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IPVanish Review: Is It Still a Good VPN to Get in 2024?

8.3
7th out of 376 VPNs

Last updated: August 1, 2023

IPVanish is not one of the most widely-known VPNs, but could it be a hidden gem?

You may have stumbled across IPVanish in your search for a quality VPN; and, the truth is, its name alone is pretty appealing, as it alludes to one of the benefits that you’d expect from the best VPN providers — a hidden IP address.

The truth is, with great speeds and top security and privacy features, IPVanish could prove to keep up with the top contenders on the VPN market.

To give you a better idea of whether IPVanish is a good fit for you, we put IPVanish to the test. We ran speed tests, streaming tests, and performance evaluations to determine if IPVanish is one of the VPNs that you should seriously consider using.

Keep on reading this IPVanish review to find out the scoop on IPVanish, once and for all.

What We Analyzed in IPVanish VPN

When analyzing and evaluating a VPN, there is some important information to take into consideration before deciding if the VPN can adequately support your online activity.

Here are the features we assessed to collect data for this IPVanish VPN review:

☑️ Speed: How fast is IPVanish? Are you able to access streaming and browsing without buffering and lag? We performed speed tests to give you the scoop.
☑️ Privacy and Security: Is your VPN connection keeping your online information and IP address private and protected online? Is there top-notch data encryption? What about a kill switch in case your VPN connection cuts out suddenly? And what about your private activity? Does this VPN service keep any logs of users’ activity that could be potentially harmful to the user?
☑️ Streaming: If you are using a VPN to access geo-restricted streaming sites — like Netflix, Hulu, or Prime Video — it’s important to make sure this VPN is strong enough to get through these sites’ geo-blocks consistently, and with buffer-free streaming.
☑️ Torrenting: Torrenting is something that could put you at risk if the VPN you choose does not give you a secure connection. For torrenting, we wanted to be sure that your actual IP address would be hidden online, safe from hackers and third parties. On top of this, it’s important to know if your VPN will support torrenting on all of its servers?
☑️ Server Network: Does your service offer server locations in a wide range of countries throughout the world, ensuring a speedy local connection from anywhere? Are these server locations in the countries you are trying to access? (For instance, if you want to be able to watch Hulu US, you will need to make sure you have servers located in the US.)
☑️ Usability: Does your VPN offer a compatible MacOS, Windows, iOS, and Android app? Is it easy to use if you are a VPN novice? Is there a way to access live-chat customer support if users have any questions that need to be answered immediately?
☑️ Price: What is the cost per month? Does this service provide good value for your money? Is there a refund policy?

Keep on reading to learn more about these important IPVanish features, and to determine whether this VPN service might be worthwhile for you.

Speed

There is nothing more annoying than trying to watch your favorite show online only to find that it takes twice as long to watch because of the annoying buffering.

Any time you use a VPN service to connect to the internet, your speeds will be slower than normal. This is because your traffic is being sent through an extra layer of encryption.

There are ways to minimize this speed loss, though. The easiest way to ensure faster speeds with a VPN is by connecting to a VPN that is close by, which means a shorter distance that your traffic will need to travel to the server.

Another way to ensure you will have good speeds when using a VPN is by making sure you are using a VPN that is vetted for speed.

When I ran an IPVanish speed test from New York, I was actually pleased with the outcome.

Before I connected to my VPN, my baseline download speed from New York was 14.96 Mbps. The download speed reflects the speed at which you can download data from your server to your personal device.

My upload speed was 0.86 Mbps, and my ping was 21 ms. Upload speed measures the speed at which you can send your information — such as files or photos — to other sites or other devices, and ping is just like it sounds, the measure of how fast you get a response bouncing (ping!) back from a website after you’ve sent your request.

After I connected to one of IPVanish’s local servers, my download speed was 10.53 Mbps; my upload speed dropped to 0.81 Mbps, and my ping rose to 30 ms.

When I tried connecting to a long-distance server, by download dropped again to 7.47 Mbps; my upload dropped to 0.63 Mbps, and my ping rose to 164 ms.

Even with the drops, my speeds were still sufficient that I did not notice much of a difference.

Privacy & Security

When we went to review IPVanish, some of the most important features to evaluate were the safety features. When doing this, we took into consideration the company’s privacy policy, encryption standards, logging policy, and even location. While subscribing to VPN services with speed deficits can be frustrating, subscribing to a service that will compromise your privacy and security is downright dangerous.

