IP VANISH REVIEW 💻 Should You Trust This "No Logs" VPN?

- So what we are going to be doing in this video today

is doing a quick, yet comprehensive review

of the VPN known as IPVanish.

Now personally this is one of my goals for 2019

was to basically improve my online security.

And the main reason for me using a VPN

is the fact that I am self-employed,

I have my YouTube channel and my blog that I run full-time

and I am constantly going to coffee shops

and using public WiFi and so that was my main reason

for exploring using a VPN, was to be more secure

with my data, especially when I'm accessing public WiFi.

Now I spent a very long time deciding

which VPN to actually go with,

and I ended up going with ExpressVPN

just because it was slightly faster

however, it is a little bit more expensive.

But IPVanish does have a very solid VPN

and I'm gonna go ahead and share with you guys

some of the research that went into my decision

and some background here on IPVanish to help you decide

whether or not this is a good VPN for you.

Now just to be as transparent as possible with you guys,

I am affiliated with IPVanish,

but that in no way is going to influence my opinion

or this review here of IPVanish.

If you do decide that you wanna support me

through the use of that affiliate link,

that is the top link in the description below

but you absolutely don't have to use that link

if you don't want to.

So when it came down to my decision-making process here

for deciding on a VPN, I essentially

looked at six different criteria.

Number one, the first thing I looked at

was the price as well as the term

for how much you had to pay for upfront.

Sometimes you're paying it monthly,

sometimes you're paying for two, three years in advanced

just to get that best possible price.

So that was the very first thing that I looked at.

The second thing, which is the most important to me

was the actual speed and we're going to be doing

a live speed test here of IPVanish

just to show you guys what kind of speed you might expect

if you do decide to use this VPN.

The third thing which isn't really important to me

but it's important to other people is the logs policy.

Whether or not IPVanish is logging your data

or logging any information about you

which could eventually be released to authorities.

Number four, I looked at the number of

simultaneous connections, how many devices can be connected

to this VPN at the same time.

Number five, I looked at the customer service.

Should I ever need them,

what kind of customer service do they offer?

And then finally I looked at whether or not

they offer any kind of free trial.

Not really important for me but it is important

for other people who maybe wanna test the VPN out

before they fully commit to a longer subscription tier.

So right off the bat,

let's talk about the pricing for IPVanish.

One of my only annoyances with this particular VPN

is the fact that their pricing strategy

is honestly kind of confusing.

If you go and use an affiliate link for example,

you in most cases will get a better price

than what they're offering if you just go right from Google.

And then later on if you had visited the IPVanish

website and maybe you didn't purchase it,

you might be getting ads run on Google or in other places

for a better price than either one of those.

So in terms of the pricing, that is one thing

that's kind of annoying here is you don't really know

whether or not you're getting the best price.

But even at the standard price they are charging

they are still in line with their competitors.

A little bit more on the expensive side

but I have found that you will get the best price

if you do use an affiliate link.

You don't have to use mine,

you can use somebody else's if you want to

but we'll go ahead and visit my affiliate link

just so I can prove it to you guys.

I'm not just saying this for the sake of you using my link.

But right here on the website,

you can see they are offering a Mother's Day sale

and we'll go ahead and hit start now

and I'll show you guys what that pricing is.

Now on the other hand if you just go to IPVanish

and you type it into Google and you click on the link here,

you will see that you are not getting that same pricing.

If you click on start now,

they are offering you a one year plan at $4.87 per month.

Meanwhile from that link I placed in the description,

you are getting a better price here of $4.50 per month

for just a three month package

versus $4.87 paying for an entire year upfront.

So in most cases, you will get a better price

by using the link in the description

but I would also recommend clicking on that link

and then leaving, and then going on Facebook

or going on Google and seeing if you're getting ads

for a better advertised price.

So now most importantly, let's go ahead

and do a speed test here of IPVanish

so you can see what you should expect here

if you do decide to use this VPN.

Right now I'm connected to my building WiFi

and we are quoted at 200 megabytes per second up

and 100 megabytes per second down.

It's usually a lot faster, especially at this point

during the day because not a lot of people are connected.

But let's go ahead and see what our base speed

is here for our baseline number.

So just being connected to my building WiFi

these are the results here, a PING of 16 milliseconds.

About 220 up and 220 down.

Now we're gonna go ahead and connect to IPVanish

and do a speed test and compare the results.

So the IPVanish dashboard itself

is pretty easy to understand.

You can automatically connect tier

to the best available server and best available city

but if you were, for example, trying to get into Netflix,

you would have to connect to a certain server

and if you wanna so that, you can click this button here

to get a list of the different servers

and connect to one server specifically.

But if you're just looking for secure browsing,

if you're using public WiFi and the best possible speeds,

I would leave this at best available city

and best available server,

which is exactly what I'm going to do.

Now I'm going to go ahead and connect through IPVanish.

So I just got a confirmation here from IPVanish

that we are, in fact connected to a different server

that is operating in New York.

