Having a reliable VPN provider has become a near necessity in 2023. The more people get on the internet, the bigger a target it becomes for looming threat actors to pick up on unprotected streams of data. That said, the problem these days isn’t the lack of a VPN provider, it’s the presence of too many of them.
This article talks about Ivacy, a feature-laden VPN that lets you do just about everything on the internet from masking your IP address, accessing geo-blocked content and even circumventing ISP throttling all while protecting you for a surprisingly low cost.
Ivacy is a Singapore-based VPN provider that claims 15+ years of experience in the field. While the product they offer seems to be well put together, it’s worth noting that their website is rather confusing. For example, the site claims 3,500 servers in over 100 countries and 180 locations on the Server Status page. The server list page, however, reports 5,700+ servers in 100+ locations.
What is clear though is their privacy policy. The VPN features a no-logs policy, something they’re very clear about on both their website and the privacy policy itself. Customer support is also rather easy to reach out to, meaning any potential issues will be quickly resolved.
Also read: Top 7 VPNs for PC, Android, Mac, iOS and Chrome
What features does Ivacy offer?
Ivacy is easily one of the most feature-packed VPNs in 2023. However, while you might have a lot of features to play around with, not all of them compare to the competition. For everyday use though, you can get by just fine.
Here’s a quick list of all the features Ivacy offers:
- 256-bit encryption
- Access to geo-blocked websites
- Unblocks streaming sites like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, BBC iPlayer and more
- Ability to circumvent ISP throttling
- Split tunnelling and Multiport support
- Dedicated IP availability
- Internet Kill Switch
- IPv6 leak protection
- Secure DNS
- Support for TCP, UDP, L2TP, IKEV and WireGuard
- DDoS protection
- Support for P2P connectivity
- Secure Downloading
- Availability across multiple platforms
- Supports up to 10 simultaneous connections on one account
A lot of the aforementioned features will tick all the boxes required for everyday internet use from streaming to downloading to just browsing around the internet. However, there are a few things that are lacking.
For starters, you can only select servers based on country or city. Unlike some of its competitors like Proton, Ivacy doesn’t show you the server load or doesn’t allow you to manually list and connect to servers. This isn’t really that big a deal if you’re just looking to get online at your local coffee shop, but might be useful to some power users.
The apps seem to work well, at least on the devices we were able to access (more on this later). The Kill Switch, which cuts off your internet connection in case the VPN stops working also works rather well. That said, it is disabled by default, in addition to the split tunnelling and multiport features so be sure to enable these before you start playing around.
Streaming, especially when it comes to geo-restricted content works great. You can access just about any streaming service in the world and the VPN works flawlessly with popular streaming services that already have VPN detection built-in including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, FireTV, BBC iPlayer and more.Â
Also read: Top 6 VPN protocols compared: Which VPN protocol is best for you?
How fast is Ivacy compared to the competition?
While Ivacy lets you access every nook and cranny of the internet, the speed of that access can leave a lot to be desired. When put up against the free version of ProtonVPN, here are the speeds we got over a standard 100 Mbps connection.
| VPN | Download Speed (in Mbps) | Upload Speed (in Mbps) |
|---|---|---|
| No VPN | 71.91 | 3.59 |
| Proton VPN (Free plan) | 55.40 | 3.39 |
| Ivacy | 50.42 | 0.95 |
Since Ivacy doesn’t offer the ability to check servers and connect to the ones you want, both VPNs were set to connect to their best servers in the US. The aforementioned test results are the average speeds after running 20 tests equally split between Netflix’s Fast.com and Ookla’s Speedtest.
The faster your connection is, the more drastic this difference in speed will be. That’s not to say that Ivacy isn’t usable, and on faster connections, the speeds will practically have no effect on your experience. That said, it is slower than the competition.
