Hide.me VPN Review

Hide.me is one of the best-known VPN providers on the market, even though it might not be the biggest. The trouble is, with so many VPN services to choose from, some of which offer a free trial, and stay up to date with the competitors’ offers, it’s often hard to pick a favorite. That’s our goal at VPNWired, to separate the wheat from the chaff. That way, you don’t have to spend time or money yourself. Plus, we can nudge you toward a solution that fits your needs, since using a VPN to hide your IP is slowly becoming a necessity. Our Hide.me review is part of that effort, so sit back, relax, and keep reading.

Hide.me Features

Thinking about whether to choose it as your go-to VPN? Here’s a list of features of Hide.me that should either convince or deter you:

Base Country

Hide.me was founded in 2012, so it’s relatively new, although not inexperienced when compared to other providers we reviewed. They’ve set up their headquarters in Malaysia – the country has no mandatory data retention laws.

Server Base and Zero-Log Policy

The VPN provider has over 1800 servers across 72 locations worldwide you can change at will. New IP addresses are being constantly assigned to prevent VPN blocking. The servers also support P2P transfer, e.g., torrenting.

Hide.me stores no logs of your activity or connection history on their servers. That means that, even if forced to surrender their servers to the authorities, there’s nothing to turn over.

Speed

It’s important to point out that even though the speed is not restricted by Hide.me, your VPN speed depends on a lot of factors. We conducted our test from London, United Kingdom, our native location. By connecting to a VPN server in the same location, our speed dropped about 7%, but our latency doubled.

After connecting to a server in the United States, the download/upload speed loss was between 35% and 45% based on the server choice. A server in Australia reduced our speed by about 10% while connecting to a Singaporean IP address caused a loss in speed of about 60%. The worst result was Hide.me VPN server in Australia, which saw our speed go down by about 70%, and latency increase by 3 and a half times.

Bandwidth Limit

We’re happy to report, Hide.me offers unlimited bandwidth on both Paid and Free subscriptions.

Unblocking Capabilities

In our testing, we not only bypassed Netflix VPN block but also managed to circumvent anti-VPN measures by the following services:

• BBC iPlayer
• RAI
• Disney Plus (Check other VPNs that can do it too)
• Amazon Prime Video
• Hulu
• HBO Max
• DAZN
• ITV

Security Protocols

Hide.me supports IKEv2, OpenVPN, WireGuard, SSTP, and Softether VPN protocols.

Encryption

The provider uses military-grade encryption which is an industry-standard – an AES-256 encryption algorithm.

Supports both IPv4 and IPv6

Thanks to the dual-stack configuration, Hide.me offers security through IP leak protection, whether you’re using one or the other, or switching between them.

Bolt – Fast Proxy

The problem with systems that have in-built VPN clients is that they are not optimized to perform efficiently. As such, third-party VPN clients that offer protocols such as OpenVPN, WireGuard, SoftEther, etc., are much more capable. Windows is pretty much infamous for favoring slower UDP connections. And when combined with ISP throttling, it can severely hamper your internet browsing experience. Bolt is Hide.me’s answer to this issue. The feature avoids UDP in favor of TCP to bypass internet slowdowns.

Multihop

The multihop feature on Hide.me is essentially a double VPN. The network provider first routes your web traffic through a VPN server. And then, it uses another server on top of it to make your originating web traffic much harder to spot. You can select an entry and exit server, and the provider will route your web traffic between these two points via multiple VPN servers to add stealth to your data. Furthermore, the feature doesn’t use pre-defined routes. Hence, it is much harder to spot.

24/7 Customer Service

Hide.me offers support through Facebook chat, e-mail, or 24/7 live chat on their website. The provider also has a forum with an active userbase, so you can ask for help there, too.

Works in China

Well, most of the time. If you read our explanation about whether VPNs are illegal in China, you would’ve known that the government blocks IP addresses constantly. Hide.me provides new IP addresses, but from what we’ve seen, users complain it takes them longer than, for example, ExpressVPN or NordVPN.

Bonus features of Hide.me VPN

Here’s a list of unique Hide.me features or ones that you might not use constantly:

Split Tunneling

Split tunneling allows you to select an app and take it outside of the VPN tunnel protection (see how does VPN work) while keeping other apps secure. This is useful for accessing a local website while, for example, connected to a VPN server in the USA.

