Table of ContentsHow Much Does HideIPVPN Cost?What VPN Protocols Does HideIPVPN Support?HideIPVPN's Servers and Server LocationsYour Privacy With HideIPVPNHands On With HideIPVPNCan You Use HideIPVPN to Watch Netflix?What Else Does HideIPVPN Offer? HideIPVPN's Speed and PerformanceThe Verdict: You Have Better VPN Choices A virtual private network (VPN) is an excellent tool for securing your information and protecting your privacy online. Still, many people worry that using one will be too complicated to set up on their devices. That's not an issue with HideIPVPN, which has one of the simplest and cleanest VPN interfaces we've seen. On the other hand, it turned in only mediocre results in our performance testing, and it has a tiny server selection, unusual pricing, and fewer licenses per subscription than the average. Proton VPN is our Editors' Choice winner thanks to its more well-rounded offering and generous free version.How Much Does HideIPVPN Cost?HideIPVPN's pricing is confusing. It appears to be similar to that of competitors, offering the same slate of features at subscriptions of different lengths. The longer the subscription, the bigger the savings. According to the prices you see at the outset, a subscription costs $6.99 per month, $17.99 per quarter, or $59.88 per year—that's reasonable. When you reach the actual order screen, however, you see that a promotional discount has reduced these prices. Strangely, you can opt not to accept the discount, although why you would do so eludes us. Without the discounts, the pricing turns into $9.99 per month, $22.99 per quarter, and $69.99 per year. We base our reviews on the base price, not promotional prices.Even without the discounts, HideIPVPN has competitive pricing. That said, we'd like HideIPVPN to make its pricing more transparent so customers know exactly how much the service will cost and that it's clear how long that pricing will remain the same.As of this writing, top-rated VPNs cost around $10.80 per month. NordVPN, meanwhile, costs considerably more, at $12.99 per month, but it also offers an excellent collection of premium features. (Credit: HideIPVPN)Money doesn't need to be an obstacle to using a VPN. TunnelBear and Hotspot Shield offer free versions with monthly and daily restrictions, respectively. ProtonVPN offers even more flexible pricing but limits some of its features and servers depending on your subscription. Despite this, Proton's free VPN subscription places no limit on the amount of data you use, making it easily the best option for free users. HideIPVPN has no free subscription, but you can demo the product for 72 hours using either an email or your Facebook account. We opted to use the email address. Disposable email addresses are an option, too.You can purchase a subscription from HideIPVPN using major credit and debit cards, PayPal, or various online payment options. We'd prefer to see anonymous methods of payment accepted, such as cryptocurrency. TorGuard VPN, meanwhile, accepts numerous prepaid gift cards from the likes of Starbucks and Subway.Each subscription allows up to three simultaneous connections per account. That means you can have any three devices connected to HideIPVPN simultaneously. Five is the industry standard, although NordVPN provides six, CyberGhost gives seven, and IPVanish VPN hands out an even more generous 10. It should be noted that Windscribe VPN and Avira Phantom VPN have no restrictions on the number of devices you use with their services. (Editors’ Note: IPVanish is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag's parent company.)If you want to extend VPN protection to every device on your network, HideIPVPN offers instructions on configuring your router to use its service. That's handy, although a few VPN providers offer preconfigured routers for sale.Some companies let you purchase additional simultaneous connections, but not HideIPVPN. We particularly like how TorGuard VPN handles these upgrades, with a simple slider letting you select how many concurrent connections you need. Other services, such as NordVPN, provide static IP addresses for sale, should you require one. HideIPVPN does not provide this option.What VPN Protocols Does HideIPVPN Support?There are several ways to create a VPN connection, but we prefer the OpenVPN or WireGuard protocols. These protocols are open-source, meaning their code is freely available and can be inspected by anyone. We are happy to see that HideIPVPN supports OpenVPN and WireGuard—as well as the excellent IKEv2 VPN protocol—on Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows. The inclusion of iOS on this list is notable since Apple requires developers to jump through more hoops when they include OpenVPN.HideIPVPN also supports L2TP/IPSec, PPTP, and SSTP on Windows. Its macOS app and iOS app support L2TP/IPSec and PPTP. These are older and, in some cases, less secure protocols, and you shouldn't use them if you can avoid them. They're handy if you're using a lot of legacy equipment since these are commonly