pool of VPN server IP, which are gathered on real time clubbed with geo location tagging received from GPS services. So, you can get some servers able to unblock Netflix while some other can’t.
In any case, I have tested the VPN with Netflix to get the actual picture.
My strategy was to connect to servers from different countries, move to Netflix and stream anything random.
We connect to different country servers, fire up Netflix, and try to stream something.
The outcome was not that well.
I tried seven servers, out of which only three worked.
Canada – Didn’t work
Brazil - Didn’t work
United Kingdom – Didn’t Work
USA LA- Worked
Hong Kong – Didn’t work
India- Didn’t work
USA WA - Worked
When I connected to U.S. servers in Chicago and LA, I could bypass the monitoring.
Though I found streaming to be lagging for both the servers.
IPVanish recently started to unblock US Netflix from abroad. But, as the result shows, all servers do not guarantee for the bypass, so you may need to switch locations, preferably to US locations at a time. You will get someone working soon.
Unfortunately, IPVanish doesn’t unblock a lot of other popular streaming services like Hulu or Amazon Prime Video. It does unblock HBO Max, though. Compared to the top-of-the-line competition, IPVanish falls short of some of its competitors in regards to geo-unblocking.
Split Tunnelling
Split tunnelling may seem technical jargon. It’s just the way which will let you watch the movies or shows on Netflix with your VPN connection on. You can use this with your devices running on FireOS as well.
Split tunnelling allows you to watch contents that are offered in your current location while your VPN service still diverts all the other traffic via VPN. It means, suppose you are sitting at Idaho and connected to a Canada Server, with Split Tunnelling, you can access Netflix through your ISP directly.
You may wonder if this is safe. It is absolutely safe without any leakage.
Here is a quick guide to use Split Tunnelling via your android phone:
Disconnect the IPVanish app from within the app. Then go to the settings option.
From within settings, under the connection tab, choose the ‘Split Tunnelling’ option.
Under the ‘Split Tunnelling’ option, you will get a host of applications from which you need to select ‘Netflix’. You are done and set to go, all your phone’s traffic goes via VPN except Netflix now.
IPVanish for KODI
Being a perfect choice for streaming addicts, Kodi is basically an open source multimedia platform. People love it because they don’t have to pay Netflix's subscription fee to enjoy the best movies, series etc.
Kodi works with add-ons both bundled and customized. Due to the issue of Geo- blocking, you will not get access to a lot of content. With a VPN only, you can get those. IPVanish supports Kodi without any issue.
You can access Kodi while keeping the IPVanish App connected and you are all set to go. If for some reason you want to access the contents accessible from your current location, you can simply use “Split Tunnelling”. I have covered that part earlier with Netflix. You can simply select Kodi from your device settings and the rest will be the same.
In Tor World
Onion world or tor network is deep internet where your traffic is relayed through different hops in such a manner to make tracing almost impossible. It is an open source software developed by The Tor Project. The best part is that it is completely free.
A lot of people use Tor every day. From high-profile whistle-blowers to victims of domestic violence, its users have vast range. Edward Snowden had used PGP protocol over Tor to communicate all the secret information with The Guardian about the NSA.
Using Tor becomes handy when you need to access an unsecured network like public WIFI. Where your traffic would have been visible otherwise.
You may wonder why you need a VPN when using Tor since there is similarity in the two. But the two are different a lot as well. While tor provides intractability through several hops, it does not guarantee against IP leaking. But there you find your VPN useful. This will add another layer of protection before getting exposed with additional security in first hop from your node to next node.
When you connect your VPN, actually an encrypted tunnel is created from your machine to the VPN server. So, the added benefit is, using VPN over Tor makes it difficult to trace back your getting connected to Tor network.
IPVanish supports tor networks. But I found surfing through tor via IPVanish to be a bit lagging.
Browser Extensions:
Though IPVanish has its useful and exciting features bundled with it, it doesn’t have dedicated extensions for a particular web browser.
Pricing
One of the greatest things about IPVanish is that they don’t grade their services according to the plans chosen.
There is no concept of “IPVanish Titanium” or “IPVanish Gold”. Instead, every user will receive exactly the equal service while the sole difference will be the duration of time for which they have access to their concerned service.
