IPVanish VPN Review | PCMag

IPVanish is an excellent VPN that lets you use as many devices as you want at the same time. It offers a widespread array of servers across the globe, covering some regions ignored by competitors. And its interface gives you fine-grained control over your VPN connection. IPVanish is easy to recommend, especially if you want to connect multiple devices at once, but it’s pricey and doesn’t offer add-ons like browser extensions or support for features like meshnet connections like you get with similarly priced Editors’ Choice winners NordVPN and Proton VPN.

(Editors’ Note: IPVanish VPN is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag.com’s parent company. For more, read about our ethics policy in the Editorial Mission Statement.)

How Much Does IPVanish VPN Cost?

IPVanish VPN costs $12.99 per month, almost 30% higher than the average monthly price of $10.29 among the field of VPNs we’ve tested. For comparison, NordVPN costs the same $12.99 and has far more features and a better interface. MullvadVPN notably offers more privacy tools than IPVanish and sticks to a single pricing tier of €5 per month ($5.64 USD as of this writing).

Note that we factor in the monthly price for our evaluations because that allows us to make apples-to-apples comparisons. Furthermore, we recommend starting out with a short-term contract with any VPN, at least until you’re sure it’s the right one for you.

As with most VPNs, IPVanish offers discounted annual subscriptions. A discounted annual subscription costs $39.99—significantly less than the average of $57.33 we see across the VPNs we’ve tested. However, that price jumps to the full $89.99 per year thereafter. IPVanish VPN is upfront about this second-year change, which is common among subscription services. Still, we wonder if the price jump will come as an unpleasant surprise to some customers. Consider, too, that IPVanish offers a two-year plan at $77.95, which is just shy of the $81.95 you pay for two years of NordVPN.

(Credit: IPVanish/PCMag)

If price is a major concern, consider a free VPN instead. Oddly, the monthly subscription for IPVanish doesn’t have an option for a 7-day free trial, but the one and two-year plans do. More odd still is that this offer is only available via mobile signup on Android or iOS. Proton VPN still has what we think is the best free option on the market, placing no data limits on unpaid subscribers.

You can pay for the service with any major credit card or Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or PayPal. If you’re looking to use Bitcoin, prepaid gift cards, or some other anonymous method of payment, you’re out of luck here. IVPN and Mullvad VPN both let you pay for subscriptions anonymously with cash sent directly to their respective HQs.

What Do You Get for Your Money With IPVanish?

IPVanish places no limit on the number of devices you can connect simultaneously, whereas most other VPN companies limit you to an average of five or six devices. In addition, the resources needed to police device limits often come at the cost of customer privacy, which makes us appreciate no-limit device policies even more. Along with IPVanish, Avira Phantom VPN, Ghostery Midnight, and Surfshark put no limits on simultaneous connections.

How a VPN Works

Some VPNs have greatly expanded their offerings to include password managers, like Remembear, and encrypted file lockers, like NordLocker. NordVPN also offers a local networking feature called Meshnet that lets users access resources and files on other Meshnet-enabled devices directly and with end-to-end encryption. Hotspot Shield comes with a Pango account that grants free access to other privacy-protecting services. IPVanish offers backup space and syncing through SugarSync and Livedrive. IPVanish also offers antivirus protection and anti-tracking tools through Vipre Antivirus Plus subscription add-ons. (Editors’ Note: SugarSync and Vipre are owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag.com’s parent company.)

What VPN Protocols Does IPVanish Offer?

When it comes to creating a VPN connection, we prefer the OpenVPN and WireGuard protocols. Both are open-source, meaning they can be picked over for any potential vulnerabilities. While OpenVPN has become the industry standard, WireGuard is a newer technology that’s still being adopted by VPN companies. We’re happy to see that IPVanish supports both options.

IPVanish VPN supports WireGuard and IKEv2 (another good option) on all platforms. It supports OpenVPN on all platforms except iOS. IPSec is available only on iOS and macOS. As a recent security measure, IPVanish has removed support for older, less secure options on its Windows app, like L2TP, SSTP, and PPTP.

