Founded in 2012, IPVanish VPN is among the veterans of the industry. This VPN offers a comprehensive service, despite a very austere interface. It does have a few small bonuses in its subscription, however, including 500GB of storage space in the cloud. But is it still a good and trustworthy VPN?
IPVanish features
 Monthly subscription price | 3.99 $ a month for a year package |
 Based in the country | US Florida |
 Money back guarantee | Yes, 30 days |
 Does the VPN keep logs? | Read “Privacy policy ” section |
 Number of servers | Over 1900 servers located in 75 locations around the world |
 Number of devices per license | Unlimited |
 US Netflix access | Yes |
 Devices and compatibility | ANDROID/ iOS/ WINDOWS/ MAC/ LINUX / CHROMEBOOK/ ANDROID TV |
 Support torrenting | No |
About IPVanish VPN
IPVanish is a 100% American VPN that started in Florida in 2012. At the time, the service was exclusively based in the USA, had only 32 servers and was only available on Windows. But even back then, IPVanish cultivated a desire to build its own network infrastructure where most VPNs were sourcing from providers whose services they rented like Amazon, Microsoft or IBM. Today, 90% of the servers, racks and even cables are owned by IPVanish on a global scale, which can therefore adapt its hardware needs to its activities.
IPVanish is now owned by StackPath, one of the largest U.S. cloud storage service providers. This is probably why the VPN offers, in addition to its regular subscription, access to secure cloud storage
Interface
Launching the IPVanish client can be a bit disorienting for the novice. You have direct access to a large dark window and no big buttons to start the VPN as is the norm with most services today. There is mostly a succession of small modules and selection tabs spread here and there on a black and green background. No need for a dark mode you may say.
You can still display a map (admittedly rudimentary) from an option accessible in the list of servers. For the time being, we prefer to pick from the list of countries as it is of little interest, even visually speaking. However, this allows the VPN to visibly address power-users already familiar with the network domain. For example, the real-time display of upload and download speeds, the IP used and the protocol in use.
Behind this rather austere interface, one appreciates the fact that it is possible to filter everything very easily, by country, by server speed, or even by specific server once the territory has been chosen. On the other hand, there is no option to choose VPNs specialized in a type of use (for streaming or peer to peer for example).
The advanced options are unfortunately few and far between and are not fully synchronized between the desktop and mobile versions. This gives rise to some aberrations, such as the split tunneling mode (which allows you to assign the VPN connection to a specific application) which is absent from the Windows and Mac version, while it is present on mobile.
Moreover, since we’re talking about the mobile application, it manages to be even more austere and less welcoming than its computer counterpart. There’s barely a list of countries on a gray background and a few options to check off… it’s clearly more user-friendly. It even has the luxury of being available only in English where most VPN applications are now available 100% in other languages.
Servers and performance
IPVanish currently has over 1900 servers located in 75 locations around the world. It uses most of the protocols that have already proven their worth, such as IKEV2 or OpenVPN. But it’s especially with the recent introduction of the Wireguard protocol that the VPN’s performance has taken off. It must be said that it is now used by most VPN services, but IPVanish manages it in a very good way. In our test, we reached excellent performances, close to what the connection without VPN can offer, both in download, upload or latency. Of course, the further away you are, the more the speeds start to drop.
In any case, this is not a problem to access foreign catalogs of VOD platforms such as Netflix, Prime Video or Disney+, and in the best possible quality.
Last word about potential DNS leaks when connecting to one of the IPVanish servers. From all our tests done from different locations, IPVanish was able to hide our IP address. So at least we can trust its reliability.
Privacy policy
IPVanish being based in the United States, its privacy policy cannot be taken seriously. First of all, because the country is part of the “14 Eyes” surveillance alliance and participates in mass surveillance on the web. It therefore requires VPN services to provide as much data as possible from their respective customers. It is thus difficult to believe in the alleged good faith of IPVanish, which proudly displays on the first page of its website a guarantee of protection of its users’ private data via its policy of not keeping logs.
So be careful when choosing a VPN to take into account this crucial element in our eyes in the role of a VPN.
Customer support
From its customer area, on its website, IPVanish allows to contact a customer service by chat. This one is only in English, but the advisors have a relatively efficient automatic translation tool. The customer service answered us very quickly, a few seconds after logging in.
Otherwise, it is possible to have access to a multitude of tutorials from the site’s help page which answers hundreds of questions, sometimes very specific, without having to go through an exchange with the support teams.
Plans & prices
IPVanish changes the price of its packages very often. This is typically the kind of VPN where you have to watch for promotions, with an annual subscription that can sometimes fall below 45 dollars. Currently, there are two packages on offer: one for a month (at $10.99 a month) and one for a year ($44.99). For the flagship one-year package, this gives a subscription of 3.99 dollars a month, which is in the high average of VPNs on the market.
Note that recently, a license allows you to cover “as many devices as you want”, from Windows or Mac computers to routers and smartphones.
Finally, the last significant advantage of IPVanish is that its owner is also one of the largest U.S. hosts (StackPath), it offers in its subscription a package including the VPN and a storage space in the cloud of 500 GB. A subscription generally offered at the price of 12.99 dollars per month. It is also one of the only VPNs on the market to offer such a package in its subscriptions.
IPVanish VPN – Our verdict
IPVanish VPN is neither the most beautiful nor the most accessible VPN. It’s not the cheapest on the market either. But this VPN provider has some attractive arguments. Starting with its very respectable performance (with Wireguard), the unlimited number of devices supported by a single license or the fact that it offers in its subscription a storage space in the cloud of 500 GB. A solution that can be interesting… if you are not too concerned about the potential leakage of your data, IPVannish being a risky VPN due to its poor privacy policy.
PROS
- Decent performance
- One license allows you to install the application on as many devices as you want
- 500 GB of storage space in the cloud as an option
CONS
- A problematic privacy policy
- No dedicated servers for a specific purpose
- Unfriendly interface
- In English only
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