Stealth Guard

Stealth Guard allows you to choose apps that cannot run until a VPN connection is established. Great for preventing accidental identity leak. You can also use Hide.me SOCKS protocol to achieve similar results in a browser or torrent client.

Kill Switch (Network Lock)

Network lock will kill your Internet traffic if a VPN connection drops. It will then reinstate it as soon as the VPN connection is back online. Users report inconsistent activation if the app crashes in the meantime, which we’re sure will be fixed soon, if not already.

Number of Concurrent Connections

Hide.me allows you to achieve up to 10 simultaneous connections on one user account. This is what we liked about IPVanish too. Read our IPVanish review, if you’re curious. If you aren’t aware, most premium VPN providers only allow between 5 and 7 connections. The only provider that tops this is Surfshark, which offers an unlimited number of connections at the same time.

i2Coalition Member

Hide.me is a member of the i2Coalition, a group of VPN providers that work together to constantly improve security online. They also collaborate to make sure privacy standards are elevated and upheld across the industry.

Why should you get Hide.me VPN

• If you want a decent Free VPN – If you are a fan of Free VPNs, then Hide.me is a perfect fit for you. The provider offers a free plan that can allow customers to use the VPN for free with a monthly data cap of 10 GB.
• If your work is sensitive – Hide.me offers some of the most sophisticated security features in the VPN market. If you are engaged in highly sensitive tasks and can’t afford any data leaks online, then you should consider Hide.me.
• If Streaming or torrenting is a priority – Finally, the VPN is for those who love streaming multi-regional content or downloading torrents. With a water-tight no-logs policy in place, and enough block-bypassing features, Hide.me can be a perfect choice.

Why should you avoid Hide.me VPN

• If you do not want a technical UI – Hide.me UI is not beginner-friendly. If you are a first-time VPN user, it might leave you overwhelmed, especially on the Windows platform. So you might want to reconsider if you do not want a technical UI.
• If you want specialized servers – The VPN, despite all its advantages, does not offer specialized servers for activities, such as gaming, torrenting, or streaming. Hence, you are forced to use the same servers for everything, which might cause problems.

Hide.me Installation and User Interface

Hide.me has dedicated apps and VPN settings for all major operating systems and devices. You can install a VPN for iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, BlackBerry, and Amazon Fire Stick. They also support VPN for Linux via the command-line. You can even setup a VPN on Windows and Mac directly, configure a VPN connection on routers, and install VPN browser extensions for Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

Both the desktop and the mobile apps have an eye-catching light-blue/white color balance. More importantly, the graphical user interface is incredibly easy-to-use and clutter-free! There’s no bloatware or ads, even on the free VPN version, and no fancy bells or whistles, only the necessary settings, and key security features. This is no exaggeration – you only need to click or tap once or twice to initiate the connection process. The app will select the best VPN server automatically!

Hide.me Pricing

You have two choices when you want to use Hide.me:

Free Plan

If you get a free VPN, you obtain full customer support and access to the same VPN protocols as the paid version. However, with the free VPN service, your choice is limited to between 5 VPN servers, and you have a 10 GB per month bandwidth limit. After you exceed it, the speed drops to about 3 Mbps. You only need to register an account, no credit card required.

Paid Plan

If you decide to upgrade to their paid plan, Hide.me offers three paid payment plan tiers:

• 1 Month – £12.99 per month (regular price).
• 1 Year – £8.33 per month with a 36% discount (£99.99 regularly)
• 2 Years – £4.61 per month with a 61% discount (£119.99 regularly)

After you do a quick conversion to USD and compare them to the prices in our review of ExpressVPN, you see they are pretty close. However, ExpressVPN is on the expensive side of the VPN industry already. If you read our review of NordVPN, you would realize the prices are almost 50% lower, and you get either more features or upgrades on the features both services possess. Luckily, you are unsatisfied, there’s a 30-day period to get your money back in full.

Conclusion

So, do we think it’s worth changing a VPN for this one or even choosing Hide.me when buying a VPN for the first time? We’d think twice mainly because of its price. It’s expensive when compared to averagely-priced VPN providers, let alone Surfshark or CyberGhost, which are known as some of the cheapest high-quality VPN providers. Other than that, you get top-notch encryption, plenty of servers, and the ability to unblock streaming services, use a VPN in China, and acquire 10 simultaneous connections. Plus, you can pay with cryptocurrency – it’s hard to find any faults with Hide.me otherwise.