Pricing
IVPN comes in only 1 package that meets everyone’s needs. Users can subscribe monthly for $15 per month, quarterly for $40 at $13.33 per month or annually for $100 at $8.33 per month. In our opinion, prices are a little high compared to other VPN services and the company does not deny it either. In fact, it is stated on their website that “by charging a little more, IVPN can provide you with better security, faster servers and awesome support from IT professionals. The difference is only a few dollars a month for a service that will affect your online experience every day.” Let’s be honest, they do have a valid point since cheap or entirely free VPN services usually end up compromising their users’ private data and security.
Payment Methods
Both regular and anonymous payments are accepted at IVPN. You can pay through any major credit card, Paypal or you can choose a more secure and anonymous payment method, like Bitcoin to subscribe to IVPN. Annual subscribers have the option to pay in cash.
Free Trial & Refund
There is a 3-day free trial given upon registering for an account and providing the required payment details. As for refund, users can enjoy a 100% 7-day money-back guarantee no questions asked.
Privacy Policy
Being based in Gibraltar gives IVPN the advantage of not falling under mandatory data retention laws, i.e; more privacy, freedom and anonymity. In light of this fact, IVPN follows a no logging policy whatsoever as stated on their privacy policy section:
“Due to the nature of our logging practices VPN servers do not contain any personally identifiable information and thus, if seized, could not be used to identify users,” [...] “We do not store any connection logs whatsoever. In addition we do not log bandwidth usage, session data or requests to our DNS servers,” [...] “IVPN purposefully does not log any usage data associated with an account as we provide an unlimited and unrestricted quota free service.”
What does this all mean for you? In simple words, IVPN will not track or monitor your online activities nor will it keep logs of your VPN session. In this way, you can surf the web privately, securely and anonymously. The only information collected is your email address (which could be fake, but valid) and your password.
The Client
We were given access to take IVPN for a spin to evaluate the overall performance of the service on our Windows system. In order to get access to any of IVPN client, you need to first sign-up for an account which is a very easy process. All you are required to do is to provide a valid email, password and payment details depending on the payment method of your choice.
Downloading and installing the app was equally easy, just follow the wizard. As for the interface, it is rather ordinary in terms of appearance, however, it is easy to navigate and is packed with several impressive features. For example, the VPN firewall feature acts as a kill switch as well as a DNS leak protection to contain the user’s data traffic within the VPN tunnel without any possible leaks. In addition, you can leave the firewall on even if you are not connected to IVPN to protect your internet connection at all times. Another excellent feature is that IVPN allows you to hop between two servers of your choice to maintain the encryption of your connection. When you go to the “Connections” tab, you will find another feature called “Obfsproxy” which acts as an additional shield to your OpenVPN connection making it very difficult for third parties and firewalls to detect it.
When it comes to performance, we have been connected for more than 17 hours now and we did not experience any disconnections. We noticed little slowdown in speed when connected to US servers, but Europe servers are very decent and pretty fast.
IVPN Features
In this section, we will explore the different features provided by IVPN, including: encryption levels, server network, bandwidth, platform compatibility, etc.
Security & Encryption
IVPN relies on very strong encryption, AES-256 algorithm with RSA-4096 handshake and HMAC SHA-1 hash authentication to support OpenVPN. In addition, every hour a DHE creates a new encryption key to support PFS.
Servers & Bandwidth
The company has its servers spread across 12 countries, including: US, UK, SPAIN, FRANCE, HONG KONG, CANADA, and many more.
As for bandwidth, users can enjoy unlimited bandwidth on all servers without speed throttling.
Compatibility
One of the excellent features of IVPN is its cross-platform support. There are software clients for all major platforms and operating systems, such as: Windows, Mac OS, Linux, iOS and Android. IVPN also works on NAS and several routers.
Simultaneous Connections
You can connect to up to 5 simultaneous connections.
P2P & Torrenting
Totally permitted.
Customer Support
24/7 live support is available. We have personally communicated with them and they were not only very responsive, but also knowledgeable and very friendly. You can also contact IVPN support team via an email ticket or you can check their Helpcentre for self-assistance.
Conclusion
IVPN came to our surprise is a very worthy VPN service that is very keen on offering a secure and private internet environment. We praise their security level and no logging policy. We were satisfied with the overall performance of their Windows software. On the other hand, we find their prices a little high and we were not very impressed with their small network of servers.
