| Provider : | Hide My Ass |
| Price : | 1 month – $11.52 (30% Discount) 6 month – $50.66 (50% Discount) 12 month – $78.66 (60% Discount) |
| Overall Rating : | 4.5 / 5 |
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UPDATE : I have expanded on this review with new information and new speed tests, you can read the updated article here.
If you have made your way here you probably know exactly what a VPN and a VPN service is, if not I shall give you a brief explanation. A VPN is a virtual private network and what that boils down to is a secure network link over the internet. There are many reasons why you would need this but some of the more ‘practical uses’ for this is anonymity and a handy tool to bypass pesky geotargeting systems.
Hide My Ass VPN is a premium service offered at a fairly decent rate provided you don’t mind buying a few months at once. I for one bought 6 months and it works out to $8.40 (£5.14) per month. This is a small price tag for something which has massive potential. To make the connection possible they have a handy, easy to install client using openVPN. This can be set to connect to any server or to the server with the least amount of active users. It normally connects first time and speeds are normally ok. I am on Virgin Media 10Mbps line and I normally get around 60Kbps-100Kbps on torrents and a simple speedtest gets me around 1Mbps. Not great and considering they tell you that you should be able to get the speed of your line. The client itself has a few problems. One is that if it disconnects you, it does not like to reconnect at all. It will continuously fail to re-authenticate. How I had to get around this was to ‘repair network connection’ then reconnect and it usually works the treat.
Now why would you want to use a VPN service? For one, with all the news buzz about piracy and getting cut off because you downloaded a torrent, you can get around that. You are not bound to your IP anymore and I would hope that Hide My Ass keeps no logs of what goes on while you are connected. Your actual ISP will can not tell if you are checking your mail, or downloading the latest movie as all traffic between you and the VPN is encrypted through a tunnel.
Ever wanted to watch hulu.com but are geotargeted out because you are outside USA. A VPN will get you into the country unlike a proxy which fails at kulu.com. NBC, Yahoo and various other TV services all work through HMA! VPN so just that is worth the meager monthly cost plus you are not ‘pirating’ so you can watch your favourite shows for free legally.
A very important note however is all ports are unblocked and free for you to use. This is awesome but opens all those ports back up to you so I would definately recommend using an after market Firewall like PC Tools Firewall and not the standard inept windows firewall.
So in conclusion, if you would like to watch hulu.com from outside the USA, download whatever you want with anonymity and don’t mind it making your connection a bit sluggish while you do said things, I say go for it, it is definitely worth every penny and more. They are always adding new servers so this is a great sign for a company to watch out for.
| Review at a glace | |
|---|---|
| Usability |   |
| The app is really simple to install and use. The simple user interface and easy to understand configuration is great for inexperienced VPN users. | |
| Speed |  |
| Using servers that are close to your location gets really good speed, in fact from the UK I got my exact speeds. When I had to connect from UK to US it can be a bit slower. | |
| Support | |
| Support via email and via their forum was good but I have had very little to contact them about. | |
| Reliability | |
| The recent updates addressed some issues and the software now connects easily and if the connection drops automatically re-connects leaving you safely behind the VPN | |
| Overall | |
|---|---|
| I have now had the service running for 18 months and they have really gone from strength to strength. A simple, unobtrusive and in todays day and age essential tool. I would recommend to a friend, in fact, I do. | |
I had this service for a total of 5 hours before I asked for a refund. They are NOT a good VPN at all. I unfortunately bought their yearly subscription before being informed. First of all, when I first used it I got disconnected a number of times. I played around with it and emailed them a few times. NOTHING. I turned it off midday. By then, I asked for a refund again and again and again. Still NOTHING. By two days time they responded (to my 6 requests) and told me they’ll send it for processing. I finally got an email today from HMA (a week later) saying that in those few hours I used over 10 GB of usage (A total of 10.1 GB in and out). I don’t see how that’s even possible. Anyway, because of that, they are charging me NOT ONE MONTH, BUT TWO MONTHS subscription for 5 hours of USAGE!! I doubt I’m the first this has happened to. I’ve read a lot of bad reviews about them. I’ve also read that they’ll happily give out your private information, websites you’ve visited and time stamps to anyone who asks, with or without a court order. Don’t use HMA, I recommend PrivateInternetAccess for your VPN instead. Everything about HMAs service is shoddy and fishy. I’m abashed that they’ve charged me for two months for having them turned on for 5 hours. I am not exaggerating here. 5 HOURS = TWO MONTHS PAYMENT.
I found this article while searching for a best vpn. Then i came across http://www.hotspotshield.com and its available for free.
Can anyone tell me, Is Hotspot shield is a good VPN while traveling??
I don’t know if HMA keeps logs or not but I did once get an email from them telling me that my service was being cancelled unless I sent them an email promising to stop downloading / uploading or sharing copyrighted material.
Maybe not what you want.
Apart from that the service is great and the interface is very slick also.
Hands down a total rip off. Your real IP is easily seen. They do not honor there money back guarantee.
HORRIBLE service. The software might be flashy, but don’t let that fool you.
The performance, customer service, and value puts this company on the bottom of the pile. Do your research, they do block traffic, they do throttle speeds, they do log connections.
Contacting Customer service was disappointing. In fact they denied me a refund after 12 days for a full year subscription, even when they have a 30 day refund policy, but because they have a 30 day refund policy for only first time subscribers, loyal customers who are no longer happy with the declining performance and value of the service can get forget it.
Do yourself a favor, stay away from this place, there are plenty of better options out there.
I subscribed to their basic plan (seemed overpriced) What was my disappointment after a couple of days the VPN stopped working and I couldn’t get anything from their non-existing support. I switched to Hide My IP lately which is a great value for money and their support team is friendly 🙂