Now we're gonna go ahead and do a speed test

and see what kind of results we are getting.

Okay, so here are the results here from IPVanish.

The PING was just a little bit slower

going from 16 milliseconds to 17.

But again, this is me being in New York

connecting to another New York server.

So that PING is naturally going to be pretty low.

It would obviously be greater if I was

connecting to a server overseas.

So that is what we saw there for the PING.

It was a download of around 58 megabytes per second

and an upload of 38.5 and remember the baseline numbers

were about 220 for each of those.

So it's still definitely very good speeds

and these speeds should allow you to do

basically anything you're looking to do.

Whether you're browsing or streaming or whatever it is.

But if you are looking for the best possible speeds

which I am personally, that is why I decided on ExpressVPN.

But in most cases, if you have WiFi

that's the speed of my building here

and you're getting this kind of speed through your VPN,

you're not gonna have any kind of issues with your speeds.

So moving on now, let's talk about

the logs policy for IPVanish.

Unfortunately they are involved in a bit

of a controversy from back in 2016.

They claimed to be a strictly no logs VPN,

meaning they do not log any user data,

but back in 2016 they did release data

to the Department of Homeland Security on a user,

meaning they were in fact collecting that data.

Now the important thing to mention here

is that this company has since changed hands.

In 2017, I'll show you over here on Wikipedia.

So in 2017, the company that owned IPVanish

Highwinds Network Group was sold to a different company

and the new CEO of that other company

came out and addressed this issue

and said that they have a strict no logs policy

despite what happened in the past.

And this is what that CEO said specifically.

They said, "At the time of the acquisition,

"no logs existed, no logging systems existed and no previous

"current or future intent to save logs existed."

So whether or not you believe that

is honestly entirely up to you.

I know that personally if I was using this VPN

for the purpose of anonymous browsing,

for example doing any kind of downloading

or torrenting that may or may not be legal,

personally I would not be using this one

based on that past controversy.

But if you're just looking to avoid annoying advertisements

and being tracked on the internet

and possibly improving your security using public WiFi,

I think IPVanish is honestly a perfectly sound option.

As far as customer service goes,

IPVanish actually has some of the best customer service

of any VPN that I have looked at.

They offer 24/7 chat as well as 24/7 email

and they do also offer phone service

and a hotline you can call during certain hours of the day.

I haven't seen very many VPNs out there

offering that telephone service

and so that is one thing that sets

this VPN apart from the others.

So if you're looking for really good customer service

and support, I definitely recommend IPVanish in that case.

Next up, number of simultaneous connections.

IPVanish allows you to have 10 simultaneously

connected devices to this VPN,

which is honestly really good because the average

that I have seen is anywhere from three to seven.

So if you have a lot of different devices

or if you're trying to get your

entire household protected through a VPN,

IPVanish is definitely a very solid option for that.

And this is one of the areas that they are very strong in

is the number of simultaneous connections.

And then finally, let's talk about

whether or not IPVanish offers any kind of free trial.

If you sign up through iOS on the app store,

they do offer a seven day free trial,

but unfortunately that is not being offered

if you sign up on their website.

But what they do offer is a seven day money back guarantee.

So if at any point in those four to seven days

you decide that it's not for you,

they will offer you a 100% money back refund.

So to go ahead and summarize this here,

this is what I see are the main strengths of IPVanish.

First of all they have great customer support.

You have both the email support,

the chat support and the telephone support

during certain hours of the day.

And both the chat and email support are 24/7.

The second area where they are strong

is the fact that they offer 10

simultaneously connected devices.

So if you're looking to hook up a bunch of devices

at the same time, this is a great option.

And then number three, the other strength

is the fact that they have pretty decent speeds

and the pricing is a little bit higher than others out there

but the speeds definitely make up for that.

Again, if you're looking for the fastest one out there,

that is ExpressVPN, that's the one I ended up deciding on.

And I'll link up to that one in the description as well

if you're looking to learn more about ExpressVPN.

Moving onto weaknesses of IPVanish.

First of all the big one is the confusing

pricing model as I showed you.

Based on where you end up clicking,

you're going to be advertised different prices.

So that's kind of annoying to consumers because you don't

really know if you're getting the best possible price.

The second thing is that past controversy

has really hurt people's trust with IPVanish.

They are owned by a completely different company now

and we heard from the CEO about their strict no log policy.

But whether or not you decide to trust them

in that nature is honestly up to you.

The third thing is that they don't offer that

free trial sign up for their website.

It's only offered through iOS which is kind of annoying.

And then last of all, the other thing

is they do not accept crypto payments.

If you're trying to be as anonymous as possible,

you're going to want to sign up for a VPN

using a crypto currency,

that way they don't store any payment information.

But anyways guys, that being said,

that was my review of IPVanish.

If you do decide that you want to sign up,

there is a link in the top of the description below.

I hope this review helped you out and that you enjoyed it

and I will see you in the next video.