Price When Reviewed

$9.95 monthly | $15 for 3 months | $49 for 17 months

Best Prices Today: Hide.me

Hide.me VPN in short:

• P2P allowed: Yes
• Unlimited machine connections: No, 10 simultaneous machine connections
• Business location: Malaysia
• Number of servers: 2,300+
• Number of nation places: 85
• Cost: $9.95 monthly, or $49.99 for 17 months

Hide.me from Malaysia-based eVenture Ltd. is a VPN which may not have the title recognition of at present’s hottest companies, however it packs simply as many options. It has slowly expanded its networks lately to embody extra places, and add extra servers. 

Since our final assessment, Hide.me has added much more servers and virtually doubled its nation places. It has additionally decreased the worth on its longer-term subscriptions and added just a few extra power-user options. So, with all of those advances let’s take one other look and see the place it stands within the present VPN market.

What are Hide.me’s options & companies?

Sam Singleton

Since our final assessment of Hide.me, it has modified up its interface fairly a bit. Now whenever you open up the appliance you’re confronted with a dashboard that reveals some related data similar to a Quick connect button that can hook up with the final used server, data in your IP Address, Account data, a listing of streaming optimized servers, and a listing of your Favorite Locations. 

Furthermore, all of those widgets are movable and interchangeable as effectively, that means you may customise the look to solely show the information you want. This is a welcomed change of tempo from the extra simplistic residence display of previous that solely displayed an Enable/Disable button within the middle. 

On the left sidebar you’ve got extra tabs for Locations, Map, and Features, in addition to Your Account, and Support. The Locations tab shows a searchable record of all out there Hide.me server places with particularly quick 10G servers tagged with an icon subsequent to the server title. Along the highest you may filter by means of all servers, these optimized for streaming, or Multi Hop servers as effectively. For those that are extra spatially inclined, the Map tab shows the bodily location of all of those servers on a world map as an alternative.

Sam Singleton

The Features tab is the place Hide.me actually shines—there’s rather a lot right here. There are the same old choices to launch on system startup, join robotically, and so forth. It additionally launched a function referred to as Bolt “Fast Proxy” which optimizes web pace efficiency over an OpenVPN connection. Theoretically, this could result in enormous pace will increase, notably in Windows—I personally didn’t discover a lot of a distinction throughout my testing.

There can be an choice to arrange Split Tunneling and its personal complementary proprietary firewall function referred to as Stealth Guard. This can be utilized to restrict both an app or your complete web until a Hide.me VPN connection is current, thereby eliminating IP tackle leaks ought to your connection falter. There can be a separate Kill Switch function out there as effectively beneath the settings menu.

Hide.me even gives extra unconventional instruments similar to port forwarding and safety from DNS, IP, and IPv6 leaks. Like I mentioned, this service has quite a lot of options. Add to that the huge array of protocols out there and the choice to make use of customized DNS and it rapidly turns into obvious that Hide.me is an influence person’s dream.

With all of that being mentioned, because of the sheer quantity of obtainable options and the maze of menus that you must work by means of to tweak all of them, this service in all probability isn’t for freshmen—or the faint of coronary heart. I personally discovered navigating the app a bit disorienting. I do just like the latest revamp to its older simplistic interface, however I can’t assist however suppose that it went too far in the other way. It’s a minor gripe although and determining the menu system is just a matter of spending a while within the utility itself.

Hide.me is accessible for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS, in addition to some consoles and sensible TVs. There are additionally browser add-ons for Chrome and Firefox that include help for the SOCKS proxy. 

Finally, it’s value noting that Hide.me has a useful free model that gives the entire nice security measures of its premium counterpart. The solely draw back is that you simply’re restricted to 10GB monthly and it solely gives entry to eight of its servers. Due to those limitations, I don’t advocate utilizing the free model to stream, however it’s a good way to browse securely or simply to check out the service to see the way you prefer it.

How is Hide.me’s efficiency?

