Hotspot Shield review: This speedster VPN’s still got it

Price When Reviewed

$12.99 per thirty days

Best Prices Today: Hotspot Shield

Hotspot Shield in short:

• P2P allowed: Yes
• Device connections: 5 simultaneous connections
• Business location: United States
• Number of servers: 1,800+
• Number of nation places: 90
• Cost: $12.99 per thirty days or $95.88 for a yearly subscription

In our earlier evaluations, Hotspot Shield has been our reigning velocity champion, taking our high spot for quickest VPN by a mile. But with so many VPN companies bolstering their servers and adopting sooner protocols, it’s price taking one other look to see the way it stacks up in right this moment’s market.

Further studying: See our roundup of the best VPN services to study competing merchandise.

What are Hotspot Shield’s options and companies?

Sam Singleton

Sam Singleton

Sam Singleton

When you begin Hotspot Shield it exhibits a matte-black background with an enormous energy button within the middle of the window. The default display screen contains two tiles under the ability button. One is for selecting your location, and the opposite shows your cumulative every day information utilization. It’s a satisfying person interface that continues to really feel slick and fashionable — although it hasn’t modified in years.

Sam Singleton

Sam Singleton

Sam Singleton

When you open up the server places tab, you’ll discover an intensive checklist of 1,800 or so servers unfold throughout a formidable 90 nations. Before Hotspot Shield modified possession to Aura, it had over 3,200 servers. When we beforehand reached out to Aura to ask why it determined to drop server rely the corporate mentioned, “Aura uses more powerful servers and has a more efficient software stack. We have continued to innovate on the VPN infrastructure stack leveraging our proprietary Hydra technology, which has led to an architecture that utilizes a smaller number of specialized servers that work together to deliver a superior VPN experience.”

Hotspot Shield additionally helps streaming companies corresponding to Netflix. Rather than making a blanket assertion that its servers will work with streaming, it really has devoted streaming servers in each the U.S. and UK. In addition to streaming places you’ll be able to select servers devoted to gaming as nicely.  

Zooming again out to the house display screen, there are a selection of choices on the left rail to select from. These embrace a helpful built-in velocity check, account data, a help web page, and a settings menu.

Sam Singleton

Sam Singleton

Sam Singleton

The settings space has plenty of helpful gadgets. There’s an web kill change that stops all net site visitors if the VPN connection crashes, and resumes solely while you reconnect to the VPN. There’s additionally an “Auto-protect” characteristic that can mechanically connect with the VPN while you’re on public Wi-Fi.

In truth, since our final overview, Hotspot Shield has added plenty of nice new options that may be turned on underneath the settings menu. It now affords cut up tunneling which lets you decide and select which apps or web sites needs to be run by the VPN and which needs to be excluded. Additionally, it added help for the WireGuard protocol.

Ian Paul

Ian Paul

Ian Paul

Once you’re related, the app shows small informational tiles that present your VPN location, the VPN IP tackle you’re utilizing, the quantity of bandwidth you’ve used going up and down, velocity information, plus the identify of the native community you’re presently on. The server data tile additionally has some good information in it, together with your present IP tackle, the load of the server (as a share), the latency, and size of time related. 

Hotspot Shield helps as much as 5 simultaneous system connections, which for a service this dear is on the low aspect and hasn’t been modified in recent times. The service has apps for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS. There are additionally directions for establishing a router, as with quite a few different companies.

How a lot does Hotspot Shield price?

Hotspot Shield is likely one of the dearer VPNs at $12.99 per thirty days. There can be a yearly plan that drops the value to $7.99 per thirty days or $95.88 for the entire 12 months. In the previous, these larger costs may very well be justified as Hotspot Shield supplied its subscriptions as bundled companies — not simply the VPN, but in addition a password supervisor, antivirus, and name blocker. Nowadays, although, many different companies are providing these similar options for no further value.

Hotspot Shield does supply a free model of its VPN for no cost in any way. The free model limits you to 500MB of information per day, connection speeds are capped at 2Mbps, and there is just one U.S. server obtainable. You’ll additionally must wade by fairly a number of adverts whereas utilizing it, particularly with the Android app. Still, these restrictions aren’t a dealbreaker and are literally comparatively gentle in comparison with these of many different free companies.

Hotspot Shield accepts funds through bank card and PayPal.

How is Hotspot Shield’s efficiency?