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The company told us that its integration of what is loosely being referred to as “quantum-safe encryption” in the VPN industry is coming, but didn’t give us firm dates for release. Meanwhile, ExpressVPN has already released what it calls “post-quantum protection” in its proprietary Lightway protocol. We expect to see many similar marketing terms over the next few years, all of them encompassing what will essentially be the same core technology.

Servers and Server Locations

IPVanish has roughly 2,500 servers spread over 57 countries. Importantly, IPVanish has excellent geographic diversity. The company offers servers in Africa and South America—two continents often completely ignored by VPN companies. It does not, however, offer servers in regions with more oppressive internet restrictions, such as China, Turkey, or Russia.

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The total number of servers a VPN company provides is usually linked to the number of subscribers it serves—more subscribers, more servers. However, it’s not necessarily a marker of quality service. While IPVanish offers a respectable number of servers, CyberGhost VPN, NordVPN, and PureVPN claim more than 5,000 servers apiece.

Your Privacy With IPVanish

When we last reviewed IPVanish in 2022, its privacy policy started strong, with clear language outlining key assurances: It wouldn’t monitor or log user activity, it strived to collect as little data as possible, and it didn’t sell or rent personal information. A company representative told us the same at the time.

After that, we noted the policy went into such levels of detail that it was a bit harder to read than we like to see. While we appreciate detail, privacy policies also need to be simple and clear enough for users to understand. IPVanish seems to have taken this criticism to heart, implementing a completely refreshed page that’s both more navigable and readable than before.

We are impressed at the exhaustive list of cookies and third-party analytics tools IPVanish uses and why it uses them. It even includes information on how to disable the cookies used on its site. That’s a level of transparency we appreciate.

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IPVanish is part of Vipre Security Group and is part of a Ziff Davis subsidiary called NetProtect. As previously noted, Ziff Davis is PCMag’s publisher. IPVanish is based in the US.

A company representative tells us that while it does respond to valid requests from law enforcement, it has no user data to supply. Some VPN companies use a foreign base of operations to add another layer between them and law enforcement requests. In general, we don’t feel qualified to make a judgment about the security implications of a VPN being based in a particular country. Instead, we encourage readers to educate themselves on the issues and choose a product with which they feel comfortable.

IPVanish has undergone a third-party audit, though only for its no-logs claims. Audits and reports are not a guarantee of quality and are admittedly imperfect tools, but undertaking them in a meaningful way is still valuable. This no-logs audit is encouraging and reassuring, and we’d like to see IPVanish auditing more of its service, such as a security review.

While VPNs greatly improve your privacy on the web, they won’t protect you from every online danger. We strongly recommend installing antivirus on all your devices, enabling multi-factor authentication on all your accounts, and using a password manager to create unique and complex passwords for every site and service.

What Is Two-Factor Authentication?

Hands on With IPVanish VPN for Windows

You can configure almost any device to use IPVanish’s services, and the company offers native apps for Android, AppleTV, Chrome OS, iOS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. IPVanish does not offer browser plug-ins, as many competitors do. It does, however, support an app for Amazon Fire TV and, surprisingly, the Apple Vision Pro. Alternatively, you can configure your router to use the VPN or purchase preconfigured routers directly from IPVanish. Using IPVanish on the router applies its VPN protection to every device that connects through it.

Installing the IPVanish application was quick and easy on our Intel NUC 13 Extreme Kit (‘Raptor Canyon’) test PC running the latest version of Windows 10.

The app’s interface is centered around a chart showing your online traffic, which isn’t particularly useful. A green Connect button in the upper right corner gets you online immediately. We appreciate that simplicity, but the button is easy to miss, and we wonder if first-time users will understand that the app is ready to work. 

(Credit: IPVanish/PCMag)

Tabs down the side of IPVanish’s Windows app let you access account information, advanced settings, and a full server list. We especially like that the server list is searchable and can be filtered by available protocol, country, and latency time. With a click, each section expands to show the specific servers, ping time, and load percentage. 

