IVPN

Verdict

IVPN is serious about its commitment to privacy and has outstanding features for power users. It’s not particularly fast, though, and isn’t built for streaming.

Introduction

IVPN takes an unusual and effective approach to its pricing.

There are two paid-for tiers, IVPN Standard and IVPN Pro, which you can subscribe to for durations of between one week and three years, starting from as little as $2. Both provide access to the same range of endpoints, but IVPN Pro lets you connect seven devices to Standard’s two.

It also includes two Pro-only features: multi-hop servers, which can help to obfuscate your point of origin, and port forwarding, which will allow you to open ports and send traffic to and from them via the VPN – useful for everything from hosting multiplayer games to logging into your household IP security cameras.

Note, though, that because it’s popularly used for seeding torrents, IVPN states that port forwarding is disabled on all USA exit servers to discourage file sharing on USA servers.

Pricing and subscriptions

IVPN Standard covers the requirements of the vast majority of VPN users. It has all the features you’d expect and even includes obfuscation. The option of a one-week subscription is fantastic, as not everyone needs a regular VPN service.

The extra Pro features, multi-hop servers and port-forward, are a little more resource intensive and only of interest to users with specific needs. Similarly, while two registered devices – one for your PC or router and one for your smartphone – cover most people’s personal VPN needs, the extra devices that go with a Pro subscription are likely to be used by families or shared households with multiple active users.

It’ll probably be the extra devices that prompt most people to upgrade to Pro, however, because it’s just a matter of not being connected at the same time: you’ll have to actually log out of your IVPN account on the devices you’re not using. This is due to a technical limit on the number of registered WireGuard devices per user, which I’ve seen before from other VPN providers, notably Windscribe, which offers unlimited connections but requires you to deregister an older Wireguard device in order to add a sixth.

All pricing is in US Dollars, so GBP prices will fluctuate depending on exchange rate. Standard: $2/£1.63 per week, $6/£4.88 per month, $60/£48.81 per year, $100/£81.36 per two years, $140/£113.90 per three years; Pro: $4/£3.25 per week, $10/£8.14 per month, $100/£81.36 per year, $160/£130.17 per two years, $220/£178.98 per three years

If you wish, you can pay using cryptocurrency and cash to help keep yourself anonymous.

Privacy and Protection

• Clear no-logging policy
• Hardcore anti-tracker blocks all hidden Google and Facebook content

IVPN is strongly privacy-focused, highly transparent and, unusually, has a clear ethical policy which includes points such as honesty in its advertising, open-sourcing its code, and being clear about its ownership and company structure. It’s clear about what data it does and doesn’t log. Nothing identifying is logged and users are assigned a login code, rather than having to use potentially identifying information such as an email address. The company is clear about what financial records are associated with your account

The company is registered in Gibraltar and, although it’s obliged to comply with legitimate legal requests and court orders, the fact that it keeps no logs means that it has nothing to hand over. It keeps a transparency page recording the number of requests it’s received and how it’s responded to them. This indicates that only a couple of requests since 2016 have been legally valid and that no data has been provided in response to any of them, as no identifying logs are kept. It also maintains a cryptographically signed warrant canary, which will be removed or cease being updated if IVPN is compromised.

The level of thought that’s gone into IVPN’s ethics and privacy policy is noteworthy, and I’m impressed by the extent to which the company shows its workings. IVPN also has regular third-party security audits carried out, the latest of which dates from March 2023 and details a number of now-remediated issues.

The apps include anti-tracking protection to help prevent cookies from being used to identify your around the web, but also has a hardcore mode that completely blocks any content linked to Google or Facebook due to their invasive tracking practices. This can vastly improve anonymity, but is likely to also make a surprising number of websites and services stop working.

Features and usability

• Supports a wide range of platforms with feature parity
• Features include a kill switch, obfuscation, split tunnelling

IVPN has dedicated clients for the major operating system platforms: Windows, Linux, macOS, Android and iOS, and provides connection profiles and detailed instructions for connecting to its service from other devices. I was pleased to find that the Linux client’s shares all the core functionally of its Windows counterpart.

As you’d expect from a seriously privacy-oriented VPN service, there are plenty of features, with security-first defaults. For example, LAN traffic (allowing your PC to see and communicate with other devices on the same local network) is disabled by default, but can be enabled in settings.

For extra security, the IVPN firewall, which provides the kill switch feature that stops you from accidentally sending or receiving internet traffic if you’re not connected to the VPN. It can be optionally enabled at times, although it defaults to only being active when you connect to IVPN, to cover you in case you unexpectedly lose your connection to the endpoint.

You can also choose between the OpenVPN and Wireguard protocols, use custom DNS and, if you’re a Pro subscriber, use multi-hop endpoint connections to help hide your point of origin but connecting first to one country, then another. Note that this can affect data transfer speeds.

There’s a hard limit on the number of devices you can associate with your account – either two for Standard subscriptions or seven for Pro users. A device is registered to your account when you log in to an IVPN app and de-registered when you log out, which is simple enough but does mean that you’ll have to log out of every account when you’re not using it.

Performance

• Unremarkable speeds
• Not built for streaming
• Smooth and secure endpoint switching

You won’t find IVPN in our list of best-performing VPN providers when it comes to speed, but it’s not too shabby.

The slowest connection I saw from my test systems was a perfectly decent 60 Mbps. Endpoint switching is particularly smooth and you can reload endpoint connections for another IP address. You’ll sometimes need to do this to improve performance, so it’s helpful to find that it’s safe, secure and simple.

You’re not going to have much luck watching streaming region-blocked video services via IVPN – the service keeps the number of IP addresses it uses low, which helps to obfuscate the identities of its users, but means that its address pool will be easily spotted by streaming services.

However, with a split tunnelling feature now available to all subscribers, IVPN allows you to designate specific apps to be excluded from the VPN connections. This means you can still watch local streaming services while most of your traffic goes via the VPN.

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