AirVPN Vs HideMyAss Comparison – Are They Any Good? Website Novice’s Honest View

  • Time to read: 15 min.
Affiliate Disclaimer

Full Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links to products/services. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

Do you want to remain anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN might be the perfect option for you if yes.

While anybody can declare to be special nowadays, when it pertains to VPN providers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its commitment to securing user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN site starts with an appeal for your trust, mentioning, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anybody can declare to be special nowadays, when it pertains to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of 2 lawyers and a little group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications service provider Iridium previously ran it, but AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).

Throughout the last years, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a bigger organization either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is explained and information the privacy projects that AirVPN has established or supported. These consist of an online encryption tool, a net neutrality monitor, and other projects such as Tor, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and WikiLeaks.

AirVPN takes the unconventional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

How does AirVPN stack up against its rivals with such strong personal privacy qualifications?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller than many, with just 246 servers spread throughout 23 countries.

The majority of servers are in Europe (other than those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor problem here is that the lack of diversity of servers decreases the number of worldwide AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home country while keeping their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That stated, Air is well known for its impressive performance throughout its server network, with lots of countries having high-performance physical individual servers.

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to supply a precise assessment of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely unlimited, without any speed restrictions or time limits.

To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most trustworthy and protected way to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.

Various ports and protocols are offered; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Moreover, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other unsafe protocols.

No preference is given to any protocol, service, or application when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is upheld. Notably, you can overcome internet restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographic restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it instantly enhances users’ privacy and security and is extremely dependable. However, the absence of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t rather staying up to date with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, however it will not put the newer protocol totally in place up until some of its technical and privacy concerns are resolved.

AirVPN has likewise included a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to try out things.

Switching is limitless, so if you do not like one server, you can easily switch servers as frequently as you like.

You can keep an eye on the present load on each server, any existing problems, and a history of previous issues on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a brand-new tab).

There is a detailed specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with details like the readily available ports, protocols, DNS server details (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s access points.

All of it is nice, however since there is no third-party audit, you have to trust that what is being provided will work. But taking a look at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A great thing about this is that you can see what other individuals state about the service prior to signing up. You don’t need to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

Just How Private Is AirVPN, & Does It Keep Logs?

When it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the business is extremely clear. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute concern, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade privacy. There is no individual information logged by AirVPN, which has a strong no-logging, tracking, or monitoring policy.

AirVPN doesn’t track what you do when you’re connected to the VPN, date/time stamps, or your IP address. It only gathers non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can request for this information to be deleted at any time. This makes it among the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, no one can identify you online; not even your ISP can tell what kind of traffic or protocol you’re using.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless network without worrying about your computer and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your information.

Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping tactics will fail against AirVPN because your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They also state they stick to EU privacy guidelines and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or higher levels of personal privacy and information protection as those in the EU.

You can get a brand-new IP address to hide your IP so that no one can utilize it to find out who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level security provided.

You can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor if your ISP or country blocks OpenVPN.

Open-source clients and a lively community online forum allow you to get a sense of what present users are saying about the service before signing up.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This indicates that anybody can look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, however only ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been checked by a 3rd party.

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the finest offered. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) via Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your genuine e-mail address. That’s excellent because it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be conscious that you won’t be able to alter your account’s password if you don’t utilize one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of nations that share intelligence information). Even if the federal government asked for user information, AirVPN would have nothing to give them.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, available on all significant platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Sadly, despite Eddie’s considerable ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those companies who utilize it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Establishing the app is simple, and it has all the information you require to connect to a VPN.

There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to assist you. While it’s not difficult to get things working, it doesn’t have the most user-friendly interface, so it might be a more tough learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a lot of download options. There are builds for numerous running systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit tastes, and in installable or portable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to discuss what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most present does not function on your setup.

After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. You simply click Disconnect when you’re ended up. Simple enough for anybody, but Eddie can do a lot more since AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two essential AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows you to connect when your computer launches, however you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen last.

Even though it defines “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the exact same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe and secure tunnel. A lot of basic kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, but you can set up the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.

Eddie’s design is easy to understand. Along the top, there are six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview merely displays the server to which you are connected, the download and upload speeds, the exit IP address, and the connection time. This is where you log into your account.

The Servers page displays all available servers in the network, along with comprehensive details about every one, such as the server’s nickname, area, latency in milliseconds from your place, and existing users and server load. Outstanding stuff!

This tab also has an amber/green signal that lets you know whether a server is suggested for you.

The Countries page displays the number of servers offered in each nation at a glimpse, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also shown. Lots of servers have up to 1000 Mb/s bandwidth, while some smaller sized ones have a 100 Mb/s connection.

A green checkmark, a red “X,” and a blank box can be discovered on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a country, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is essentially a favorites list; you might select as numerous countries as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that country will be removed, effectively making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.

By picking a nation, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. Connect to a server by marking it and clicking on the “sign out” icon on the right-hand side (a right-facing arrow pointing into a square bracket).

The Speed tab shows a basic throughput graph with thin plot lines. Its temporal resolution can be altered, so you can see traffic from the last 10 seconds to one day.

While most apps display your current VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained info, such as the server’s location, load, present user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data downloaded and uploaded, and far more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to utilize a VPN with all the information they could ever desire about the various locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s a valuable resource.