(Credit: IPVanish/PCMag)

Beyond VPN protocol selection, the app also offers split tunneling, threat protection, and a kill switch that blocks access to the web unless the VPN is connected. You can also configure IPVanish to connect automatically when your machine boots up. By default, the app allows for local network traffic, but you can toggle this off as well.

(Credit: IPVanish/PCMag)

Some VPNs may leak personal information, like your real IP address or DNS information. IPVanish specifically has a DNS Leak Protection setting. We tested with this enabled and checked to make sure our IP address was changed. Using the iOS app, we tested the service’s included adblocker on PCMag.com, and it blocked all of the ads on the page. Note that we tested only one server, and other servers may not be correctly configured.

IPVanish On Other Platforms

We tested the IPVanish apps for Android, ChromeOS, iOS, and macOS. Aside from the iOS app, which offers a light theme by default, the user interface for all other platforms is dark, with green and white details. The apps look good and are easy to navigate. We particularly appreciate the quick yet thorough product tutorial for new users, which highlights the locations of key features in the app’s menu system.

(Credit: IPVanish/PCMag)

On iOS, the IPVanish VPN app offers a feature called Connect On Demand, which allows you to connect to the VPN only in certain circumstances, such as when using public Wi-Fi. Other notable features on iOS include split tunneling, ad and tracker blocking, and a kill switch. Using the iOS app, we tested the service’s included adblocker on PCMag.com, and it blocked all the ads on the page.

The Android and ChromeOS applications look identical and offer all of the features found in the iOS version of the app, but add an option to toggle on LAN access, allowing local network traffic to travel outside of the VPN. Many VPN apps are somewhat feature-limited on Macs, but IPVanish offers split tunneling, a kill switch, and threat protection

Can You Watch Netflix With IPVanish?

Many streaming video services block VPNs because you can use them to spoof your location and access content licensed for specific regions. Netflix is the example that comes most readily to mind. Another is BBC’s free streaming app, iPlayer, which is only available to UK citizens. But if you hop onto a VPN server in London, you may appear to be a local.

During our testing, we could access the entire Netflix library when connected to four of the five IPVanish servers we tested, including Canada, Japan, the UK, and the US. Australia was the exception, only allowing for Limited access. You can learn more about that qualification in our article on how to unblock Netflix with a VPN and see the results of our testing in the chart above.

Speed and Performance

A VPN service usually reduces download and upload speeds and increases latency. To compare the impact of each VPN on web browsing, we take a series of speed measurements using Ookla’s Speedtest tool with and without the VPN running and then find a percent change between the two. See our story on how we test VPNs for further details. (Editors’ Note: Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag.com’s parent company.)

IPVanish performed well across the board in our tests, placing it among the top 10 fastest VPNs. (Fastest, in this case, means it reduced download speeds by the smallest amount.) Our results showed that IPVanish decreased download speed test scores by 11.5% and decreased upload speed test scores by 13.55%. Latency increases of 38.8% put it right around the middle of the pack.

You can see the full results in the table below:

Because your experience with a VPN will differ dramatically depending on when, where, and how you use it, we strongly advise against using speed as a deciding factor when making a purchase. Instead, we suggest focusing on features, cost, and the privacy protections a VPN provides.

Excellent Protection for All Your Devices

If your primary concern when shopping for your next VPN is the number of supported devices per account, IPVanish’s unlimited policy is a strong selling point. In addition, it has an easily understandable privacy policy and provides further transparency through third-party no-log audits. Finally, our testing shows that it’s fast and has good global server coverage. Balanced against this is that there are other services with more servers and more privacy features that cost less, such as Proton VPN, which is our overall Editors’ Choice winner thanks to its overall excellence and its impressive free tier of service. And NordVPN, our Editors’ Choice winner for premium VPNs, gives you more features such as Meshnet networking for the same monthly cost as IPVanish.

Max Eddy contributed to this review.