AirVPN Vs ZenMate Comparison: A Comprehensive Overview Of Cons & Pros

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

While anybody can declare to be special these days, when it concerns VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN stands out 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, stating, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anyone can claim to be unique these days, when it comes to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of 2 lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications supplier Iridium previously ran it, however AirVPN took control of 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 bigger organization either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is discussed and details the privacy projects that AirVPN has developed 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 against its competitors with such strong personal privacy credentials?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

Many 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 decreases the number of worldwide AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home country while preserving their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to supply a precise assessment of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally 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 trusted method to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.

Numerous ports and protocols are readily 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. Forget about PPTP and other hazardous protocols.

When it comes down to it, no preference is given to any application, service, or protocol. Net Neutrality is maintained. Importantly, you can get rid of internet constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographic restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it immediately enhances users’ privacy and security and is extremely reputable. However, the absence of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its rivals. That said, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, however it won’t put the more recent protocol fully in place up until some of its technical and privacy concerns are resolved.

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

Switching is limitless, so if you don’t 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 issues on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a brand-new tab).

There is an in-depth specifications 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 access points.

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

A nice feature of this is that you can see what other people state 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?

The business is very clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute top priority, with security 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 only gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can request this info to be deleted 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 determine what kind of traffic or protocol you’re using.

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 methods will fail against AirVPN because your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They also state they comply with EU 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 new IP address to conceal your IP so that nobody can use it to learn who you are. You’ll remain safe with the top-level security provided.

If your ISP or country 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 current users are saying about the service before signing up.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This suggests that anybody can look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but only ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been inspected by a third 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 terrific since 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 use one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence information). But even if the government requested user information, AirVPN would have 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 major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Unfortunately, despite Eddie’s considerable capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those companies who utilize it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

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 user interface, so it may be a more challenging learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a load of download options. 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 brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing doesn’t operate on your setup.

After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. You simply click Disconnect when you’re ended up. 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 have actually seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

2 key AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows you to connect when your computer starts up, 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 a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe tunnel. The majority of standard kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, however 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 six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview simply 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, in addition to in-depth details about every one, such as the server’s nickname, area, latency in milliseconds from your area, and present users and server load. Remarkable stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the number of servers available in each country at a look, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise shown. Many 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 lots of nations as you like.

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

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

Power users, in particular, should value the capability to utilize a VPN with all the information they could ever want 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 permits you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it must always connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The truly knowledgeable user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, among other 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 professional, it might be tough to determine what specific settings do and how to get the desired results. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of customization.

Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply since of its intricacy. Remember that the program typically functions fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings until you look for them. If you periodically crave power or configurability, the app will supply 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 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 an exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software supplies the same extensive setup options as its desktop sibling and useful status information.

Different pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a nation and pick a specific city on the exact same page. Some practical text additions make the information more understandable, however it’s still quite challenging to comprehend in some spots.

Android does not have as lots of settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than the majority of people will ever require. The software also tries a little more to help you, with extra text subtitles to explain what each alternative does.

Speeds/Performance

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

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

In terms of personal 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 due to the fact that AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.

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

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

What AirVPN lacks is a more comprehensive variety of server places. This might restrict the ease of access of neighboring servers for some users (which will always result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding option for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, however possibly less so for other areas.

Streaming

Streaming the big services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple Television, 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.

Some report that Air is quite 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 United States Netflix seldom work, and when they do, discovering the best server needs prolonged trial and error. This is most likely since, unlike other companies, AirVPN doesn’t provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

Fortunately, 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.

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

Does AirVPN Permit P2P?

Yes, it does; every internet protocol, consisting of peer-to-peer, is welcome. Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s nothing to configure, no hoops to jump through. Just connect to the VPN server of your option and start.

Plus, you can use port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. Numerous 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, allows port forwarding for as much as 20 ports at once (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s built-in 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 out unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really practical, particularly 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 issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN offers a broader variety of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 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 excellent choice for individuals who reside in a family home or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should suffice for many people, other VPN service providers offer 7 or even 10 if you require more.

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

The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they utilize 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 choice.

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, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of global options are also 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 voucher 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 used more than 5 GB of data during that time.

AirVPN Customer Support

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

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

AirVPN’s website has a lot of info, consisting of a big Frequently asked questions area that is broken up by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover several topics, however beginners 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 very little loss.

Unlimited 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.

Strong Client Service.

Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Excellent rates, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t extremely easy to use 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 too many advanced choices.

Located in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Choice?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reliable, and safe VPN service with excellent rates. It’s plainly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN service provider. But even brand-new users could do much, much worse.

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

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

It might not guarantee the same level of privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which designates you a random account number and enables you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent alternative for customers who value their privacy.

While it does not 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 excellent option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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