In order to check Hide.me’s efficiency, I rated connection speeds throughout its servers in 5 totally different nations all world wide for a number of days after which in contrast them to my baseline web pace. Across all places examined, the speeds averaged simply over 31 p.c of the bottom obtain pace and 67 p.c of the bottom add pace. That’s okay, however wanting our record of the fastest VPNs.

Within that mixture, nevertheless, have been some really unimaginable speeds. I simply discovered they weren’t constant. It was fairly widespread for every location to point out some nice relative speeds at some point after which fall off fully the next day. I additionally discovered that the drop in pace was fairly vital the additional the Hide.me server was from my bodily location. This is in fact not unusual as distance tends to have an effect on ping, however it was so drastic in some situations it caught me a bit abruptly.

Please be aware nevertheless that on-line speeds can differ wildly in pure Mbps exams from daily and even hour to hour. It’s greatest to take any and all pace exams with a grain of salt. Your expertise with Hide.me could differ from these within the exams for this assessment.

Despite all of this, nevertheless, I by no means actually bumped into any main issues with utilizing the service to stream video or obtain recordsdata. Therefore, I’m assured that Hide.me has sufficient pace to maintain absolutely anything that you must do over a VPN connection.

In regards to streaming, Hide.me carried out admirably. Every optimized streaming server I related to was in a position to entry streaming websites similar to Netflix and Amazon Prime. I even examined its non-optimized servers and so they had no points as effectively. Due to the inconsistent speeds although I did discover that my video tended to drop in high quality for very temporary durations of time. Still, Hide.me ought to serve you effectively for streaming and getting round area blocks.

How is Hide.me’s safety and privateness?

Hide.me

Hide.me has a really thorough privacy policy on its web site. It states that it doesn’t monitor your exercise whenever you’re related to the VPN. It doesn’t maintain connection logs or retailer IP addresses. The firm does, nevertheless, maintain troubleshooting logs that embrace a randomly generated username and an internally assigned IP tackle for every person. The troubleshooting logs are erased each few hours, in response to the privateness coverage. Additionally, it logs month-to-month knowledge site visitors quantities for high quality assurance functions.

The firm did move an unbiased safety audit of its ‘No-log’ coverage by Defense Code Ltd., however that was in 2015. Unfortunately, a newer audit has not been accomplished since that point. The proven fact that it was one of many first VPN companies to endure an unbiased audit reveals that it takes privateness significantly. However, seeing as what number of VPNs are actually present process audits yearly or two, an up to date model would go a good distance in direction of assuring customers that Hide.me is constant its privateness commitments. Having mentioned that, it does publish annual “Transparency reports” detailing all knowledge requests the corporate has acquired in a given 12 months.

Sam Singleton

The VPN itself comes with business commonplace AES 256-bit encryption. It additionally gives an entire vary of protocols together with IKEv2, OpenVPN, SoftEtherVPN, WireGuard, and SSTP—that’s greater than most different companies. Furthermore, it even gives superior configuration choices for a lot of of those protocols so as to add to the customization. And in my testing I discovered that there have been no IP tackle leaks when utilizing Hide.me throughout any of its servers and protocols. 

When signing up for Hide.me you do have to offer private billing data and it accepts funds by way of Credit Card, PayPal, Google Pay, and numerous cryptocurrencies.

Is Hide.me value it?

Hide.me is a very intriguing VPN service. On the one hand it gives implausible instruments to assist energy customers tweak and configure to their coronary heart’s content material. On the opposite, it could actually’t fairly nail down some primary belongings you need from a VPN similar to constant speeds throughout servers and a user-friendly interface.

It makes the entire proper privateness guarantees although and the service was in a position to unblock all streaming websites that I examined. Overall, it’s a well-rounded service that ticks virtually each field you could possibly need from a prime VPN. I can simply advocate it for skilled energy customers, however freshmen would possibly need to attempt the free model first earlier than committing to the premium service.

Editor’s be aware: Because on-line companies are sometimes iterative, gaining new options and efficiency enhancements over time, this assessment is topic to alter in an effort to precisely mirror the present state of the service. Any adjustments to textual content or our closing assessment verdict will probably be famous on the prime of this text.