IPVanish Review 2023

IPVanish went from a small VPN provider to a formidable corporate entity in the span of 7 years. First launched in 2012, the VPN provider was acquired by Ziff Davis in 2019. Davis owns StrongVPN, PCMag, Mashable, and many other famous brands. He’s also famous for merging multiple VPNs into a single service.

Will IPVanish continue to provide its fast, reliable service — or is it destined to merge with other providers under Davis’ leadership? Has the latest acquisition affected its policies and security levels?

Read our full IPVanish VPN review below to find out and check the results of our extensive hands-on testing.

IPVanish Review: A Short Review

IPVanish is a premium VPN provider launched back in 2012. Its beginner-friendly apps also include some advanced features for power users. It supports OpenVPN, WireGuard, and IKEv2 protocols, doesn’t leak data, and has a good no-logging policy. It only offers split tunneling on Android, which is hampered by its permanent kill switch.

IPVanish operates 2,000+ servers in 50+ countries. It dishes out good speeds and provides a smooth browsing, streaming, and downloading experience. It can unblock all popular streaming platforms, including Netflix US, Hulu, and Disney+. Torrenting is allowed on all servers as well. The pricing is reasonable but you can’t pay with crypto.

With that in mind, can IPVanish compete with other VPN giants? Keep reading to find out.

Specifications IPVanish

💵 Price	From $3.99 a month
📱 Operating systems	Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, Windows
💻 Connections	Unlimited
💳 Payment methods	Credit card, PayPal
🔒 Protocols	IKEv2, Wireguard, OpenVPN
📥 Torrent options	Torrenting allowed
📅 Money-back guarantee	Money-back-guarantee
📋 Logs
🎬 Works with

Deal

Very fast VPN for a special price if you go for a long term subscription

Visit IPVanish

Speed – How Fast is IPVanish?

Good VPN providers should secure your online activity without causing drastic speed drops. This is why we test the speed of every VPN we review. After our testing circuit, IPVanish got an 8.5 out of 10 for performance.

Our final result is based on these conclusions:

• IPVanish offers good speeds on both nearby and faraway servers.
• It provides smooth day-to-day operation without any lag.

Speed test results for IPVanish

For this IPVanish review, we tested its Windows client from our headquarters in the Netherlands. We first measured our speed without a VPN and compared it to the results obtained across various IPVanish servers.

Note that you might get different results based on your location and connection speed. So, the table below is best used as an indicator of potential performance.

Having said that, let’s take a look at the results of our IPVanish speed test:

*We were using WireGuard during our speed tests since it’s the fastest protocol IPVanish has to offer.

As you can see, IPVanish is quite solid in the speed department. Although not the fastest VPN out there, it still managed to retain a good portion of our benchmark speed. We were especially surprised by its excellent performance in Japan.

We also got some impressive uploads during our testing. This makes IPVanish a great VPN for Twitch as well as securing your video conferences.

The pings were reasonable, but they did start going up as we moved away from the Netherlands. So, if you want to use IPVanish as a gaming VPN, we recommend sticking to nearby servers with lower latency. Alternatively, Surfshark can provide a lag-free experience, even on distant servers.

The connection times were acceptable as well. Depending on the location, it took us between 5 and 16 seconds to connect to the server we wanted to test.

Speed during daily use

IPVanish provides a smooth experience during regular day-to-day operations. We streamed a bunch of Netflix shows and YouTube shorts without any problems. Naturally, you won’t even know it’s there during low-impact browsing.

During our tests, we played Diablo 2: Resurrected (eight-player party), MTG Arena, and Minecraft. As long as you stick to nearby servers, you shouldn’t experience any issues.

Lastly, we downloaded some torrents from our favorite P2P sites and were pleasantly surprised by the snappy downloads.

Safety – How Secure is IPVanish?

People are using VPNs to browse anonymously and stay safe online. If the provider’s encryption fails or they resort to dangerous logging, the purpose of a VPN is defeated. IPVanish’s current security setup got it an 8 out of 10 for safety.