IPVanish privacy and security features

Is IPVanish safe?

Based on our knowledge base and the research we did to review IPVanish, we found IPVanish to be a safe and secure option — with a few caveats. Keep reading to find out the beneficial features that IPVanish has, and the few downsides that we found.

Encryption

IPVanish has top-of-the-line military-grade AES 256-bit encryption. This means that if any third party gets its hands on your traffic or information, it will all be totally indecipherable when you are using IPVanish.

DNS & IP leak protection

If your VPN has leaks, some of your DNS requests may accidentally be sent via your ISPs unprotected servers instead of your encrypted VPN servers, which could reveal your actual IP address and your actual location. A DNS leak can make you vulnerable to tracking by your ISP, as well as to hackers and cyber attackers.

We ran a leak test to test IPVanish for any DNS or IP leak and were not able to find any. So, IPVanish’s IPV6 leak-protection technology to prevent any DNS leak seems to be working.

Kill switch

A kill switch is another important way of making sure your actual IP address and traffic are not revealed online. In the event that your VPN cuts out unexpectedly, your kill switch will cut your internet until this secure connection is restored.

Surprisingly, there is only an IPVanish kill switch available on the desktop software for MacOS or Windows.

Does IPVanish have an ad-blocker?

IP Vanish doesn’t offer a built-in ad-blocking option, but you can opt to use a third-party ad-blocking app or browser extension if you choose.

Does IPVanish keep logs?

While IPVanish does claim to have a zero logs policy, this wasn’t always the case. In 2016, IPVanish was involved in a scandal where it passed on user information as per request from the Department of Homeland Security, which was looking to prosecute an IPVanish user for child abuse and pornography. Because it was able to comply with this request for user data, IPVanish proved that it did, in fact, keep user logs.

Since we have not heard of any scandals since 2016, though, we assume that its 2017 change in management has strengthened its no-logging policy. IPVanish now guarantees that it doesnt keep any user logs of user activity or IP addresses.

Even though IPVanish has a strict no-logs policy, it is still important to note that IPVanish is based in the United States (in the 5/9/14 Eyes Territory), so, it could be asked again to hand over user information, which could potentially cause a repeat of this 2016 scandal.

Here is its current Privacy Policy from their website:

IPVanish Privacy Policy

Streaming

If you are using a VPN to unblock geo-restricted content, like Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and a variety of Netflix libraries, it is important to make sure the one you choose has been vetted for success at reaching these streaming services with good streaming quality.

Here are the streaming services that I tested, and the results of my tests:

☑️ ABC: Unsuccessful
☑️ Amazon Prime Video: Unsuccessful
☑️ BBC iPlayer: Unsuccessful
☑️ HBO GO: Successful (on most servers)
☑️ HotStar: Successful
☑️ Hulu: Successful
☑️ Netflix US: Successful (on most servers)
☑️ SlingTV: Successful

*If you are looking for a service that will be successful at unblocking all of your geo-restricted content with the fastest speeds, ExpressVPN may be a better option. ExpressVPN is renowned for its speeds and reliability at accessing sites all over the world with its servers spread across 94 countries.

Torrenting

IPVanish supports P2P sharing on all of its servers, with pretty good speeds.

A cool add-on feature that this VPN offers is its SugarSync cloud storage. This allows users to back up torrent files to the cloud up to 500 GB.

Server Network

IPVanish offers a decent number of servers: 1,900 servers in 75 locations around the world, including in Africa, which is sometimes overlooked.

The reason it is important to have servers spread throughout the world is that the closer you are to your server, the faster your connection speeds will be. So, if there are servers in your country or a nearby country, this will give you a better chance at establishing the fastest connection available.

IPVanish server network

Protocols

IPVanish also offers a few different protocols to choose among — IKEv2, OpenVPN (TCP/UDP), L2TP and SSTP.

Our recommendation is OpenVPN, as this open-source protocol is known as the most secure choice.

Unlike the top VPNs available, IPVanish does not yet support the newest WireGuard protocol.

If you do not want to connect to a VPN, IPVanish also gives users the option of using a SOCKS5 proxy connection. This is another way of getting IP addresses that will help you unblock geo-restricted sites, but it will not encrypt your data. Because it does not send your traffic through the process of encryption, this option is actually faster than using a virtual private network, but less secure.

