AirVPN Vs HideMyAss: Terrific VPNs Matched Up

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Do you wish to stay anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the perfect service for you if yes.

While anyone can declare to be special these days, when it comes to VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its commitment to securing user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN website 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 anyone can declare to be unique these days, when it concerns VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of two lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications company Iridium formerly ran it, however AirVPN took over in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is currently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).

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

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is discussed and information the personal 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 non-traditional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

So how does AirVPN stack up against its competitors with such strong personal privacy qualifications?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than many, with only 246 servers spread out across 23 countries.

A lot of servers are in Europe (other than those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small problem here is that the lack of diversity of servers minimizes the number of global AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while preserving their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They use transparent bandwidth allocation methods to supply a precise evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally unlimited, without any speed constraints or time limits.

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

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

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

The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it immediately enhances users’ privacy and security and is highly trustworthy. The lack of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN says it is testing WireGuard, but it won’t put the more recent protocol fully in place until a few of its technical and privacy issues are addressed.

AirVPN has also included a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to experiment with things.

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

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

There is an in-depth specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the offered ports, protocols, DNS server details (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s gain access to points.

All of it is nice, however because there is no third-party audit, you have to trust that what is being provided will work. Looking at the active community forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice 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 company is really clear. Online personal privacy and security are the outright priority, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal 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 data” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can request for this info to be deleted at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

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

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wi-fi network without fretting about your computer system and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.

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

They likewise say they comply with EU privacy guidelines which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or higher levels of privacy and information protection as those in the EU.

You can get a new IP address to hide your IP so that no one can use it to learn who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-level security offered.

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

Open-source clients and a lively community forum enable you to get a sense of what existing users are stating about the service prior to registering.

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

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the best available. 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 details, not even your real e-mail address. That’s fantastic given that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be aware that you won’t be able to alter your account’s password if you don’t use one.

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

Who Or What Is Eddie??

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

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Setting up the app is easy, and it has all the details you require to connect to a VPN.

Unfortunately, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide you. While it’s not difficult to get things working, it doesn’t have the most easy to use interface, so it may be a more difficult learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a ton of download choices. 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 new and an archive of past releases in case the most present doesn’t function on your setup.

After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. When you’re finished, you simply click Disconnect. Simple enough for anyone, however 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

2 key AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN enables you to connect when your computer launches, but you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.

Although it specifies “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the exact same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its protected tunnel. A lot of basic kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, however you can establish 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 just shows 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 readily available servers in the network, along with comprehensive information about each one, such as the server’s nickname, location, latency in milliseconds from your location, and existing users and server load. Excellent stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the variety of servers readily available in each nation at a glimpse, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also shown. Many servers have up to 1000 Mb/s bandwidth, while some smaller 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 nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is essentially a favorites list; you may select as lots of countries as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that nation will be gotten rid of, successfully making it a blocklist/denylist. To eliminate the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.

By choosing a nation, you are not right away connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and pick the server you want in a particular nation. 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). There are also a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s also a “refresh” button to get updated information on ping times and load times.

The Speed tab shows a simple 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 the majority of apps show your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained details, such as the server’s location, load, current user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information downloaded and uploaded, and a lot more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to use a VPN with all the info they might ever desire about the different locations, down to the number of users on a particular server. It’s a priceless resource.

Lastly, Logs is a detailed record of connections, routes, and other data.

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

The genuinely competent user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface through the Logs pane.

If the vast function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be difficult to figure out what particular settings do and how to get the desired outcomes. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of personalization.

However, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program usually operates fine on its own, and you’ll never see the settings till you look for them. Nevertheless, if you occasionally long for power or configurability, the app will offer it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t wish to use 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?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize an exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application supplies the exact same comprehensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and helpful status information.

Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a nation and choose a particular city on the same page. Some practical text additions make the info more reasonable, however it’s still rather challenging to understand in some spots.

Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still a lot more than most people will ever need. The software application likewise attempts a little bit more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to discuss what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app identifying when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop alert, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of privacy, leak tests showed that AirVPN’s Windows client didn’t have any DNS leaks, which shows that the Network Lock/Kill Switch works well.

Now let’s get to those speeds.

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

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

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

What AirVPN does not have is a more comprehensive variety of server places. This might limit the availability of close-by servers for some users (which will always lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding option for most people in the United States and Europe, but maybe less so for other areas.

Streaming

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

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

Another reviewer says services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, finding the right server needs lengthy experimentation. This is probably because, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN doesn’t provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

Streaming is definitely not an area in which AirVPN excels, simply since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on 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. Numerous applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run poorly without it, and your computer’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.

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

AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, activated by default, will block all traffic from leaving your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending out unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very convenient, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have revealed torrenting to be remarkable, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and without any problems whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN provides a wider range of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as five gadgets at the same time, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other devices all at the same time.

This makes it an excellent choice for individuals who live in a family home or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 should be enough for the majority of people, other VPN service providers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Rates varies based on the membership length, and each plan includes the exact same features. Most plans use good value; nevertheless, longer memberships use the best offer.

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

The present plans offered 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, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of international choices are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day totally free trial, which can be obtained by sending a message to the support team and using the coupon code they send you.

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

AirVPN Customer Support

AirVPN has a different customer support offering than many other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it provides email assistance and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has an extremely active assistance online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Notably, AirVPN’s e-mail assistance isn’t outsourced but can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get an action. That stated, the e-mail support is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and helpful, but the thorough answers can be pretty technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a lot of information, consisting of a big FAQs section that is separated by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover several topics, however novices will have the very same troubles understanding a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent speeds with minimal loss.

Unrestricted P2P permitted with Port Forwarding.

Strong security on servers and apps 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 options in the client app.

Solid Customer Care.

Active Community Forums and In-depth Guides.

Excellent costs, particularly for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists shield you from ads, adware, trackers, and hazardous sources.

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app may overwhelm newer users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are too many advanced choices.

Located in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?

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

While it could be challenging to use 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 ensure the very same level of privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and permits you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent option for customers who value their personal privacy.

While it does not hit the speed heights of a WireGuard service, performance-wise, it’s definitely the very best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an excellent option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

Click Here Or Below To Join AirVPN Today!!

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