supported. HideIPVPN also supports SoftEther on Windows, which is a bit unusual but interesting for a certain kind of network geek.HideIPVPN's Servers and Server LocationsIn theory, the more servers a VPN company provides, the better the service you'll experience because you're more likely to have a server near you that isn't stuffed full of other subscribers. HideIPVPN, unfortunately, offers a mere 29 servers. That's a troublingly small number and a far cry from ProtonVPN's 347 servers, let alone the 3,000-plus servers available from CyberGhost, ExpressVPN, TorGuard, Private Internet Access, NordVPN—which has 5,800-odd servers.Also important is the geographic distribution of those servers. Having more server locations means you're more likely to find one nearby, wherever you go. It also gives you more options for location spoofing. HideIPVPN comes up short here, as well, offering only 11 countries. This leaves Africa, Central and South America, India, and most of Asia high and dry.NordVPN, by contrast, offers servers in 60 countries. ExpressVPN, on the other hand, has an impressive roster of 94 countries. We'd like to see HideIPVPN greatly expand its available server locations in the future.HideIPVPN says that 90% of its servers are physical hardware. However, we are unable to determine if its virtual servers are where they appear to be, as they aren't clearly marked. We'd like HideIPVPN to be more transparent about this.Your Privacy With HideIPVPNA big reason to use a VPN is to protect your personal information and online activities from being harvested and monetized by your ISP. However, a crooked VPN company could gather your information as easily as an ISP. That's why we read through each company's privacy policy and have them answer specific questions about what the company does to protect customer privacy.HideIPVPN has a short but highly readable privacy policy. It assures customers that their information will never be sold or shared with third parties. A company representative assured me that HideIPVPN only makes money from VPN subscription sales. Oddly, its privacy policy says very little about actually using the VPN. For that, we had to look at the terms of service. This document is slightly longer but includes assurances that the company does not gather personal information or data about customers' online activities while the VPN is active. That's what we want to hear. (Credit: HideIPVPN/PCMag)HideIPVPN operates under Servermanagement LLC and is within US legal jurisdiction. Other VPN companies, such as NordVPN, are quick to point out that because they are based outside the US, they are not required to respond to US subpoenas or court orders. Still, the company representative we spoke with assured us that when HideIPVPN responds to requests for information, it has nothing to share with authorities.HideIPVPN currently does not engage in third-party audits or evaluations, which are starting to become a trend among VPN providers. An audit provides outside verification of the VPN company's standards and practices. While the scope of audits varies wildly, We are grateful to see more efforts to hold companies accountable. TunnelBear, for example, has committed to undergoing annual audits and has publicly released the information over two consecutive years. NordVPN recently commissioned its own audit of its no-log policy.Additionally, HideIPVPN has not participated in the Center for Democracy and Technology's VPN questionnaire. ExpressVPN, IVPN, Mullvad, TunnelBear, and VyprVPN have responded.In general, we didn't find anything surprising or worrying in HideIPVPN's policies. That said, we believe the company could do a better job of relaying this information to customers. We'd also like to see the company issue transparency reports relaying the amount of information requested by law enforcement each year and undergo independent audits.Hands On With HideIPVPNWe had no trouble downloading and installing the HideIPVPN Windows client on an Intel NUC running Windows 10. While you can configure your computer to connect without using the client, we always recommend using the software provided by the VPN company. It's much easier to use and gives you access to features that wouldn't otherwise be available.The HideIPVPN app is tall and slender, looking quite a bit like a mobile app translated for PCs. In fact, looking at the HideIPVPN Android app, we'd say that's exactly what it is. We're all for apps having a consistent look and feel across different platforms, but we think HideIPVPN goes a bit too far since the Windows app feels out of place.Thankfully, it's simple to use. A large connect button gets you online without any hassle. The option to browse for a different server location is clearly marked and within easy reach. From the location list, you can choose either a country or a specific server location within that country. You can also order the list by speed, which is handy. We prefer apps that provide a little more information about specific servers, such as what kind of load a