Does IPVanish Work in China?

In order to get past the Great Firewall of China, a VPN provider has to try very hard to constantly keep a step ahead of China’s censorship and restrictions.

IPVanish is not able to get past this Firewall at this point.

Device Compatibility

IPVanish lets users connect an unlimited number of devices to one user account. This is a huge asset that may earn it a place on our list of top VPNs. For comparison, ExpressVPN only lets users connect 5 devices simultaneously, while NordVPN lets users connect 6.

IPVanish device compatibility

You can use IPVanish on your mobile devices, desktops, laptops, and many other platforms. There is an app for Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, Linux, Windows Phone, Chromebook, FireTV, and your routers.

IPVanish also offers split tunneling. With split tunneling, you can choose to send certain traffic through your VPN tunnel while leaving other traffic out of the encrypted tunnel.

Native app for the Amazon Fire TV Stick

IPVanish has a native app for Fire TV Stick that lets you circumvent geo-restrictions to unblock your blocked content and secure your connection.

Follow these steps to install IPVanish on your Fire TV Stick:

  1. Choose “apps“> “categories” from the TV stick home screen.
  2. Choose “utility“>”IPVanish app
  3. Choose “get” to download the app.
  4. When the download is complete, click “open” and enter login info.
  5. Choose “connect” to automatically be connected to the best server, or manually choose a server location in “options

Number of Simultaneous Connections

IPVanish allows you to connect all of your devices simultaneously to a single account.

User-friendliness

IPVanish is a user-friendly VPN service that is a good fit for even those who have never used one before.

You can download the app in seconds and find setup guides on the website in case you need help.

If you are not looking to configure your settings, you can just leave the settings as is. If you are the type who likes to play around with your VPN’s features, there are features that you can configure on your own.

If you are using an older operating system and you are looking to use a virtual private network, IPVanish is a great choice, as it is very lightweight. I didn’t have to deal with any major slowdown with my download speeds when using IPVanish on my old PC.

Pricing

IPVanish offers a couple of different plan options — their monthly plan, and their yearly plan:

☑️ Monthly Plan: $3.49 per month for the first month, and then $9.99 per month thereafter
☑️ Yearly Plan: $2.62 per month for a year

If you want to pay for a VPN plus 500 GB of SugarSync storage, here are the pricing options:

☑️ Monthly Plan: $3.84/month for the first month, and $10.99 thereafter
☑️ Yearly Plan: $2.92/month for the first year

Here are some of the differences in the IPVanish VPN plan that includes storage, and the straight IPVanish VPN plan:

IPVanish pricing

You can pay for your IPVanish using a credit card, PayPal, or Bitcoin, and if you subscribe to the annual plan, you can use their 30-day money-back guarantee to cancel your plan if you change your mind.

Support

IPVanish has customer service available via 24/7 live chat IPVanish support. You can also reach customer support via email or phone (from 9 am-5 pm), which not all VPNs offer.

If you look on the IPVanish site, you can find lots of support and Help articles and tutorials. If you prefer dealing with an actual person, per our experience, the IPVanish customer service reps were super friendly and knowledgeable, and our questions were answered within 90 seconds.

Conclusion

Overall, IPVanish is a pretty good VPN, and there are certainly both pros and cons to this service.

If you are looking to use a VPN for streaming, this VPN provider, unfortunately, doesn’t unblock all of the popular streaming services that other top VPN providers can unblock.

On top of this, IPVanish only gives you a 30-day money-back guarantee on its annual plan, not its monthly plan. This shouldn’t be an issue, though, since you should always opt for the cheapest plan anyway, which is the annual plan.

Pros:

  • Zero-logs policy
  • 256-bit encryption
  • Work with Netflix and other popular streaming services
  • Live-chat customer service
  • Unlimited simultaneous connections
  • Can pay with Bitcoin
  • Refund within 30 days (for annual plans)
  • 75 locations around the globe

Cons:

  • Based in the US (privacy-unfriendly country)
  • Refund within 30 days is not available on monthly plans
  • Doesn’t unblock all streaming sites

Thank you for reading this IPVanish VPN review.

If you use any of the links on our site, they will unlock the most current IPVanish offer available today.

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