Ivacy Reviews

The range of features is arguably the strongest point of Ivacy’s service. There are those that are available by default and allow users’ control over when to use them and there are others that can be added to the bill separately, but all are proof that the company doesn’t hesitate on giving its clients what they ask for.

Simple to use with plenty of customization

The first contact that users have with Ivacy is very smooth and easy to understand, which is important to capture their interest right away. Its desktop client fulfils all of the expectations but it is especially worth highlighting its combining of preestablished features with a decent level of customization, which makes Ivacy suitable for both newcomers and the most demanding customers. For instance, the latter will be happy to know that they can choose whether or not they want to use the kill switch, enable IPv6 leak protection or split tunneling, and much more.

This high level of customization is extended to VPN protocols, too, which is great for those that want to control whether they have a faster or safer connection. Useful options like having the VPN start at the computer’s launch or enabling it to automatically reconnect when the kill switch activates – among other things – can all be accessed from a well-elaborated settings page.

Conversely, beginners don’t need to visit this page at all since they can simply resort to using the menu on the left to easily connect to the most appropriate servers for unblocking content from other countries or torrenting files.

On top of these handy customizable features that are built natively into Ivacy’s clients, the company also gives customers the option to add a dedicated IP for $1.99 extra per month.

Ivacy has a great selection of servers and locations since there are over 100 locations in more than 50 countries. This translates to 1,000+ servers with a significant portion of them carefully located in P2P-friendly countries for file sharing fans to make use of. In addition, though the company is not yet one of biggest names in the industry it can still claim to have some pretty rare locations that many other services don’t. Africa is much better represented than elsewhere, for instance, and the presence of countries like China, Costa Rica, New Zealand, Singapore, and many others ensures a worldwide coverage.

The IP addresses that were attributed by the servers were always on par with the country chosen, but multiple tests revealed that in fact some are actually shared with another VPN company. On a positive note, there were no issues regarding DNS leaks which comes to prove that the company’s tool works flawlessly and thus Ivacy can be trusted for P2P sharing.

Speed tests produced varying results but none of them could be considered lacking in any way. There is another curiosity with the automatic server selection feature, which selects the best server available for you and since tests were run from Europe it would be fair to assume that it would pick one of the nearest countries. Instead, it was actually Ivacy’s homeland of Singapore claiming the award for fastest connection, which was a nice surprise despite the high ping. The remaining countries that were tested produced predictable results considering the geographical distances to each of them.

When it comes to security there are four protocols to choose from and this will play an important role in the speed and overall security of any given connection. The most common choice will be OpenVPN – on either UDP or TCP – but PPTP, L2TP and IKEv2 are also available. The encryption level, however, cannot be changed – unless using PPTP, which doesn’t apply encryption and therefore is faster, but unsafe – and is set at 256-bit, which is still the most popular and reliable today.

Likewise, it’s also important to say that Ivacy is ruled by its no-log policy and because it’s headquartered in Singapore this can be considered trustworthy.

Ivacy’s pricing structure offers the usual three-plan strategy with very attractive prices and no service restrictions on any of them. The only difference is the subscription period, though at the same time this may even push some customers away.

To explain, the monthly plan costs $9.95, which is a fair and common price for per-month packages, but the next offer shoots up to $40.00 per year. Sure, this is saving 66% on the monthly subscription but Ivacy lacks a plan in between monthly and annual, which would provide even more options for potential customers. The third plan, though, is a two-year subscription and the cheapest of the three, costing the equivalent of an amazing $2.25 per month and billed at $54.00 every two years. Unfortunately, there is no free trial or free version, but the company does include a 30-day money-back guarantee on all of its plans, which at least allows a full month of risk-free testing.

In addition, all purchases include a free one-year subscription for Sticky Password, which we reviewed and find to be one of the top password managers in the world.

Ivacy also accepts a vast range of payment options, including PayPal, credit cards, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, Paymentwall and many more.

On the downside, most of the FAQ page can’t be relied on. While some of the most basic answers are answered there, many of them date back to 2015 when desktop clients and apps were configured completely differently, and the assistance provided was for different problems.

It’s also worthy of praise that the DNS leak prevention feature works flawlessly and that some quite rare server locations are available. The outdated FAQ section of the website is less important, really, even though it fails to provide what is for many the first means of assistance. Ivacy should definitely be given a chance as it offers one of the best connections that we have ever had to Singapore while the rest of the network has a good performance too, which might well be enough for many people.