server is currently experiencing. (Credit: HideIPVPN/PCMag)The company allows P2P and BitTorrent on its servers, but only the servers are in Germany, Lithuania, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. If you plan on doing a lot of that thing, consider marking these as favorites to keep them close at hand in the app.The HideIPVPN app is a bit sparse but does have one trick up its sleeve: App Killer. This automatically closes the applications you specify should the VPN connection be disrupted. That way, you can be assured that no information will accidentally travel in the clear. Many other VPNs offer this feature, usually calling it a kill switch. (Credit: HideIPVPN/PCMag)One concern with VPNs is ensuring that information about your ISP or DNS requests isn't leaked. We test this using the aptly named DNS Leak Test tool. We found that while our ISP information was obscured, the DNS results were troubling. Without a VPN, we see five to six Verizon DNS servers listed, and usually, only one DNS server when a VPN is running. In the case of HideIPVPN, we saw five to six Google DNS servers in the US and Belgium. We've reached out to HideIPVPN to clarify if this is expected behavior. Can You Use HideIPVPN to Watch Netflix?VPNs are an important security tool, but some companies would prefer you not to use them. Sometimes, this is because of a genuine need to try and verify your location for security purposes—such as your bank making sure you are who you say you are. Other times, it's to enforce company policies. In the case of Netflix, the latter is true. Netflix distribution deals are specific to different regions, meaning that what is licensed in the UK isn't necessarily the same as what's available in the US. You can sidestep those restrictions when you use a VPN to watch Netflix. Netflix isn't a fan of this strategy and does its best to stop it.We had no trouble accessing Netflix via a US-based VPN server with HideIPVPN. We also tested Australia, Canada, and the UK, all of which worked. However, we couldn't test Japan as we normally would since HideIPVPN doesn't offer servers in the region. Given the cat-and-mouse relationship between Netflix and VPN companies, however, you may have different results.What Else Does HideIPVPN Offer? In order to stand out from the ever-increasing horde of competitors, VPN providers sometimes include additional tools that go beyond VPN protection. NordVPN, for example, lets you connect to the Tor anonymization network via its servers. TorGuard offers ad-blocking and malware-blocking DNS that uses blacklists to keep annoying advertisements and dangerous URLs out of your path. CyberGhost offers static, dedicated IP addresses for people who want to have a particular outward-facing IP address. (HideIPVPN/PCMag)There are many other features from different companies, but HideIPVPN isn't one of them. The company offers a VPN service with associated features, and that's all.HideIPVPN's Speed and PerformanceYour internet performance will take a hit no matter which VPN service you use. There's no way around it. To measure the impact each service has, we perform a series of tests using Ookla's Speedtest.net. (Editors’ Note: Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag's parent company.) We then compare those results with a baseline to find a percent change. You can read more about our speed testing methodology and its limitations in our explainer on how we test VPNs.In our testing, we found that HideIPVPN increased latency scores by 300%, reduced download speed test results by 54.23%, and reduced upload speed test results by just 8.4%. The upload results are good, but the others are not.These results may be due to the fact that unlike quite every other VPN we've ever tested, HideIPVPN has no servers available in New York City. The closest available option during our testing was all the way out in Virginia, and even then, not in a heavily populated portion of it. This easily explains the very high latency results and, given the hop distance, could significantly impact your download speeds.While speed might seem important, server distribution, features, and the price of a VPN are far more so. Keep in mind that there are many factors that can affect VPN performance, so while our results are useful for comparison, they will certainly differ from your experience.The Verdict: You Have Better VPN ChoicesNot much has changed since we last reviewed HideIPVPN. It's easy to use and approachable enough for a novice to get online immediately, and it supports BitTorrent and P2P on specified servers. However, the service is slow and has a very high latency score, and we are unimpressed by its extremely limited server offerings and its lack of audits. Finally, we'd like to see it make its pricing pricing more transparent. We believe that Proton VPN is setting the standard for the VPN industry, and this is reflected in our five-star rating and Editors' Choice award.Max Eddy contributed to this review.

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