AirVPN Vs ZenMate: Learn Which One We Would Prefer

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

While anybody can claim to be distinct nowadays, when it concerns VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its dedication to securing user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN website begins with an appeal for your trust, mentioning, “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 pertains to VPN companies, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of two lawyers and a little group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications provider Iridium previously 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).

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

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is discussed and information 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 providing 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 a lot of, with just 246 servers spread across 23 countries.

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

AirVPN Servers

That stated, Air is well known for its impressive performance throughout its server network, with many countries having high-performance physical individual servers.

They use transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to offer a precise evaluation of performance, with no 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 use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most protected and trustworthy way to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.

Various 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. Forget about PPTP and other risky protocols.

No preference is given to any service, protocol, or application when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Importantly, you can overcome internet 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 reliable. The absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, however it will not put the newer protocol totally in place until a few of its technical and privacy concerns are addressed.

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 quickly change servers as frequently as you like.

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

There is a detailed specifications 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 access points.

All of it is nice, but since there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being offered will work. But taking a look at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice feature of this is that you can see what other individuals state about the service prior to registering. 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 company is really clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the outright priority, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no individual details logged by AirVPN, which has a strong no-logging, tracking, or monitoring policy.

AirVPN does not 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 enhance services, but you can request this details 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 determine what kind 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 versus AirVPN because your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They also say they adhere to EU privacy regulations which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or higher levels of personal privacy and information protection as those in the EU.

You can get a new IP address to conceal your IP so that no one can utilize it to find out who you are. You’ll remain safe with the top-level security supplied.

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 allow you to get a sense of what existing users are stating about the service before registering.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This suggests 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 examined by a 3rd party.

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best readily available. The very first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to accomplish 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 fantastic 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 do not utilize one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence data). Even if the government asked for user details, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to offer them.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, readily available on all major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Sadly, despite Eddie’s substantial 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 simple, and it has all the details you require to connect to a VPN.

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

With Windows, there are a load of download choices. There are builds for various 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 existing doesn’t work on your setup.

After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. You simply click Disconnect when you’re ended up. Simple enough for anybody, however 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 essential AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN enables you to connect when your computer 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 difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe tunnel. Most basic kill switches only 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 six 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 shows all readily available servers in the network, along with in-depth information about each one, such as the server’s nickname, area, latency in milliseconds from your location, and existing users and server load. Excellent 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 number of servers readily available in each country at a look, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also shown. Numerous 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 select as lots of countries as you like.

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

By choosing a nation, 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 changed, so you can see traffic from the last 10 seconds to one day.

While most apps display your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows 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, information uploaded and downloaded, and much more.

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

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

This permits you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it should constantly connect when opened, which protocol to use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The truly competent user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface by means of the Logs pane.

If the vast feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be difficult to determine what particular settings do and how to get the wanted results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in regards to personalization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just since of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program usually functions fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you try to find them. If you sometimes crave power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not wish to use 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 exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software supplies the same extensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and useful status info.

Different 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 valuable text additions make the details more reasonable, however it’s still quite challenging to comprehend in some spots.

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

Speeds/Performance

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

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

In regards to 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 because AirVPN only supports OpenVPN.

Nevertheless, reviewers have actually reported speeds to be exceptional. Certainly, one stated there wasn’t a single nation where they could complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was actually impressive overall.

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

What AirVPN does not have is a broader variety of server locations. This might restrict the ease of access of nearby servers for some users (which will always result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent choice for many people in the United States and Europe, but maybe less so for other areas.

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

Certainly, some report that Air is pretty bad for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the major streaming services. Nevertheless, 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, discovering the ideal server needs lengthy trial and error. This is most likely because, unlike other providers, AirVPN doesn’t offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

Thankfully, 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 stands out, simply 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, including peer-to-peer, is welcome. Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s absolutely nothing to configure, no hoops to leap through. Just connect to the VPN server of your choice and get going.

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’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.

File sharing has good speeds on local servers, enables port forwarding for up to 20 ports at the same time (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, triggered 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 Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is extremely practical, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be excellent, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and without any issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN uses a broader variety of plans than a lot of 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 outstanding choice for people who live in a household home or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for most people, other VPN suppliers provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.

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

The standard pricing is in Euros. They utilize the European Central Bank to supply real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be quickly transformed to and paid for in the currency of your option.

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 options are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day totally free 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 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 assistance offering than many other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it provides e-mail support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a really active support online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Significantly, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t contracted out however can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get a response. That said, the email assistance is high quality, and the representatives are handy and friendly, however the extensive responses can be quite technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a great deal of information, including a big Frequently asked questions section that is separated by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different topics, but newbies will have the same difficulties 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 permitted 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 use.

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

Solid Customer Support.

Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Excellent rates, particularly for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists shield 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 newer users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are too many advanced choices.

Found in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with good rates. It’s clearly tailored 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 new users could 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 rivals.

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

Although it might not guarantee 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 choice for consumers 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 excellent option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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