Here’s why:

• IPVanish supports OpenVPN, WireGuard, and IKEv2 protocols.
• It doesn’t keep any dangerous user logs.
• It comes with an automatic kill switch.
• We didn’t see any data leaks during our tests.
• The registration process requires an email and payment info.

Protocols

VPN protocols largely determine the security, performance, and overall flexibility of your VPN. They will also affect its ability to deal with online censorship in countries like China and Russia. Lastly, having more VPN tunnels at your disposal increases your chances of unblocking geo-restricted platforms like Netflix.

With that in mind, here are the VPN protocols supported by IPVanish:

• OpenVPN (TCP/UDP): The golden standard among VPN tunnels known for its speed and security. It should meet the needs of most VPN users.
• WireGuard: The youngest and most promising option. It’s known for its raw speed and excellent security setup.
• IKEv2: Less CPU-hungry than OpenVPN and ideal for mobile users thanks to its impressive reconnection capabilities.

If you just want an excellent all-around protocol, we recommend going with OpenVPN. UDP connection is faster but easily blocked while TCP provides better resilience at the cost of speed. WireGuard is faster but might not be ideal in censorship-heavy countries due to its minor privacy problem.

If you’re using mobile devices a lot, we recommend going with IKEv2. It allows you to switch between mobile and Wi-Fi networks without dropping your VPN protection. It’s also ideal if you travel a lot and have to deal with unsecured Wi-Fi networks.

If you’re still not sure, you can let IPVanish pick the protocol automatically, based on your connection type.

Depending on your chosen tunnel, you’ll either encrypt your traffic with AES-256 or ChaCha20 ciphers. They’re both excellent options that cannot be cracked by any computers we have today.

Logging and privacy

IPVanish is located in the US, which is a member of the Eyes alliance and not a VPN-friendly place overall. Ideally, you’d want a VPN outside 14 Eyes countries that doesn’t have to deal with constant court requests and gag orders.

However, the US (still) doesn’t have any mandatory data retention laws, which is a point in its favor. It means that IPVanish can protect its users as long as it keeps a strict zero-logging policy.

This leads us to its problematic history. Namely, in 2016, IPVanish shared user data with the American authorities during a child pornography investigation. This included IP addresses and connection time stamps. Since IPVanish had this data to share, its no-logging claims were fake at the time.

Since this scandal, IPVanish has upped its privacy game and adopted much safer logging practices. According to an audit performed by Leviathan Security Group, the company doesn’t record user traffic, content, or destination addresses. They also couldn’t find any logged IPs, port numbers, and hostnames.

Here’s a list of the logged data, according to the official privacy policy:

• The IPVanish website: Browser/device type, operating system, average time spent on the site, pages visited, clicks, gender, age, language preference, and country.
• Service: IPvanish demands some personal information in order for you to use their service (see below). Additionally, the provider potentially logs your name, and affiliate tracking data.
• App: Language settings, device brand/model, OS, country of residence, crash reports, session lengths, server usage, protocol, UI interaction, and the app build version.

This is a good logging policy for a modern VPN service. The company doesn’t record anything that could be used against you in a hack attack or court of law. All the collected data is aggregated and anonymized for optimal user security.

Note that the IPVanish apps do keep connection logs (this feature is disabled by default on macOS and iOS). However, the company doesn’t have access to these diagnostic files unless you give them to the support team. The IPVanish Windows app can send crash reports automatically, but we recommend disabling this option.

We never recommend volunteering your personal information. Even if the support team asks you to enable this option in order to solve your problem, we would advise against it.

Kill switch

IPVanish has an Automatic kill switch that cuts your internet access if your VPN stops working for whatever reason. The kill switch is disabled by default, so you’ll have to activate it manually.

However, note that IPVanish features the so-called “permanent kill switch,” which was made famous by Proton VPN. This means that you can’t access the internet at all without connecting to one of IPVanish’s VPN servers first.

