Hide.me VPN - Review
The company is based in Malaysia, has been operating for 10 years now and offers over 2,000 servers in more than 75 locations, we do not stand up to the levels of other services, however the VPN supports different types of protocols, such as WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2, SoftEther and SSTP. Among its strengths we also mention the protection from DNS, IP and IPv6 leaks, as well as the presence of some very valid functions such as split tunneling, port forward and P2P support for all plans, including the free one. , on which we will return immediately.
Read also: The best VPNs of 2022
Hide.me plans and pricing
Hide.me offers three pricing plans:2 years | € 3.84 per month + 2 months free 12 months | € 6.66 per month 1 month | € 9.99 per month Let's say right away that Hide.me's plans are certainly not among the cheapest even if the cost does not differ too much from those of ExpressVPN, for example. The two-year plan is the only one at the moment to also offer 2 TB of cloud storage with cryptographic protection. Finally, the paid plans allow you to use up to 10 devices at the same time.
Accepted payment methods range from credit cards, PayPal, to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Finally, the plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, which replaces the old policy for which it was not possible to request a refund if a certain threshold of data consumed was exceeded.
The good news is that there is also a free plan, quite functional since it supports P2P and has no speed limits, however there are some restrictions: data traffic is blocked at 10 GB per month, while the locations only 5 are available, while only one device can be connected at a time. Another downside is that you will have to renew the plan manually, month after month. A little annoying, but nothing insurmountable.
Privacy
On paper, Hide.me is a VPN of everything respect for privacy: it respects a strict no-log policy and declares that it does not keep any data that may allow its users to be traced, as clearly indicated on the website and on the company's Terms of Service.Of course, as expected, Hide.me still retains some information on data consumption, since the free plan has a traffic limit, and it shouldn't be too surprising that email addresses are also stored. However, the provider declares that it does not share the data with third parties. Furthermore, on the website of the service, it is reiterated that Hide.me allows Google to collect only a portion of users' IP addresses, given that Google Analytics is active on the website.
Hide.me also declares that, in the case of official orders from the court and from competent and recognized authorities in the respective jurisdictions, it must respect and satisfy the requests. But as always, anyone who uses the VPN lawfully will have nothing to fear.
Unfortunately, however, Hide.me has not undergone a public audit to date, so the claims made by the company remain so. It would be excellent to be able to verify what Hide.me promises through an external and independent entity, as is now good practice in the sector and among the best VPNs on the market.
Performance, protocols and features
From a performance standpoint, we have to say that Hide.me's guaranteed speeds are above average, albeit outclassed by high-end services like ExpressVPN. And net of some problems with OpenVPN, we have found excellent results with the IKEv2 protocol (150-160 Mbps), but above all with WireGuard (390-420 Mbps peak).The privacy texts have all given positive outcome (ipleak.net, dnsleak.com and dnsleaktest.com): our IP was always protected and consistent with the chosen location. Furthermore, the DNS leaks were correctly blocked, as well as the protection of our online activities was always active.
Speaking of protocols, Hide.me supports WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2, SoftEther and SSTP, moreover the service is available for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux, routers, consoles and Smart TVs. P2P is also supported on almost all servers, in fact we were able to download torrents without experiencing any inconvenience.
A really interesting feature of Hide-me is the addressing to dedicated servers for unblocking the services of streaming. We were able to access BBC iPlayer, US Netflix and Disney +, however we were unable to unblock Amazon Prime.
Hide.me also offers the MultiHop feature, which allows you to connect from one server and disconnect from another. This allows us to optimize the protection of our anonymity, making it even more difficult, if not impossible, to track our online activities.
Finally, there is also the Bolt functionality, which promises to speed up the connection, directing the traffic on TCP, through some techniques that neutralize the tendential slowness of the protocol.
Hide.me - App
The version Windows of the Hide.me app is as simple as it is effective in its functionality. The large connection button takes up almost the entire main screen, and allows you to connect to the geographically closest server, however it is very easy to access the complete list of available locations, as well as having important information at a glance such as the ping of the various destinations and the status of our IP address.Customization options, designed for the more experienced, abound: it is possible to select various protocols such as WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2, SoftEther, SSTP, use IKEv2 in stealth mode, define random or customized ports, create IPv4 or IPv6 tunnels, select the MultiHop mentioned above and much more.
The kill switch is very effective and allows you to customize its operation based on the app. Also based on the app, it is possible to define whether to use the VPN or the standard connection, or the so-called split tunneling.
Mobile apps are also excellent, the Android version supports WireGuard and many of the other functions described above. Furthermore, the ability to customize DNS is also available on iOS.
