Hide.me VPN review: A worthy VPN service packed with features

Price When Reviewed

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

Best Prices Today: Hide.me

Hide.me VPN briefly:

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

Hide.me from Malaysia-based eVenture Ltd. is a VPN that may not have the identify recognition of in the present day’s hottest companies, but it surely packs simply as many options. It has slowly expanded its networks in recent times to embody extra areas, and add extra servers. 

Since our final overview, Hide.me has added much more servers and nearly doubled its nation areas. It has additionally decreased the worth on its longer-term subscriptions and added a number of further 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?

Since our final overview of Hide.me, it has modified up its interface fairly a bit. Now if you open up the applying you’re confronted with a dashboard that exhibits some related data comparable 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 properly, which means you possibly can customise the look to solely show the information you want. This is a welcomed change of tempo from the extra simplistic house display screen of previous that solely displayed an Enable/Disable button within the middle. 

On the left sidebar you’ve further tabs for Locations, Map, and Features, in addition to Your Account, and Support. The Locations tab shows a searchable checklist of all accessible Hide.me server areas with particularly quick 10G servers tagged with an icon subsequent to the server identify. Along the highest you possibly can filter via all servers, these optimized for streaming, or Multi Hop servers as properly. 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 lots right here. There are the standard choices to launch on system startup, join routinely, and so forth. It additionally launched a characteristic known as Bolt “Fast Proxy” which optimizes web pace efficiency over an OpenVPN connection. Theoretically, this could result in large 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 characteristic known as Stealth Guard. This can be utilized to restrict both an app or your total web except a Hide.me VPN connection is current, thereby eliminating IP deal with leaks ought to your connection falter. There can be a separate Kill Switch characteristic accessible as properly underneath the settings menu.

Hide.me even provides extra unconventional instruments comparable to port forwarding and safety from DNS, IP, and IPv6 leaks. Like I stated, this service has lots of options. Add to that the huge array of protocols accessible and the choice to make use of customized DNS and it shortly turns into obvious that Hide.me is an influence person’s dream.

With all of that being stated, as a result of sheer quantity of accessible options and the maze of menus it’s essential to work via to tweak all of them, this service most likely isn’t for inexperienced persons—or the faint of coronary heart. I personally discovered navigating the app a bit disorienting. I do just like the current revamp to its older simplistic interface, however I can’t assist however assume that it went too far in the other way. It’s a minor gripe although and determining the menu system is simply a matter of spending a while within the utility itself.

Hide.me is on the market 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 price noting that Hide.me has a helpful free model that gives the entire nice safety features of its premium counterpart. The solely draw back is that you just’re restricted to 10GB monthly and it solely offers entry to 8 of its servers. Due to those limitations, I don’t advocate utilizing the free model to stream, but it surely’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 completely different nations all all over the world for a number of days after which in contrast them to my baseline web pace. Across all areas examined, the speeds averaged simply over 31 % of the bottom obtain pace and 67 % of the bottom add pace. That’s okay, however wanting our checklist of the fastest VPNs.

Within that combination, nevertheless, had been some really unbelievable speeds. I simply discovered they weren’t constant. It was fairly widespread for every location to indicate some nice relative speeds sooner or later after which fall off utterly 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 after all not unusual as distance tends to have an effect on ping, but it surely was so drastic in some situations it caught me a bit unexpectedly.

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

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

In regards to streaming, Hide.me carried out admirably. Every optimized streaming server I related to was capable of entry streaming websites comparable to Netflix and Amazon Prime. I even examined its non-optimized servers they usually had no points as properly. Due to the inconsistent speeds although I did discover that my video tended to drop in high quality for very transient durations of time. Still, Hide.me ought to serve you properly 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 observe your exercise if you’re related to the VPN. It doesn’t preserve connection logs or retailer IP addresses. The firm does, nevertheless, preserve troubleshooting logs that embody a randomly generated username and an internally assigned IP deal with for every person. The troubleshooting logs are erased each few hours, in accordance with the privateness coverage. Additionally, it logs month-to-month knowledge site visitors quantities for high quality assurance functions.

The firm did cross an impartial safety audit of its ‘No-log’ coverage by Defense Code Ltd., however that was in 2015. Unfortunately, a more moderen audit has not been accomplished since that point. The incontrovertible fact that it was one of many first VPN companies to endure an impartial audit exhibits that it takes privateness severely. 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 the direction of assuring customers that Hide.me is continuous its privateness commitments. Having stated that, it does publish annual “Transparency reports” detailing all knowledge requests the corporate has obtained in a given 12 months.

Sam Singleton

The VPN itself comes with trade customary AES 256-bit encryption. It additionally provides an entire vary of protocols together with IKEv2, OpenVPN, SoftEtherVPN, WireGuard, and SSTP—that’s greater than most different companies. Furthermore, it even provides 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 deal with 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 varied cryptocurrencies.

Is Hide.me price it?

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

It makes the entire proper privateness guarantees although and the service was capable of unblock all streaming websites that I examined. Overall, it’s a well-rounded service that ticks nearly each field you could possibly need from a high VPN. I can simply advocate it for knowledgeable energy customers, however inexperienced persons would possibly wish to attempt the free model first earlier than committing to the premium service.

Editor’s observe: Because on-line companies are sometimes iterative, gaining new options and efficiency enhancements over time, this overview is topic to alter so as to precisely replicate the present state of the service. Any modifications to textual content or our last overview verdict will probably be famous on the high of this text.