AirVPN Vs Hotspot Shield – Close Match, But Only One Winner

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Do you want to stay anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the best service for you.

While anyone can declare to be unique nowadays, when it pertains to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its dedication to safeguarding user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN site starts with an appeal for your trust, stating, “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 unique nowadays, when it concerns VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of 2 lawyers and a little 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).

During the last decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger business either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is explained and information the privacy projects that AirVPN has developed or supported. These include 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.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than the majority of, with only 246 servers spread throughout 23 nations.

A lot of servers are in Europe (besides those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small problem here is that the absence of diversity of servers minimizes the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while maintaining their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That said, Air is well known for its exceptional performance throughout its server network, with lots of nations having high-performance physical individual servers.

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation methods to provide an accurate evaluation of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely unlimited, with no 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 safe and reputable way to create encrypted tunnels. It offers more security than the military.

Many ports and protocols are readily available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Additionally, 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 service, application, or protocol when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is upheld. Notably, you can overcome web constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographical constraints, and traffic shaping.

The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it immediately enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is highly trustworthy. The absence of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, however it won’t put the more recent protocol completely in place till some of its technical and personal privacy concerns are dealt with.

AirVPN has actually also added 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 change 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 new tab).

There is a detailed specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with info 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, but given that there is no third-party audit, you need to trust that what is being used will work. But taking a look at the active community forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A great aspect of this is that you can see what other individuals say about the service before 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 privacy and security are the outright top priority, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal privacy. There is no individual details 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 just gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can ask for this details to be erased 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 sort of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

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 methods will fail versus AirVPN due to the fact that your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They also say they stick to EU personal privacy guidelines which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or greater levels of privacy and data protection as those in the EU.

You can get a new IP address to conceal your IP so that nobody can utilize it to discover who you are. You’ll remain safe with the top-level protection provided.

If your ISP or nation obstructs OpenVPN, you can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor.

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

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

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the very best offered. It’s similar to that of some other companies, however still worth discussing. The first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying happens every 60 minutes, and the user can lower this value. The primary data channel uses AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your real e-mail address. That’s terrific because it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. But understand 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 information). Even if the federal government asked for user information, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to give them.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

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

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

Unfortunately, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to direct you. While it’s not hard to get things working, it does not have the most user-friendly interface, so it may be a more tough learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a load of download choices. There are builds for different running systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit flavors, and in portable or installable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to describe what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most current does not function on your setup.

After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. You just click Disconnect when you’re completed. Simple enough for anybody, however Eddie can do a lot more given that AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

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

Although it defines “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the very 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 only do this when the VPN is on, however 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 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 offered servers in the network, along with detailed details about each one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your location, and present users and server load. Impressive stuff!

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

The Countries page shows the variety of servers readily available in each country at a glimpse, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise 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 found on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a nation, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you might choose 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 remove the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.

By choosing a country, you are not instantly 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 displays an easy 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 a lot of apps show your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained information, such as the server’s location, load, existing user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information downloaded and uploaded, and much more.

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

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

A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. This enables 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 try an SSH tunnel through more versatile ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

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

If the large function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be difficult to determine what specific settings do and how to get the preferred outcomes. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of personalization.

However, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its complexity. Remember that the program usually functions fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings until you search for them. However, if you occasionally crave power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t 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?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize an extremely feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application offers the very same substantial setup choices as its desktop sibling and practical status information.

Different pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a country and pick a specific city on the exact same page. Some practical text additions make the information more easy to understand, however it’s still rather tough to understand in some spots.

Android does not have as lots of settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still a lot more than the majority of people will ever require. The software also tries a bit more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to discuss what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN generally 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, alerting us with a desktop alert, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of 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 just supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competitors.

Reviewers have reported speeds to be exceptional. One stated there wasn’t a single nation where they could complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was really outstanding overall.

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

What AirVPN lacks is a wider number of server locations. This might restrict the accessibility of close-by servers for some users (which will always lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional option for most people in the United States and Europe, however perhaps less so for other regions.

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 effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Some report that Air is quite bad for streaming and does not work with any of the major 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 rarely work, and when they do, finding the right server needs prolonged experimentation. This is most likely because, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN does not offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

Streaming is absolutely 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 Torrenting?

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 use port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. A number of 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 good speeds on regional servers, enables port forwarding for up to 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 obstruct all traffic from leaving your device 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 really convenient, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN offers a broader variety of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 gadgets all at once, 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 household home or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should be enough for most people, other VPN companies offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Prices varies based upon the membership length, and each plan includes the same features. The majority of plans provide good value; however, longer memberships provide the best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they use the European Central Bank to provide real-time currency exchange rate for those abroad, so it can be quickly transformed to and paid for in the currency of your option.

The current plans 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 also 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 using the voucher code they send you.

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

AirVPN Customer Assistance

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

Notably, AirVPN’s e-mail assistance isn’t outsourced however can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get a reaction. That stated, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the representatives are valuable and friendly, but the thorough responses can be quite technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a great deal of information, consisting of a big FAQs section that is broken up by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, however beginners will have the very same problems understanding a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent speeds with minimal loss.

Unlimited P2P enabled 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 usage.

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

Solid Client Service.

Active Community Forums and In-depth Guides.

Good costs, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t extremely user-friendly or attractive like other services.

Client app might overwhelm more recent users.

It is very hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are a lot of advanced choices.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with good pricing. It’s clearly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN supplier. 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 much of its rival VPN rivals.

This VPN service is more focused on protecting your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu when it comes down to it.

Although it may not guarantee the exact same level of privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and permits you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a great option for customers who value their personal privacy.

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

Highly recommended!

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AirVPN Review 2022: Will You Be Switching Over This Month?