Adopting a permanent kill switch means that a VPN wants to prevent dangerous situations instead of reacting to them. However, you’ll see how this feature conflicts with split tunneling later on in this IPVanish review.

Obfuscation

Obfuscation or “stealth” allows you to disguise your VPN traffic to look like regular browsing. This is especially useful in censorship-heavy countries like Iran, for example. With obfuscation, you can pass deep packet inspections employed by various VPN filters and firewalls.

IPVanish allows you to add obfuscation to its OpenVPN connection. They call it “Scramble” and it can be found in the Protocol tab of the Settings menu.

Obfuscating your data means adding an extra layer of encryption, which will result in a slower VPN connection. So, we don’t recommend using this option unless you’re in a country with a significant degree of internet censorship.

Does IPVanish leak your data?

During our extensive testing of IPVanish, we didn’t experience any data leaks. This means that its VPN tunnel managed to hide our real info while showing the data of the server we were using.

Apart from the ipleak.net test, we were also using our own IP checker and they both only showed VPN server-related data. Our original IP remained hidden at all times, which means we didn’t experience any WebRTC leaks. You can also find options dedicated to DNS and IPv6 leak protection in the Connection tab of the Settings menu.

In conclusion, IPVanish didn’t leak any data that we wouldn’t want to share with our ISP or other (potentially malicious) entities lurking online.

What information does IPVanish need?

To create your IPVanish account, you only need to submit your email and payment details. You can always create an anonymous burner email without any personal identifiers and protect it with a solid password.

However, you can’t buy this VPN with crypto. Its payment methods only include PayPal and credit cards. Out of the two, we recommend going with PayPal, instead of providing a lot of private info required for credit card purchases. Alternatively, you can go and purchase subscriptions with NordVPN or ExpressVPN completely anonymously. Some VPNs like Mullvad even allow anonymous cash payments.

Usability – How User-Friendly is IPVanish?

Good VPNs should also be fairly easy to use, without overly complicated menus and cryptic options. This is why we always pay extra attention to a provider’s website, software, and customer service. With all that in mind, IPVanish gets a 9 out of 10 for user-friendliness.

This score is based on the following conclusions:

• The website is simple and easy to navigate.
• The VPN clients are beginner-friendly.
• The installation process is quick and effortless.
• IPVanish offers split tunneling on Android.
• The pricing is reasonable for the value.
• Crypto payments are not accepted.
• IPVanish offers professional 24/7 customer support (live chat included).

IPVanish’s website and installation process

The IPVanish website is professionally designed and well-organized. The menus are easy to navigate so you shouldn’t have any problems finding your way around.

Clicking the “Subscribe Now” button in the top-right corner will take you directly to the purchase screen. Here, you can create an account and pick a subscription package. The “My Account” button next to it will open up your personal dashboard. Here, you can review your account and billing, check or upgrade your subscription, inspect the server list, and reset your SOCKS5 credentials.

This user area also allows you to download IPVanish apps for your devices. To do that, simply click the “Apps” button in the top-right corner of your dashboard.

IPVanish supports a lot of popular platforms, including, Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Chrome OS, Fire OS, Linux, and VPN routers. Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer any browser extensions.

For this IPVanish review, we mainly tested its Windows app. It installs quickly and effortlessly without any unnecessary extra steps.

Here’s how to install IPVanish:

1. Go to IPVanish’s official website.
2. Click on “Subscribe Now” in the top-right corner.
3. Provide an email to create an account.
4. Pick a subscription package and payment method.
5. Click on “My Account” to access your personal dashboard.
6. Click on “Apps” in the top-right corner.
7. Download the installation file for your device.
8. Click on the downloaded file to start the installation.
9. Click “Yes” when prompted to install the TAP driver.
10. Finish the installation.

After purchase, you’ll receive an email from the company that might end up in your spam folder. This message doesn’t contain anything too relevant that you couldn’t find on your own.