Lastly, Logs is an in-depth record of connections, routes, and other information.

A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. This permits you to tweak the setup, such as whether it should always connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Or whether to attempt an SSH tunnel through more flexible ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The really proficient user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface via the Logs pane.

If the huge function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be hard to figure out what particular settings do and how to get the wanted results. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of personalization.

However, do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its intricacy. Remember that the program generally operates fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings until you try to find them. Nevertheless, if you periodically yearn for power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not want to utilize Eddie. In that case, you can also set up a router or firewall to send all traffic through a VPN tunnel. This works with routers running the open-source DD-WRT and Tomato firmware and the FreeBSD-based pfSense firewall.

How Good Is AirVPN’s Mobile App?

Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can use a very feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application provides the exact same comprehensive configuration choices as its desktop sibling and practical status info.

Separate pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a country and choose a specific city on the same page. Some valuable text additions make the information more reasonable, however it’s still quite challenging to understand in some spots.

Android does not have as lots of settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still many more than many people will ever require. The software also attempts a little bit more to help you, with extra text subtitles to describe what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN normally connects rapidly and is ready to enter less than 10 seconds.

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop notice, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In regards to personal privacy, leak tests revealed that AirVPN’s Windows client didn’t have any DNS leaks, which reveals that the Network Lock/Kill Switch works well.

Now let’s get to those speeds.

Since AirVPN only supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competitors.

However, reviewers have actually reported speeds to be exceptional. Certainly, one said there wasn’t a single nation where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly remarkable overall.

While it wasn’t quite on top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and situations like HD video, streaming, and video gaming conferencing certainly won’t slow you down.

What AirVPN lacks is a broader number of server places. This may limit the ease of access of nearby servers for some users (which will always lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional choice for many people in the United States and Europe, but maybe less so for other regions.

Streaming

Streaming the big services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple Television, Hulu, HBO, BBC iPlayer, and Discovery+ has actually been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Indeed, some report that Air is pretty poor for streaming and does not work with any of the significant streaming services. However, it appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer says services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, finding the ideal server requires prolonged experimentation. This is probably because, unlike other companies, AirVPN doesn’t offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

The good news is, on AirVPN’s site, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can examine to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.

Streaming is definitely not an area in which AirVPN stands out, merely since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on personal privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Allow P2P?

Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Just connect to the VPN server of your choice and get going.

Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Several applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run poorly without it, and your computer system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.

File sharing has decent speeds on local servers, enables port forwarding for as much as 20 ports at once (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, activated by default, will block all traffic from exiting your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is extremely practical, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have shown torrenting to be remarkable, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and without any concerns whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN uses a larger range of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 devices simultaneously, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.

This makes it an exceptional option for people who reside in a household home or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While five really should be enough for the majority of people, other VPN suppliers provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Pricing varies based on the membership length, and each plan includes the same features. Most plans offer good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions provide the very best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. They use the European Central Bank to offer real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be quickly converted to and paid for in the currency of your option.

The present plans readily available are:

Three days- EUR2

One month – EUR7

Three months – EUR15 – works out to EUR 5/month

Six months – EUR29 – works out to EUR 4.83/month

One year – EUR49 – works out to EUR 4.08/month

Two years – EUR79 – works out to EUR 3.29/month

Three years – EUR99 – works out to EUR 2.75/month

AirVPN accepts major credit cards, PayPal, Amazon Pay, and a whole load of cryptocurrencies, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of international choices are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day complimentary trial, which can be obtained by sending out a message to the support team and utilizing the discount coupon code they send you.

There’s likewise a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they have not broken the terms of service or used more than 5 GB of data throughout that time.

AirVPN Customer Support

AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than lots of other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it offers e-mail assistance and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a really active assistance online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Significantly, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t contracted out but can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get a response. That stated, the e-mail support is high quality, and the representatives are useful and friendly, however the detailed responses can be quite technical, which might put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a great deal of details, including a big FAQs area that is separated by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different topics, however novices will have the very same troubles comprehending a great deal of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Exceptional speeds with very little loss.

Unlimited P2P permitted with Port Forwarding.

Strong security on apps and servers alike, with advanced protocols and encryption.

Network Lock/Kill Switch.

Split tunneling.

Supports Windows, Mac, Linux, mobile, and routers.

Supports Tor over VPN.

Easy app installation and use.

Many, many advanced settings and customization choices in the client app.

Solid Customer Service.

Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.

Excellent prices, especially for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists protect you from advertisements, adware, trackers, and harmful sources.

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t very easy to use or pretty like other services.

Client app may overwhelm newer users.

It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Possibly there are a lot of advanced alternatives.

Located in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trusted, and safe VPN service with excellent rates. It’s clearly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN company. However even brand-new users might do much, much worse.

While it could be challenging to utilize if you’re brand-new to VPNs, you’ll receive much quicker speeds and better results than a number of its rival VPN rivals.

When it boils down to it, this VPN service is more concentrated on securing your personal privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.

It may not guarantee the same level of personal privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a good alternative for consumers who value their personal privacy.

While it doesn’t hit the speed heights of a WireGuard service, performance-wise, it’s absolutely the best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an exceptional option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

Click Here Or Below To Join AirVPN Today!!

AirVPN Vs Windscribe In 2022 – Our Decision