Hide.me Review

Introduction

Welcome to our review of the Hide.me VPN service. This provider has been in the privacy space for quite some time and is located in Malaysia. They have a firm grasp of the business. Their website is very polished, and like many of their competitors, they claim to be the world’s fastest VPN provider. Here, we will test that claim and look at their features. However, we will look at pricing first.

Pricing and Discounts

When choosing a VPN provider, often times price becomes a factor. Hide.me has 2 different plans, depending on the features you want. The plus account is $6.50/mo. Six months of the plus service is $26.00, which brings your price down to $4.43/mo. The best deal on the plus account through our discount is $42.25 for a year of service. That means your price is only $3.52/mo. Their premium account offers the best value. A month of premium service is $13.00. Six months of the service is $55.25, which brings your price to $9.21/mo. By far, the best deal is the year service for $91.00. Your final price with our discount is just $7.58/mo.

Generally, established VPN providers will offer a number of different payment options. Hide.me offers the familiar standards, along with some other methods that may not be quite so well known, as you see in the image below.

Whether it is by credit card, PayPal, Bitcoin, or one of the other methods mentioned here, you may choose your favorite. Hide.me offers their new members a 14 day money back guarantee.

Features

Another factor used in your provider choice may be features. A service with good features can make it stand out from others very quickly. Hide.me is packed with them, so we will discuss them now. To access the options, click on the settings gear as shown below.

We will begin by mentioning the kill switch feature. That is great if you are worried about being exposed if the VPN drops. As you would expect, it will kill your connection. Other good features include DNS leak protection, one-click connect, IP leak protection, and auto-reconnect. On their premium plan, they also offer port forwarding and 5 simultaneous connections. As you can see, there are many options available that you can take advantage of. They make everything pretty easy with their sliders. Of course, they have the favorites like auto connecting at start up, and the ability to force all traffic to run through the VPN service. There are some other features that we did not mention, but you can see them if you decide to use their service.

Server Locations

Hide.me offers servers in 29 locations, spread over 23 countries in various parts of the world. Looking at their website will give you the location of the server, load, and whether or not the server supports p2p traffic. In the map below, a green arrow points to a box. That box represents the European region.

Of course, you may not need that many locations, but depending on your goals, it is nice to have the options available to you. Changing locations is easy, just disconnect, select the new server from the drop down box, and re-connect.

Performance

Internet speeds when using a VPN can certainly be important. When using an encrypted connection, you may expect some speed loss. Anywhere from 10%-25% is considered to be in the acceptable range. We ran a speed test, and here are the results.

In the image above, you will see our results using a server in Amsterdam. We only encountered about a 16% speed loss, and not only is that within the acceptable range, that is excellent considering the test distances. You may wish to test the other servers for yourself, though.

Security and Privacy

Hide.me offers a full range of protocol support, as long as you are using the plus or premium plans. Those protocols are OpenVPN, IKEv2, PPTP, and SSTP. You will want the OpenVPN protocol whenever possible. It provides the right mix of speed and privacy. Hide.me has a no logs policy.

Support

Hide.me provides 24/7 support through 2 different ways. Those are through a ticketing system, and an online chat. The staff is very friendly and knowledgeable, and they are glad to answer any questions you may have.

Compatibility

When choosing a VPN provider, you want to make sure they have support for your favorite device. Hide.me offers software for Windows, Android, and iOS.They also offer a host of easy to follow setup guides for just about every other device you may think of, including Windows phone, Ubuntu, and even Blackberry.

Sign Up Process

When signing up for a VPN service, the process should be easy to do. We are very pleased to see just how easy it is with Hide.me. Additionally, you only have to provide them with a minimal amount of information. Though some providers ask for more, all that is required here is simply an email address as shown below. Of course, you may be asked for additional information according to your method of payment, but that is not asked by the VPN provider.

Once you sign up, you will see a promo code that is auto populated. Be sure to click on our button below to get the best deal possible.

How to Use Hide.me for Desktop

The days when you had to be technologically advanced to use a VPN are long gone. Everything is made more user friendly, but there are still advanced features like the ones we mentioned earlier. For the purpose of demonstrating how easy it is to use a VPN now, we will use the Windows client. Begin by downloading and installing the client. Then, go ahead and launch it.

1. Next, you will see a box pop up that looks like the one on the right. If you wish to change servers, there is a drop down box where it says automatic. If you do not have a preference, just proceed to step 3.
2. Slide the button to the right, as indicated by the blue arrow.
3. You are now connected to whichever server you chose.
4. Enjoy the benefits of using your VPN for whatever you plan on doing.

Though we are not showing it here, they have easy to use setup guides as we mentioned earlier for operating systems like Ubuntu and Mac.

How to Use Hide.me for Mobile

The mobile version of Hide.me is just as easy to use. For our mobile demonstration, we will use the Android operating system.

1. Go to Google Play store and search for Hide.me. Then, download and open the app.
2. Sign in with the email you already used, or create a new account
3. Select your server by clicking on the 3 dots shown by the red arrow. When ready, click on enable protection shown by the dark blue arrow.
4. On the second screen, click the box and click ok.
5. You are now protected, so enjoy whatever it is you want to do.

And that is all you have to do. Versions for other devices should be similar, but again, if you have any issues, Hide.me’s support team is glad to help.

Final Thoughts

Favorite features of Hide.me:

• Easy to use interface
• Advanced features
• 24 hour support
• p2p friendly
• No logs policy
• 14 day money back guarantee
• 5 simultaneous connections (premium version)

Thoughts to make Hide.me better:

• Add servers in more countries

To end this review, Hide.me is a good service that offers many popular features. There is really not much bad we can say about it. The server we tested gave us good speeds, even from a different continent. Their interface is easy to operate, but they still offer features that are advanced. We also like the option of 5 simultaneous connections, and their 14 day money back guarantee. That should be more than enough time to test the service out.