For a very long time, Hotspot Shield’s Hydra protocol was the flat-out quickest VPN you would discover. In latest years, nevertheless, that’s modified, as many opponents have adopted the new-ish WireGuard protocol. The lightning-fast speeds of WireGuard imply that Hotspot Shield not stands alone on the high of the heap of fastest VPNs.

When testing Hotspot Shield’s efficiency, I measured connection speeds throughout its servers in six completely different nations around the globe after which in contrast them to my baseline web velocity. I did this utilizing each its proprietary Hydra protocol in addition to WireGuard.

The common obtain speeds for the as soon as vaunted Hydra have been 61 p.c of base obtain velocity. Upload speeds clocked in at 70 p.c of my base add velocity. That’s not dangerous, however it’s not nice both. Just like an growing old Usain Bolt, the opponents have been certain to catch up ultimately, I suppose.

When related to WireGuard, nevertheless, I really seen a slight velocity enhance, with obtain speeds leaping to 64 p.c of base whereas add speeds remained about the identical. This simply goes to indicate that Hydra isn’t what it as soon as was and, fairly truthfully, I’d be arduous pressed to advocate it over WireGuard going ahead.

All of this isn’t to say that Hotspot Shield is sluggish. It’s nonetheless a lot sooner than many different VPNs, however it not runs away with the quickest title. Other VPNs corresponding to NordVPN and ProtonVPN have caught up and overtaken it.

For those that’re wanting to make use of Hotspot Shield to unblock streaming content material, you’re in luck. It labored surprisingly nicely when it got here to accessing geo-restricted content material on websites corresponding to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and others. The service maintains a number of streaming optimized servers within the U.S. and UK, however I really discovered that even random servers I related to in locations like Japan and Australia allowed me to entry content material as nicely.

How is Hotspot Shield’s safety and privateness?

Sam Singleton

Sam Singleton

Sam Singleton

Hotspot Shield affords three protocols: WireGuard, IKEv2, and its personal proprietary protocol referred to as Catapult Hydra. There isn’t an excessive amount of recognized about Hydra, however it’s utilized by Kaspersky, Bitdefender, and McAfee, amongst different reliable safety manufacturers and I suppose that goes a great distance in direction of demonstrating its reliability.

The service additionally affords a kill change, turned off by default, which in my testing efficiently blocked my web site visitors when my VPN connection was unexpectedly terminated. It’s price noting, nevertheless, that the kill-switch perform solely works with the Hydra protocol, not with WireGuard or IKEv2. This is extremely uncommon and fairly vexing as I’ve by no means come throughout a VPN that doesn’t permit its kill-switch characteristic to work throughout all protocols.

Sam Singleton

Sam Singleton

Sam Singleton

While the safety could be top-notch, Hotspot Shield drops the ball in relation to privateness. Its dad or mum firm Aura nonetheless collects the domains you go to, as did the earlier Hotspot Shield homeowners. Not the precise URLs, thoughts you, simply the higher-level domains. Aura says it does this with a view to, “monitor, support, and optimize our VPN services.” As a aspect be aware, this optimization is probably going one of many causes Hotspot Shield is ready to keep on the high of our velocity rankings. 

In addition to the domains, Hotspot Shield additionally creates a hash based mostly in your system attributes and makes use of that to measure bandwidth use, present help, analytics, and so forth. Your IP tackle can be saved (in an encrypted state) throughout your VPN session after which deleted. Finally, the corporate additionally collects the length of your classes and bandwidth consumption. Aura says it does this “to monitor, support, and optimize our VPN services, as well as enforce free app usage limits.”

Although Hotspot Shield claims that this information is anonymized and logs can’t be traced again to particular customers, this has sadly by no means been verified by unbiased audit. So it’s as much as you whether or not you’re keen to take them at their phrase.

Is Hotspot Shield price it?

Hotspot Shield is a superb choice in case your solely concern is VPN speeds for streaming, gaming, and so forth. It’s not the standout that it as soon as was, as different VPNs have caught up, however it’s nonetheless lots quick. The Windows and Android apps are simple to make use of and it really works with Netflix and different streaming companies.

The firm’s privateness coverage leaves loads to be desired although, and proprietary VPN protocols, even one with huge help like Hydra, are nonetheless somewhat questionable. The actuality is that there are different VPN companies that log far much less information, and nonetheless have acceptable speeds. Go with Hotspot Shield for the velocity, however not the privateness.

Editor’s be aware: Because on-line companies are sometimes iterative, gaining new options and efficiency enhancements over time, this overview is topic to alter with a view to precisely replicate the present state of the service. Any adjustments to textual content or our ultimate overview verdict might be famous on the high of this text.