Hide.me VPN review: A VPN service packed with features

Worth When Reviewed

$9.95 per thirty days | $15 for 3 months | $49 for 17 months

Finest Costs Right this moment: Disguise.me

Disguise.me VPN in short:

• P2P allowed: Sure
• Limitless gadget connections: No, 10 simultaneous gadget connections
• Enterprise location: Malaysia
• Variety of servers: 2,300+
• Variety of nation areas: 85
• Value: $9.95 per thirty days, or $49.99 for 17 months

Disguise.me from Malaysia-based eVenture Ltd. is a VPN that may not have the identify recognition of as we speak’s hottest companies, however it packs simply as many options. It has slowly expanded its networks lately to embody extra areas, and add extra servers. 

Since our final assessment, Disguise.me has added much more servers and virtually doubled its nation areas. It has additionally decreased the value on its longer-term subscriptions and added just a few further power-user options. So, with all of those advances let’s take one other look and see the place it stands within the present VPN market.

What are Disguise.me’s options & companies?

Sam Singleton

Since our final assessment of Disguise.me, it has modified up its interface fairly a bit. Now while you open up the appliance you’re confronted with a dashboard that reveals some related info equivalent to a Fast connect button that may hook up with the final used server, info in your IP Tackle, Account info, an inventory of streaming optimized servers, and an inventory of your Favourite Areas. 

Moreover, all of those widgets are movable and interchangeable as nicely, that means you possibly can customise the look to solely show the data you want. It is a welcomed change of tempo from the extra simplistic house display of outdated that solely displayed an Allow/Disable button within the heart. 

On the left sidebar you may have further tabs for Areas, Map, and Options, in addition to Your Account, and Assist. The Areas tab shows a searchable checklist of all obtainable Disguise.me server areas with particularly quick 10G servers tagged with an icon subsequent to the server identify. Alongside the highest you possibly can filter by way of all servers, these optimized for streaming, or Multi Hop servers as nicely. For many who are extra spatially inclined, the Map tab shows the bodily location of all of those servers on a world map as an alternative.

Sam Singleton

The Characteristics tab is the place Disguise.me actually shines—there’s so much right here. There are the standard choices to launch on system startup, join routinely, and so forth. It additionally launched a characteristic referred to as Bolt “Quick Proxy” which optimizes web velocity efficiency over an OpenVPN connection. Theoretically, this could result in enormous velocity will increase, significantly in Home windows—I personally didn’t discover a lot of a distinction throughout my testing.

There may be additionally an choice to arrange Cut up Tunneling and its personal complementary proprietary firewall characteristic referred to as Stealth Guard. This can be utilized to restrict both an app or your total web until a Disguise.me VPN connection is current, thereby eliminating IP handle leaks ought to your connection falter. There may be additionally a separate Kill Swap characteristic obtainable as nicely beneath the settings menu.

Disguise.me even gives extra unconventional instruments equivalent to port forwarding and safety from DNS, IP, and IPv6 leaks. Like I mentioned, this service has plenty of options. Add to that the huge array of protocols obtainable and the choice to make use of customized DNS and it shortly turns into obvious that Disguise.me is an influence consumer’s dream.

With all of that being mentioned, because of the sheer quantity of accessible options and the maze of menus that you must work by way of to tweak all of them, this service in all probability isn’t for learners—or the faint of coronary heart. I personally discovered navigating the app a bit disorienting. I do just like the latest revamp to its older simplistic interface, however I can’t assist however suppose that it went too far in the wrong way. It’s a minor gripe although and determining the menu system is simply a matter of spending a while within the utility itself.

Disguise.me is accessible for Home windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS, in addition to some consoles and good TVs. There are additionally browser add-ons for Chrome and Firefox that include assist for the SOCKS proxy. 

Lastly, it’s price noting that Disguise.me has a helpful free model that gives all the nice security measures of its premium counterpart. The one draw back is that you simply’re restricted to 10GB per thirty days and it solely offers entry to eight of its servers. Resulting from these limitations, I don’t advocate utilizing the free model to stream, however it’s an effective way to browse securely or simply to check out the service to see the way you prefer it.

How is Disguise.me’s efficiency?

