Hide.me Review

Hide.me is a Malaysia-based company which has been providing VPN services since 2011. Hide.me's free plan offers a 2GB data transfer, although the extremely limited server choice (Canada, Netherlands, Singapore), and has a one device limit. Registration requires an email address. The Plus plan is $10 per month ($65 per year – when paid annually) and offers 29 locations and unlimited bandwidth, but there are is a 75GB data cap and a one-simultaneous connection-only limit.

What we like

• 2GB/month free plan
• No logging policy
• Well-designed client
• Excellent download speeds

What we don't like

• Unlimited bandwidth plan is expensive
• Registration requires an email address
• Limited Servers (Canada, Netherlands, Singapore)

Speed

In performance tests Hide.me was impressive, with the service actually accelerating regular download speeds by 1%. Latency was increased by 86%, though, and uploads were down by 61% compared to our normal speeds.

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Privacy

Hide.me has a strict "no logging, ever" policy, the company claims, saying "our network simply cannot log your information, it is just built that way". Some details are held to manage your account, but these are relatively minimal: an email address, the amount of monthly data traffic, and a non-persistent log which holds randomly generated user names and internal IP addresses (which is securely erased every few hours). Your name, payment details, email and physical address stay private.

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Servers

Hide.me's client is compact and well-designed. You're able to connect to the best server with a click, the list of alternative servers is immediately on view, and status information about your current IP address and location is always visible. However, server selection is EXTREMELY limited (Canada, Netherlands, Singapore).