AirVPN Vs StrongVPN: Learn About The Main Differences

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

While anybody can claim to be unique these days, when it concerns VPN companies, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its commitment to safeguarding user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN site begins 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 anyone can declare to be distinct these days, when it concerns VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of two lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications service provider Iridium formerly 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 larger business either.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is explained and details the personal 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 providing a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than a lot of, with just 246 servers spread out across 23 nations.

Many servers are in Europe (aside from those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor concern here is that the absence of variety of servers decreases the number of global AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while maintaining their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That said, Air is popular for its exceptional performance across its server network, with many countries having high-performance physical individual servers.

They use transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to offer an accurate evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely unlimited, with no speed restrictions or time limits.

To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most safe and secure and reputable method 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. Additionally, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So ignore PPTP and other risky protocols.

No choice is given to any service, protocol, or application when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Importantly, you can get rid of web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical constraints, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it instantly enhances users’ privacy and security and is extremely trustworthy. However, the lack of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t quite staying up to date with its rivals. That said, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, but it will not put the newer protocol totally in place until a few of its technical and privacy concerns are resolved.

AirVPN has actually also added a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to try out things.

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

You can monitor the current 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 an in-depth specs 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 gain access to points.

All of it is nice, but considering 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 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 before signing up. You don’t have to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

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

The business is really clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the absolute priority, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no personal 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 information” to keep the server running and improve services, however you can request for this details to be erased at any time. This makes it among the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, nobody 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 wi-fi 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 techniques will fail against AirVPN since your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They also state they follow EU privacy regulations which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or greater levels of personal privacy and data protection as those in the EU.

You can get a brand-new IP address to conceal your IP so that no one can utilize it to discover who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-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 enable you to get a sense of what existing users are stating about the service before signing up.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This implies that anybody can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but only ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been checked by a 3rd party.

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

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your genuine email address. That’s excellent given that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be conscious that you will not be able to change 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 government asked for user information, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to offer 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, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regardless of Eddie’s considerable capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as excellent as those suppliers who utilize it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

Sadly, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to assist 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 heap of download alternatives. There are builds for different running systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit tastes, and in portable or installable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to explain what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most current doesn’t work on your setup.

After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. When you’re ended up, you simply click Disconnect. Easy enough for anybody, however Eddie can do so much more given that AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

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

Despite the fact that it specifies “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe tunnel. Many standard 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 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 shows all offered servers in the network, along with detailed details about every one, such as the server’s nickname, location, latency in milliseconds from your location, 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 displays the variety of servers 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 likewise revealed. 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 nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you might pick as many nations as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that nation will be eliminated, efficiently 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 displays a basic throughput graph with thin plot lines. Its temporal resolution can be changed, so you can see traffic from the last 10 seconds to one day.

While many apps show your current VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained information, 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 use a VPN with all the details they might ever want about the numerous locations, down to the variety of users on a specific server. It’s a valuable resource.

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

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 support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The truly experienced user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, 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 specialist, it might be tough to find out what specific settings do and how to get the desired outcomes. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of personalization.

Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply since of its complexity. Bear in mind that the program typically operates fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you look for them. If you occasionally crave power or configurability, the app will offer 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 out 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 utilize a very feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software offers the same substantial setup options as its desktop sibling and practical 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 country and pick a particular city on the exact same page. Some helpful text additions make the info more understandable, however it’s still rather difficult to comprehend 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 need. The software also attempts a bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to explain what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app detecting when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop notification, 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.

It was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition since AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.

However, reviewers have actually reported speeds to be outstanding. One stated there wasn’t a single country where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly outstanding overall.

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

What AirVPN lacks is a more comprehensive number of server places. This might limit the ease of access of neighboring servers for some users (which will constantly lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional choice for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, however 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 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 pretty poor 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 US Netflix rarely work, and when they do, finding the best server needs prolonged trial and error. This is probably since, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN doesn’t provide 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 sites ever changes.

Nevertheless, streaming is absolutely not an area in which AirVPN excels, just because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more concentrated on privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Allow P2P?

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

Plus, you can use 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 Web.

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

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, triggered by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting your gadget 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, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have shown torrenting to be remarkable, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and with no problems whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Rates

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

This makes it an excellent option for people who live in a household house or want to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should be enough for the majority of people, other VPN companies provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Prices varies based upon the membership length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. Many plans provide good value; however, longer memberships offer the best deal.

The standard pricing is in Euros. They utilize the European Central Bank to provide real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be easily 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 global alternatives 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 voucher 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 utilized more than 5 GB of data during that time.

AirVPN Customer Support

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

Importantly, AirVPN’s e-mail assistance isn’t contracted out however can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get an action. That said, the e-mail support is high quality, and the agents are friendly and useful, however the detailed answers can be pretty technical, which might put off those brand-new to VPNs.

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

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

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent speeds with minimal loss.

Unrestricted P2P enabled 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 use.

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

Solid Customer Service.

Active Community Online Forums and Detailed Guides.

Good prices, 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 really easy to use or attractive like other services.

Client app may overwhelm more recent users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are a lot of advanced alternatives.

Found in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with good prices. It’s clearly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be much better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN supplier. However even new users could 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 many of its rival VPN rivals.

When it comes 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 exact same level of privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which designates you a random account number and permits you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent option for customers who value their 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 exceptional option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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