AirVPN Vs ZenMate: 5 Tests To Determine “Who’s Number 1” In 2022?

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Do you wish to remain anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the best solution for you.

While anybody can declare to be unique these days, when it comes to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN sticks 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, specifying, “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 special these days, when it concerns VPN companies, AirVPN reveals 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 small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications supplier Iridium previously ran it, but AirVPN took over 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 larger business either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is discussed and details the 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 unconventional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

A lot of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor concern here is that the absence of diversity of servers lowers the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while keeping their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to provide an accurate evaluation of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely unlimited, without any speed constraints or time limits.

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

Many ports and protocols are available; 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 unsafe protocols.

When it boils down to it, no choice is given to any application, service, or protocol. Net Neutrality is upheld. Notably, you can get rid of web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographic limitations, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is highly reputable. The absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, but it won’t put the more recent protocol fully in place up until a few of its technical and privacy concerns are dealt with.

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

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

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

There is a comprehensive specs 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 have to trust that what is being provided will work. However taking a look at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A good thing about this is that you can see what other people say about the service prior to registering. 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 very clear. Online privacy and security are the absolute top priority, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade 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 only collects non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can request this information to be erased 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 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 tactics will fail against AirVPN due to the fact that your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise say they stick to EU privacy regulations and that 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 brand-new IP address to conceal your IP so that nobody can utilize it to discover who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level protection provided.

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

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

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

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the finest available. The very first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of 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 terrific because it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But understand that you won’t be able to alter your account’s password if you do not utilize one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, is a member of the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence information). But even if the federal government requested for user information, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to provide.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, offered on all significant platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regardless of Eddie’s considerable capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as great as those companies who utilize it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

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

With Windows, there are a heap of download options. There are builds for various operating 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 describe what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most current does not function on your setup.

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

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

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

Despite the fact that it specifies “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has 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 secure tunnel. The majority of standard kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, but you can establish the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.

Eddie’s layout is easy to understand. Along the top, there are 6 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 offered servers in the network, together with detailed details about every one, such as the server’s label, place, latency in milliseconds from your place, and present users and server load. Excellent stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the variety of servers offered in each country at a look, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise revealed. Lots of 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 country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is essentially a favorites list; you might choose as numerous nations as you like.

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

By choosing a country, you are not right away 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 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 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, current user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information uploaded and downloaded, and much more.

Power users, in particular, should value the capability to utilize a VPN with all the details they could ever want about the various locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s a priceless resource.

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

This allows you to tweak the setup, such as whether it needs to always connect when opened, which protocol to use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The really experienced user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface through the Logs pane.

If the huge feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be hard to find out what specific settings do and how to get the desired results. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of customization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Keep in mind that the program normally functions fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings until you search for them. However, if you occasionally yearn for 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?

Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize a very feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software provides the same extensive configuration choices as its desktop sibling and useful status information.

Separate pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a country and select a particular city on the exact same page. Some handy text additions make the information more easy to understand, but it’s still rather 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 the majority of people will ever need. The software also tries a little bit more to help you, with extra text subtitles to describe what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, informing us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of 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.

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

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

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

What AirVPN lacks is a more comprehensive number of server areas. This might limit the ease of access of close-by servers for some users (which will constantly result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional choice for many people in the United States and Europe, but perhaps less so for other regions.

Streaming

Streaming the big services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV, 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 used by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Indeed, some report that Air is pretty bad 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 seldom work, and when they do, discovering the ideal server needs lengthy trial and error. This is probably since, unlike other service providers, AirVPN doesn’t provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

However, streaming is definitely not an area in which AirVPN excels, merely since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more concentrated on privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Permit 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 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 decent speeds on regional servers, permits port forwarding for up to 20 ports simultaneously (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and deals with leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

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

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

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN uses a larger range of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 devices concurrently, 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 people who live in a family house or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should suffice for many people, other VPN service providers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Prices differs based upon the subscription length, and each plan includes the same features. Many plans provide good value; nevertheless, longer memberships provide the very best deal.

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 choice.

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 options 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 utilizing the 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 utilized more than 5 GB of data throughout that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

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

Significantly, AirVPN’s email support isn’t outsourced however can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get an action. That stated, the email assistance is high quality, and the agents are friendly and valuable, but the extensive responses can be pretty technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a lot of info, consisting of a large FAQs section that is broken up by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different topics, but beginners will have the same difficulties understanding a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding 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 use.

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

Solid Customer Support.

Active Community Online Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Excellent costs, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app may overwhelm more recent users.

It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are a lot of advanced choices.

Found in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Choice?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with excellent prices. It’s plainly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be 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 get much quicker speeds and better results than a number of its rival VPN competitors.

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

Although it might not ensure the same level of 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 an excellent 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 very best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an exceptional choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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AirVPN Vs ZenMate: Find Out Which One We Would Prefer