While many VPNs hide your internet activity, allow you to evade censorship and access-denied services, IPVanish VPN keeps your location confidential while not retaining your traffic logs—meaning you will remain completely anonymous.
IPVanish VPN will take you to the darkest corners of the internet, without unwanted guests ever having a chance to intercept and monitor your browsing.
A recent act passed by the United States Senate basically eliminated privacy rules that required ISPs to get consumers’ exclusive approval before sharing or selling their private information or browsing data.
The last thing you want is for politicians to have your data at their disposal, right? Or even worse—marketing companies, as if endless spamming of our inbox isn’t enough.
The last thing you want is for politicians to have your data at their disposal, right? Or even worse—marketing companies, as if endless spamming of our inbox isn’t enough.
In this VPN review, allow us introduce you to the basics of IPVanish before we proceed with a full technical breakdown of all its components.
Overview
Being part of the Highwinds Network Group, IPVanish VPN started in 2012 with, as some might say, a speed of light. Even though its apps are not as simple to use if you’re a beginner, IPVanish VPN is astonishingly fast. Due to this, many users turn to IPVanish VPN forgoing all the difficulties, for the sake of advanced security options and a zero logs policy.
IPVanish VPN is somewhat above average cost for a VPN service, but at the same time offers three different payment options based on your preferred length of usage. It can cost $10 a month, $26.99 quarterly, or $62.39 annually, which is around 30 percent overall cheaper than it was before. Additionally, it offers a seven-day money-back guarantee.
IPVanish VPN will connect you to hundreds of VPN servers in over 60 countries for an anonymous web surfing experience. As such, it makes a perfect match for you if you’re privacy-oriented or into unblocking, torrenting and live streaming content. The system is compatible for both Windows and Mac.
Now let’s elaborate on the points responsible for its reputation—privacy and speed.
Privacy and security
As mentioned, IPVanishVPN allows you to surf anonymously and gain access to blocked websites from every corner of the planet (except Russia, but we will tackle this later).
Given the fact that government surveillance is increasing, the best feature of IPVanish is that it keeps zero logs, meaning that it’s technically impossible to reconstruct your connection. Should the authorities ask for information about your browsing, the VPN provider wouldn’t have anything to give them.
So, although based in the U.S. and subject to its privacy-unfriendly laws, IPVanish VPN has nothing of value regarding your online behavior to hand over to the government.
It is not a wonder then that, besides regular currencies, you can also buy IPVanish VPN with Bitcoins, which perfectly fitsthe purpose.
Such concept means that you can use any file-storing methods, peer-to-peer tools and torrents without having thegovernment behind your back. As you might assume, this is crucial for those diving into darker corners of the internet, like to access the deep web.
The whole point of this is to fully maximize your internet security by giving you the best possible privacy so you’re not vulnerable to any risks. Additionally, an instant kill switch feature is designed to freeze your connection should it break, so that nothing will ever get exposed.
Additionally, the fact that IPVanish VPN has a network that spans more than 40,000 IPs enhances the overall notion of internet security and privacy.
Speed
IPVanish VPN is supposedly the fastest VPN network on the planet, which makes it much-desired by torrents and gamers.
Bandwidth is unlimited, which means that the amount of data transferred per second can flow fast enough, which also results in low latency rate.
Such feature is crucial for online gamers, especially those focusing on sport or PVP games. IPVanish VPN delivers the streaming experience at its smoothest by combining low ping time (how quickly your device receives the data) with high download bandwidth.
The process of moving data between source and destination is consistently stable, whether on nearby or distant servers. Networks can indeed change depending on the time of day or the number of people connected, yet with IPVanish VPN your connection will not be throttled.
The following table further proves its speed features:
- Max download speed: 74.87.
- Max upload speed: 36.92.
- Ping time: 4ms.
- Average time to connect: 14s (a bit longer than usual, but we can’t have everything).
- Reliability score: 8.6.
Given the above listed features and tools, IPVanish’s privacy and security offerings are what makes it a top VPN provider, rather than one that only provides steady speed performance.
Location
Though IPVanish holds the title of the fastest VPN, it also keeps its reputation as the fastest growing top-tier VPN in the world.
In addition to supplying over 40,000 IPs (as mentioned before), IPVanish also has an additional 850+ VPN servers in more than 60 countries, as the server covers the most popular and busy locations on each continent.
The U.S. has the best cover, with more than 300 locations followed by a near equal number of places in Europe. The West Coast and Southern regions of the U.S. hold leading domains, while in Europe, Germany, Sweden and the U.K. appear to be hotspots for IPVanish VPN.
On the other hand, it’s rather surprising that the Midwest region of the U.S. is still not as covered as other areas, given the fact that Midwesterners are known for being fanatics of sports and sports-related streaming and games.
Singapore, China, and India are outnumbering other countries when it comes to theAsian continent.
The problem occurs with Russia, which in 2016 signed new anti-terrorism legislation that led to a new data retention law as well.
The new law states that all personal user information, activity, communications and data decryption have to be handed over to the Russian government.
To protect its users, IPVanish has removed all VPN servers physically located in Russia as of July 2016, meaning that devices connected to servers in Moscow will require reconfiguration to another location on IPVanish’s server list.
Regardless of Russia, the internationally spanned servers mean faster speed and less congestion. While offering more sites increases user reach, the system’s vast pool of IP addresses additionally enhances privacy.
The feature of dynamic server-switching is also a highly positive factor, keeping performance up while making it difficult for IPVanish users to be tracked.
Usability
When it comes to IPVanish’s usability appeal, users will come across features that are both easy and difficult to handle. Some enable optimal and quick connection, while others might be frustrating for users to deal with.
What appears to be the most advantageous feature is the concept of allowing users to pick a country or city in which the fastest option is available.
This feature is a sword with two blades, as it locates the best and fastest server for you, but it also won’t allow you to connect to any other servers.
At the same time, it will not be as helpful to scroll through a randomly-ordered server selection in order to find your preferred location. The server has numerous settings, but it organizes them into tabs to make options less confusing to navigate.
To wrap up the IPVanish VPN review for usability, it does appear to be a difficult system for beginners—which might cause a bit of frustration. On the other hand, tech buffs tend to overlook this problem for the sake of high speed and privacy performances.
IPVanish VPN is compatible with following devices:
Blackberry, Kindle and gaming consoles do not support IPVanish VPN.
Customer Support
Surprisingly, IPVanish VPN doesn’t offer ongoing customer support. Another disappointing feature is that there is no live chat room option, which usually proves as the best way to solve simple and sudden issues. Video tutorials are also missing.
However, 24/7 support IS enabled, but mostly via email.
The emails are well-written and easy to understand, but they do lack a personal touch that would make the conversation more pleasant. But it is worth noting that you’ll get an email response within three hours, unlike with other servers where you might have wait a few days.
Even though it’s not as easy to navigate, the IPVanish FAQ sheet and knowledge base are well-composed and understandable, which might be of great help given the fact that some basic customer support features are lacking.
Final Words
For inexperienced users, IPVanish VPN will probably seem rather intimidating, even frustrating at times. It is a demanding platform that seems to be aimed toward VPN veterans and professionals, rather than a broader range of consumers.
However, incredible speed performance and advanced privacy and internet security are its main features for which most peoplewho use it will overlook the less desirable options.
It is not newbie-friendly, and you will not be able to stream your Netflix shows (since Netflix has blocked the servers of several VPN providers, including IPVanish servers), but among thousands of servers welcome to your choosing, you will surely find your fit.