Monthly: $7.50
Though they tag their monthly plan as $11.99 a month, I never seen them charge that. They always offer some discount. So, I will consider their ‘Offer’ as nothing but a clever marketing strategy.
You can see, their homepage says upto 60% discount but you can not find how.
Anyways, I have decided to compare the plans in my own way:
Monthly
$10 per month
$120 per year
0% Saving
IPVanish says 17% discount on its $11.99 tag, but I see $10 as the base since they never actually sold monthly plans with that tag.
I was a little awed to find no Half yearly plan by IPVanish. It has become standard practice now.
Instead they offer a quarterly 3-month pricing plan billed four times annually at $26.99.
This melts down to:
Quarterly
$8.99 per month
$107.96 per year
11% savings
Major VPN providers use tier costing, which means, the longer you commit for, the lower the monthly price you have to pay. You can grab the best possible deal when you go for their one-year commitment.
At only $77.00, the plan becomes:
Annually
$6.41 per month
$77 per year
55.84% savings
Previously, IPVanish was offering only a seven days money back guarantee. With the peer pressure from NordVPN and ExpressVPN, they are now offering a industry standard 30 days money back guarantee.
You may ask, do they really give your money back if you are dissatisfied? Be reasonable. Most of such ‘money back’ things are just to convince you that they are the best. All can not be best at the same time. If you knock IPVanish for money back, they will not refund at once. Instead, they will offer you troubleshooting, and will ask for proof of your dissatisfaction in a very gentle way. To say in short, if you have the time to keep conversation going with them, you can get your money back.
Though this is reasonable enough, many want to use VPN service for a month and just ask for a refund to make it free. To prevent this, they put such mechanisms in place.
If you can show them your point of dissatisfaction precisely, you will get what you want.
Here is a price comparison between ExpressVPN, NordVPN and IPVanish. You will see why I said this to be cost effective:
I liked the 2 year and 3 year plan by NordVPN much since it let you not worry about the renewal part. Also, at $3.49 per month, you save the most among all long term plans available.
Added Freebie - SugarSync
I really found a 250 GB SugarSync distributed storage account great that comes with all the options completely free. It would otherwise cost you $10 a month. I don’t know how they could manage it as paying for SuragSync subscription alone is costlier than paying for it with IPVanish.
If you don’t have any idea what SugarSync is, it’s a file sharing platform just like DropBox or Onedrive. You simply get secure storage with a quick syncing feature. It offers selective syncing, where you can select the folder of your choice from your desktop for Syncing. I find SugarSync way much better than Dropbox. 250GB free space is also more than what you get with either Dropbox or Onedrive.
You can pay using PayPal, GiroPay, WebMoney and of course via Bitcoin. Nowadays paying for VPN via cards is getting obsolete. When you pay using a credit card or PayPal, your account can be traced for buying the VPN. When you use cryptocurrency like BitCoin, you can use VPN but none actually knows that you pay for VPN and use it!
While wrapping up, I would say, IPVanish is a reliable VPN client. I will place it within my top five in the business. It offers more than average in terms of number of server counts.
They have their own servers in more than 95 countries for their customers.
Well, you will get access to streaming content, P2P sites, all social major media sites, Kodi add-ons from more than 95 nations.
The biggest downside of IPVanish I found is that they lack any free trial. As I mentioned earlier, they have a money back policy, but you can guess, nothing is free waiting for you. Even, seriously, you can’t even get a real feel of using it without buying it.
Another con I found is, it doesn’t come up with an in-built ad blocker. This has become customary nowadays.
I didn’t like the design of the interface of their desktop app much. But that’s not significant to you.
The bottom line is that IPVanish is undoubtedly one of the top VPNs. But they could have done better in some places including offering free trials, better Geo Blocking etc. Though for advanced users like me, setting up and configuring the app was super easy. The most important part is for my stress testing over 72 hours of continuous operation, I found it to be momentarily changing a few times while changing the IP and it didn’t crash for a single time.
The android version was super cool and minimalist.
If I had speed as my priority, I would definitely go for NordVPN, for better Geo Blocking bypass, I would suggest ExpressVPN. But if you want a VPN providing you the option to connect too many devices (upto 10) a time while being robust, IPVanish is something that I would suggest you in spite of its odds and limitations.
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