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

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Do you wish to remain anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the best option for you if yes.

While anyone can declare to be special nowadays, when it comes to VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its dedication to protecting user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN website begins with an appeal for your trust, specifying, “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 pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of 2 lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications supplier Iridium previously ran it, however AirVPN took over in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently 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 bigger business either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is discussed and information the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has actually 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 developed 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 sized than many, with only 246 servers spread across 23 countries.

Many servers are in Europe (aside from those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small concern here is that the lack of diversity of servers reduces the number of worldwide AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while preserving their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That stated, Air is popular for its exceptional performance throughout its server network, with numerous countries having high-performance physical individual servers.

They use transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to offer a precise assessment of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely 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 protected and trustworthy way to create encrypted tunnels. It provides 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. Every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So forget about PPTP and other risky protocols.

No preference is given to any protocol, application, or service when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is upheld. Significantly, you can get rid of web constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographic limitations, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it instantly enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is highly dependable. However, the lack of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That said, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, however it won’t put the more recent protocol fully in place up until some of its technical and privacy issues are resolved.

AirVPN has actually likewise included a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to experiment with things.

Switching is unlimited, so if you don’t like one server, you can quickly switch servers as often as you like.

You can keep track of the existing 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 a detailed specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the 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 since there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being offered will work. But looking at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A great feature of this is that you can see what other people state about the service before signing up. You do not have 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 very clear. Online personal privacy and security are the outright priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade privacy. There is no individual info 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, however you can ask for this information 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 figure out what sort of traffic or protocol you’re using.

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

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

They also state they abide by EU personal privacy guidelines which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or higher levels of privacy and data protection as those in the EU.

You can get a brand-new IP address to hide your IP so that nobody can use it to discover 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 blocks OpenVPN.

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

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 only ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been inspected by a third party.

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the finest offered. The first exchange uses 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 email address. That’s excellent considering that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But be aware 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 countries that share intelligence information). Even if the government asked for user information, AirVPN would have 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. In spite of Eddie’s substantial capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as excellent as those suppliers who utilize it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

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

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

After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. When you’re completed, you simply click Disconnect. Simple enough for anybody, but Eddie can do so much more since AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two crucial AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN enables you to connect when your computer system starts up, but you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen last.

Even though it specifies “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the 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 layout is easy to understand. Along the top, there are six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview just 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 offered servers in the network, in addition to comprehensive details about each one, such as the server’s label, place, latency in milliseconds from your area, and present users and server load. Impressive stuff!

This tab also 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 a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is also shown. Numerous 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 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 essentially a favorites list; you might choose as lots of nations as you like.

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

By picking 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 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 many apps show your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained details, such as the server’s location, load, existing user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data downloaded and uploaded, and a lot more.

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

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

This enables you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it needs to always connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor support, custom-made DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The truly proficient user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface via the Logs pane.

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

However, do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its intricacy. Remember that the program usually operates fine on its own, and you’ll never see the settings up until you try to find them. If you periodically yearn for power or configurability, the app will offer 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 instead. This software provides the very same substantial configuration options as its desktop sibling and valuable status info.

Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a nation and select a particular city on the very same page. Some helpful text additions make the info more understandable, but it’s still quite tough to understand in some spots.

Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still many more than many people will ever require. The software likewise tries a bit more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to explain what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN typically connects rapidly and is ready to go in less than 10 seconds.

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

In terms of privacy, leak tests revealed 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.

It was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competitors because AirVPN only supports OpenVPN.

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

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

What AirVPN does not have is a wider variety of server places. This may restrict the ease of access of close-by servers for some users (which will constantly result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding option for most people in the United States and Europe, however possibly less so for other regions.

Streaming

Streaming the huge services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV, 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 utilized by Netflix in the USA, 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 states services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix seldom work, and when they do, finding the best server requires lengthy experimentation. This is most likely since, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN doesn’t offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

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

Streaming is absolutely not an area in which AirVPN stands out, just since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on personal 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 option and get going.

Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. A number of applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run badly without it, and your computer’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.

File sharing has decent speeds on local servers, permits port forwarding for up to 20 ports simultaneously (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, triggered by default, will block all traffic from leaving your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very convenient, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have actually shown torrenting to be outstanding, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and with no concerns whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Prices

AirVPN offers a wider range of plans than many 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 devices all at the same time.

This makes it an outstanding option for individuals who reside in a household home or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 should be enough for most people, other VPN suppliers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Pricing varies based upon the membership length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. Most plans use good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions offer the very best offer.

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

The existing 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, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of worldwide choices are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day complimentary 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 haven’t broken the terms of service or utilized more than 5 GB of data during that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

AirVPN has a different customer support offering than lots of other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it provides e-mail 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 contracted out however can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get a response. That said, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the agents are friendly and practical, however the detailed answers can be quite technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a lot of details, including a big Frequently asked questions area that is broken up by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover various subjects, but newbies will have the exact same troubles comprehending a great deal of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent speeds with minimal 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 setup and usage.

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

Solid Customer Support.

Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.

Excellent rates, especially for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t very user-friendly or pretty like other services.

Client app might overwhelm more recent users.

It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are too many advanced alternatives.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are fairly 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 great rates. It’s plainly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN company. Even new users might do much, much worse.

While it could be challenging to utilize if you’re new to VPNs, you’ll get much quicker speeds and much better results than a lot of its competing VPN rivals.

When it comes down to it, this VPN service is more focused on safeguarding your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.

Although it might not guarantee the very same level of personal privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and enables you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a good option for consumers who value their 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 outstanding option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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