IPVanish Review

Premium Features at a Fraction of the Cost

IPVanish boasts a great set of features that you’ll only get from the best VPN services. We’ve combed through everything there is to know about this US-based VPN service, so stay tuned.

Security and Privacy Features

We’re starting off our IPVanish review with the most important thing to keep in mind when browsing for your new VPN provider — security and privacy. IPVanish VPN offers an abundance of great features to that end - from premium encryption to automatic kill switch. Read on to find more about them.

No-Logs Policy

While there were some problems regarding IPVanish logs in the past, that is not the case anymore. While doing our IPVanish review research, we discovered that the VPN provider had a data-logging scandal back in 2016 when they were required to hand over user information to the Department of Homeland Security related to a child pornography case. While the information greatly helped settle the case, the VPN was proven to have logged their users’ information.

Be that as it may, ever since IPVanish was acquired by StackPath and then by J2 Global, the vendor’s management swears by its strict no-logs policy, and IPVanish reviews only confirm that. Additionally, if we were to compare IPVanish vs. PureVPN, the former would come out as a safer choice, with the latter storing some temporary logs.

Encryption

IPVanish uses the high-end AES 265-bit encryption, meaning it would take hackers billions of years to encrypt just one piece of your data. Most governments and militaries use this type of encryption to ensure that their private data is inaccessible to hackers.

DNS Leak Prevention

IPVanish's DNS leak prevention technology ensures that your real IP location is never revealed to websites and prevents your ISP from tracking your online activity. A lot of IPVanish customer reviews show that, while connected to IPVanish, users have not experienced any leaks.

Automatic Kill Switch

Another great security feature that IPVanish VPN offers is the automatic kill switch. Kill switches are important in case your connection drops and your IP address is suddenly exposed. To prevent this, most VPNs are utilizing automatic kill switches. Unfortunately, the IPVanish kill switch feature is available only for Windows and macOS at the moment.

Streaming

According to most IPVanish reviews, this service might not be among the best VPNs for streaming. You can get excellent speeds with no interruptions on most servers, but the service’s ability to bypass geo-restrictions and VPN blocks is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

On the bright side, while using IPVanish, Netflix, in particular, can be seamlessly streamed on most servers, but it works best on US servers as they provide the fastest connections and best quality streaming. IPVanish is also a good choice for unblocking and streaming Vudu, ESPN, DAZN, HBO Go, and YouTube.

Additionally, using IPVanish, FireStick can be unblocked, which is a feature not all VPNs can brag about. You can also get an IPVanish Chrome extension that makes streaming even easier.

Overall, we have to agree with IPVanish customer reviews — if you’re looking for the best streaming experience out there, you may want to keep looking. Comparing IPVanish vs. NordVPN, for example, would show that the latter is a better choice for bypassing geo-restrictions and has great speed consistency.

Speeds

When it comes to speed, IPVanish performs exceptionally well, even on overseas servers. The IPVanish server list counts over 1,300 servers in more than 55 locations worldwide. While this is a good number, if we were to compare IPVanish vs. CyberGhost, the latter would take the lead with 6,400+ servers in more than 90 locations around the world.

Nonetheless, for the sake of our IPVanish VPN review, we did some research on the service’s speeds on both local and international servers. While we experienced speed drops, they were almost undetectable. Additionally, the speeds were consistent throughout both streaming and gaming, making the service one of the top candidates for the best VPN for gaming.

Torrenting

IPVanish VPN is an excellent choice for torrenting, offering unlimited P2P connections and the SOCKS5 proxy. Users may experience slight speed drops while torrenting from time to time, but the drops are barely measurable. All in all, IPVanish torrenting is easy and, more importantly, safe and anonymous.

Device Compatibility

Our IPVanish review research wouldn’t be complete without telling you which devices the service is compatible with. Well, you’ll be happy to hear that you can get IPVanish VPN for Android, as well as some other major platforms, including Windows, macOS, iOS, Windows Phone, Linux, Chromebook, etc. IPVanish also supports light and dark mode features that you can set in your IPVanish app. This is not something you will often find in VPNs, and we thought it was a nice touch.

Additionally, IPVanish reviews rave about the fact that IPVanish allows an unlimited number of devices using a single account, which makes it one of the best multi-device VPN services on the market right now. Comparing IPVanish vs. PIA, the first one would take the cake as PIA allows only five simultaneous connections.

Customer Support

The IPVanish customer service can only be described as quick. The support page offers six categories, including troubleshooting, FAQs, setup guides, billing questions, announcements, and general information about the service.

You can reach IPVanish support via 24/7 live chat or by sending an email. The research for our IPVanish VPN review shows that the live support team usually answers in a matter of minutes, and the email support takes up to a couple of hours.

If you’re not dying to contact customer service, you’ll be happy to hear that the support website is user-friendly and has a lot of helpful information that allows you to troubleshoot on your own instead. Overall, we give the IPVanish customer service a big thumbs up.

Pricing

Before we wrap up our IPVanish review and give our final verdict, let’s talk money. The first thing that you should know is that you can’t get IPVanish free of charge, which is not a surprise when it comes to premium VPNs. The vendor, however, does offer a generous 30-day money-back guarantee and, as a new customer, you can also get an IPVanish coupon.

IPVanish offers two types of deals. You can get both on either a monthly or yearly basis. The first one includes only the VPN service, while, thanks to the provider’s collaboration with SugarSync, the other includes cloud storage and backup as well.

A lot of IPVanish reviews appreciate one thing about the IPVanish cost, and that is the fact that both plans come at a relatively similar price. The VPN+Backup plan will set you back $5.5/month for the first month and $12.99/month after that, while the VPN-only plan costs $4.5/month the first month and $9.99/month after.

If you’re looking for yearly plans, you should know that the IPVanish discount for the annual subscription includes storage for the first year at $65.99/year. After that, you’ll be paying $109.99/year. The VPN-only plan will set you back $53.99/year for the first year, and you’ll be charged $89.99/year going forward.

Unfortunately, neither an IPVanish 2-year-deal nor an IPVanish lifetime subscription is available at the time of writing this IPVanish review. That said, the vendor usually has some flash deals a couple of times a year when you can get both.

Our Verdict

IPVanish VPN offers a fairly good price-to-features ratio, and it ranks pretty high against its competition for a good reason. That said, we can’t quite give IPVanish a 10/10 because it can’t bypass all VPN blocks. Then, it is not strong enough to support seamless streaming just yet. Nonetheless, as you can see from our IPVanish review, the VPN vendor still has a lot to offer in terms of security, privacy, and of course, torrenting.