To be able to check Disguise.me’s efficiency, I rated connection speeds throughout its servers in 5 completely different nations all all over the world for a number of days after which in contrast them to my baseline web velocity. Throughout all areas examined, the speeds averaged simply over 31 p.c of the bottom obtain velocity and 67 p.c of the bottom add velocity. That’s okay, however wanting our checklist of the quickest VPNs.

Inside that mixture, nevertheless, have been some really unbelievable speeds. I simply discovered they weren’t constant. It was fairly frequent for every location to point out some nice relative speeds someday after which fall off utterly the next day. I additionally discovered that the drop in velocity was fairly important the additional the Disguise.me server was from my bodily location. That is after all not unusual as distance tends to have an effect on ping, however it was so drastic in some cases it caught me a bit unexpectedly.

Please notice nevertheless that on-line speeds can fluctuate wildly in pure Mbps exams from day after day and even hour to hour. It’s greatest to take any and all velocity exams with a grain of salt. Your expertise with Disguise.me might differ from these within the exams for this assessment.

Regardless of all of this, nevertheless, I by no means actually bumped into any main issues with utilizing the service to stream video or obtain information. Due to this fact, I’m assured that Disguise.me has sufficient velocity to maintain absolutely anything that you must do over a VPN connection.

With reference to streaming, Disguise.me carried out admirably. Each optimized streaming server I linked to was capable of entry streaming websites equivalent to Netflix and Amazon Prime. I even examined its non-optimized servers they usually had no points as nicely. Because of the inconsistent speeds although I did discover that my video tended to drop in high quality for very transient intervals of time. Nonetheless, Disguise.me ought to serve you nicely for streaming and getting round area blocks.

How is Disguise.me’s safety and privateness?

Disguise.me

Disguise.me has a really thorough privateness coverage on its web site. It states that it doesn’t monitor your exercise while you’re linked to the VPN. It doesn’t hold connection logs or retailer IP addresses. The corporate does, nevertheless, hold troubleshooting logs that embrace a randomly generated username and an internally assigned IP handle for every consumer. The troubleshooting logs are erased each few hours, in accordance with the privateness coverage. Moreover, it logs month-to-month information visitors quantities for high quality assurance functions.

The corporate did cross an unbiased safety audit of its ‘No-log’ coverage by Protection Code Ltd., however that was in 2015. Sadly, a newer audit has not been accomplished since that point. The truth that it was one of many first VPN companies to bear an unbiased audit reveals that it takes privateness severely. Nonetheless, seeing as what number of VPNs are actually present process audits yearly or two, an up to date model would go a great distance in the direction of assuring customers that Disguise.me is continuous its privateness commitments. Having mentioned that, it does publish annual “Transparency reviews” detailing all information requests the corporate has acquired in a given yr.

Sam Singleton

The VPN itself comes with business customary AES 256-bit encryption. It additionally gives an entire vary of protocols together with IKEv2, OpenVPN, SoftEtherVPN, WireGuard, and SSTP—that’s greater than most different companies. Moreover, it even gives superior configuration choices for a lot of of those protocols so as to add to the customization. And in my testing I discovered that there have been no IP handle leaks when utilizing Disguise.me throughout any of its servers and protocols. 

When signing up for Disguise.me you do have to supply private billing info and it accepts funds by way of Credit score Card, PayPal, Google Pay, and varied cryptocurrencies.

Is Disguise.me price it?

Disguise.me is a extremely intriguing VPN service. On the one hand it gives improbable instruments to assist energy customers tweak and configure to their coronary heart’s content material. On the opposite, it may’t fairly nail down some fundamental stuff you need from a VPN equivalent to constant speeds throughout servers and a user-friendly interface.

It makes all the proper privateness guarantees although and the service was capable of unblock all streaming websites that I examined. Total, it’s a well-rounded service that ticks virtually each field you can need from a high VPN. I can simply advocate it for skilled energy customers, however learners may wish to attempt the free model first earlier than committing to the premium service.

Editor’s notice: As a result of on-line companies are sometimes iterative, gaining new options and efficiency enhancements over time, this assessment is topic to vary to be able to precisely replicate the present state of the service. Any modifications to textual content or our last assessment verdict shall be famous on the high of this text.