After installation, you’ll get a login screen asking for your credentials. If you’ve just installed the IPVanish Windows app without creating an account, you’ll see a quick link on this screen that will allow you to do it in a minute.

According to the official website, you can install IPVanish on an unlimited number of devices. So, one subscription should be enough for any household. Naturally, there’s no way to prove this, but we tested IPVanish on six devices at the same time and it worked like a charm. Surfshark is another one of these rare VPN gems that allow unlimited simultaneous VPN connections.

IPVanish’s appearance and ease-of-use

IPVanish Windows app is fairly simple and easy to use. We don’t have too many complicated features, which is great news for VPN beginners. Having said that, there are still some advanced options power users will appreciate.

An interactive map takes up the majority of the client’s main screen. Although you can click on the countries you wish to connect to, we see this primarily as an unnecessary gimmick. It also makes the client look more complicated than it is.

The very top of the app is reserved for the inconspicuous connect/disconnect button. If you just click this button, the client will connect you to the fastest available server, based on your location.

The settings menu on the left branches into:

• Application: Language, Windows startup options, app theme, notification settings, closing options, telemetry
• Connection: Auto-reconnect options, kill switch, enhanced security features
• Protocol: VPN tunnels, ports, obfuscation
• Network security: Auto-connections, trusted networks

IPVanish currently supports only five languages, including English, German, Spanish, French, and Dutch. We hope to see more languages added in the future.

We always appreciate dark themes in VPN clients. IPVanish did us one better here and made the dark theme the default, which gets a huge thumbs up from us. During our testing, we tried the light variation and promptly switched it back.

IPVanish offers a great quality-of-life feature that we never saw before. Namely, you can use a number of useful shortcuts to navigate your way through the basic commands. It was a bit daunting at first, but we got the hang of it rather quickly.

IPVanish is a user-friendly VPN with some advanced options aimed at power users. Beginners shouldn’t have any problems navigating their way around and mastering the basic options. If you’ve never used a VPN before, CyberGhost is another excellent gateway option.

Split tunneling

Split tunneling allows you to grant direct internet access to trusted apps (without VPN protection). IPVanish offers this feature only on its Android app.

However, our testing showed that split tunneling doesn’t work well with their permanent kill switch. Namely, if you enable the kill switch (disabled by default), you can only go online while connected to one of the IPVanish servers. Split tunneling, by its definition, allows apps to access the internet directly (not through a VPN tunnel).

So, we picked Netflix as our trusted app for split tunneling, connected to a server, and enabled the kill switch. As expected, we couldn’t access Netflix while the kill switch was on. The app was trying to let it go online without protection and the kill switch didn’t allow it.

So, split tunneling is basically a dead feature without a “regular” kill switch. We never recommend using a VPN without a kill switch and that’s exactly what you have to do to get IPVanish’s split tunneling to work.

Pricing and payment methods

IPVanish is a pretty affordable VPN, given its current setup. The yearly subscription comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. There’s also a seven-day free trial on iOS (soon on Android as well).

The available subscription packages include:

• Three months: $10.00/month (billed $29.99 every three months)
• One year: $3.99/month (billed $47.89 the first year)
• One month: $11.99/month (billed $11.99 every month)

No matter which duration you select, you can use all VPN features on an unlimited amount of devices. The annual subscription also includes VIPRE antivirus software, which is roughly a $60 bonus. This antivirus scanner is owned by the same parent company as IPVanish, which made this great deal possible.

At the moment, IPVanish accepts the following payment methods:

• Credit cards (MasterCard, VISA, American Express, Discover, JCB, and Diners Club International)
• PayPal

As you can see, IPVanish doesn’t support crypto payments. Until it does, we recommend going with PayPal and avoiding credit card payments.

Customer service

IPVanish offers a lot of useful materials on the official website. This includes FAQs, setup guides, troubleshooting manuals, and even a rich cybersecurity blog.

The support team is available 24/7 and you can send them a message or talk to them directly through the live chat feature. Phone support is also available to customers from Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, the UK, and the US.

You can access IPVanish’s support through the official website, but also through your VPN client (including the Android app).

During our testing for this IPVanish review, we had a lot of questions. The support team answered them all and even provided us with some useful links. The staff is knowledgeable, professional, and forthcoming. Even if you hit a longer queue in the live chat, someone will be with you in mere minutes.

Before starting a live chat session, you’ll be prompted to provide your name and email address. Unlike most support teams, the IPVanish staff doesn’t actually check whether you have an account with them or not. So, you can always provide some random credentials if you’re not comfortable sharing your real name.

Server Network – Can IPVanish Unblock the Internet?

A large server network increases a VPN’s unblocking power. Additionally, the more servers in a country, the smaller the chance is that they’ll get overcrowded.

For its server network, we give IPVanish an 8.5 out of 10. Here’s why:

• IPVanish has over 2,000 servers across 75+ locations in 51 countries.
• IPVanish doesn’t offer dedicated IP addresses.
• There are no optimized servers for streaming.

Number of servers and locations

IPVanish has 2,000+ servers in 75+ locations across the globe. This is a great server network that guarantees good speeds and low server lag. Additionally, the company offers more than 40,000 different shared IP addresses.

Here’s an overview of IPVanish’s server locations:

You can access the full list of IPVanish servers in your client. We especially like the presence of ping and load indicators, which allow you to pick the least crowded option for you. Similarly to NordVPN, IPVanish allows you to pick individual servers, instead of just countries. You can also create a list of favorites simply by clicking the star next to each server.

When you use the “Fastest Available” option in the app, the client will pick the best server for you automatically. During our testing, it picked a server in Amsterdam that kept the largest portion of our original speed. So, the automatic server picking definitely works as intended.

IPVanish and streaming (Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, BBC iPlayer)

IPVanish is a good VPN for unblocking Netflix and other streaming platforms. We tested it across the board for this review and were pleasantly surprised by its unblocking capabilities.

Here are the actual results of our streaming tests:

If you’re unable to access Netflix, you should try different servers. Customer service can also help you out and give you recommendations.

Watch Netflix with IPVanish

IPVanish and torrents

IPVanish is a great VPN for torrenting. We were able to download torrents from various sites, and can’t complain about the speeds.

Additionally, IPVanish offers specialized proxy servers for Socks5. These are optimized for people who don’t think it’s necessary to encrypt their data but do want to torrent on a different IP address than their own. In other words, SOCKS5 will sacrifice security for sheer speed.

Since we didn’t have any speed issues with IPVanish’s servers, we recommend using the “real” VPN instead. Sacrificing encryption is never a good idea unless you’re accessing trusted websites.

Dedicated IP address

If VPN services offer dedicated IP addresses, you have a personal server at your disposal. This means you use the same IP address every time you go online, which lowers the chances of being detected as a VPN user.

This means it’s less likely that your VPN will get blocked. Additionally, it’s easier to access streaming services such as Netflix. The disadvantage of a dedicated IP is that it’s relatively easy to trace the address back to you.

IPVanish only offers dynamic, shared IP addresses. This means that your IP address is shared with other users. While you might not unblock Netflix as easily, it does increase your online anonymity.

Our Experience with IPVanish

IPVanish offers solid security, a large server network, and good speeds. It pairs that with an acceptable logging policy and some nifty features for power users.

The apps are simple enough, so VPN beginners should have zero problems finding their way around. The pricing is reasonable, and we believe that IPVanish offers good value for the money. We’d like to see crypto payments enabled in the future, though.

So, IPVanish can secure your streams, downloads, and general browsing without causing lag or huge speed drops. It can also unblock geo-restricted platforms, as shown by our extensive testing.

Finally, IPVanish supports unlimited simultaneous connections, which saves money and makes general VPN logistics much simpler. We are talking about a good VPN that could find its way to the top after ironing out some minor issues.