Cross-platform support
Ivacy offers some of the best cross-platform support a VPN can offer. You can download it for just about any platform. Ivacy lists the following supported platforms on its site:
- iOS
- Android
- Windows
- Linux
- Kodi
- Raspberry Pi
- Xbox
- PlayStation (PS3 and PS4)
- Blackberry
- Roku
- Amazon Fire Stick/TV
- Chromecast
- Smart TVs
- Browser extensions (Chrome, Edge, Firefox)
- Apple TV
- Routers (requires support for PPTP, OpenVPN TCP and UDP protocols)
While it’s available for a lot of devices, the Android app wasn’t available to download in India, which kept us from reviewing its features. There are lite versions of the app for Android and iOS as well, but they weren’t available either.
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Browsing, Streaming and Downloads
Outside of the speed issues, the general browsing experience is pretty good. You can access any site, any streaming service and any other geo-restricted content that might otherwise not be available. Support for P2P connections also means that torrenting won’t be a problem either.
There are two tabs in particular in the Ivacy Windows app that unlock more content on the internet — Streaming and Unblocking. The Streaming tab deals with streaming sites, as you’d expect. You can either select and pick a specific streaming service or select by country. The Unblocking tab works the same way, except it essentially opens up any sites specific to a country for you.
These two features could’ve been combined in a single tab for a less cluttered experience. Ivacy’s desktop apps get the job done, but they aren’t the best to navigate or are visually pleasing.
As for Downloads, Ivacy has a feature called ‘Secure Download’, the descriptions for which vary across their site. What it basically does is scan your downloads for any potential malware or other malicious content before during the download process itself or at the ‘server level’, ensuring a malicious file doesn’t enter your PC at all.
Do keep in mind that this feature isn’t enabled by default and is not supported on the Wireshark protocol. If you want to use it, you’ll have to switch to either OpenVPN (TCP and UDP) or IKEV. These are arguably less secure than Wireguard, so it’s a trade-off you have to make based on how many shady downloads you have.
Pricing
Pricing is one place where Ivacy beats everyone by a mile. The VPN is surprisingly cheap for the features it offers. At the time of writing, there are three plans Ivacy offers.
| Plan | Price per month | Payable at checkout |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Month plan | $9.95 | $9.95 billed monthly |
| 1 Year plan | $3.99 | $47.73 billed annually |
| 5 Year plan | $1.00 | $60 billed every five years |
As you can see, Ivacy’s five-year plan beats its competitors by a lot. Granted it’s a long-term commitment, it also includes encrypted 2 TB cloud storage from Internxt and the Sticky password manager, both available for one month after activation. Since you can also share the account with up to 10 people, the monthly cost comes down to basically $1 even if you take the monthly plan.
Payments can be made via all popular payment portals and anonymous methods like Bitpay and Coingate as well. This ensures that you can set up a VPN account without ever leaving a trace behind. Additionally, you can also add security add-ons like a Dedicated IP or Port Forwarding. Dedicated IPs cost $1.99 a month on top of your subscription and include free port forwarding, which by itself costs only $1 per month.
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How safe is Ivacy?
Singapore is a member of the Fourteen Eyes group — a surveillance alliance that shares intelligence with each other. While Ivacy maintains that they don’t keep any logs, according to their privacy policy, they do collect personal data including names, email addresses, payment methods as well as other information such as app crash reports, Google Analytics data on their website, and diagnostics data via Firebase and Crashlytics.
This isn’t ideal for a VPN service, as this data can eventually be pieced together to trace a user. The policy also vaguely states the following under the question “What if an authority requests for information about a customer?”
Since we have a zero-log policy, we keep no information of activities carried out by our customers online. We have information users share with us once he/she signs up for our service, like your email address for instance.
Ivacy also relies on a few unnamed third-party vendors as mentioned in the privacy policy for international data transmission. The way their VPN functions has been in line with the privacy policy in our tests, that said, all we have is their word that they have “no information that could associate specific activities to specific users”.
For everyday browsing needs, Ivacy offers a quick, no-hassle solution to all your security worries. While the feature set might not be as in-depth, everyday consumers will not feel like they’re missing out on something.
Support for the Wireguard protocol, split tunnelling, kill switch, secure download and IP/DNS leak protection all make Ivacy a great choice for a daily driver. When you counter in the price, it almost becomes too good a deal.
However, the product isn’t perfect. If you’re looking for the most control over your data and the fastest speeds over a VPN, you might be better off with something else.
Also read: Internxt review: Safest and most seamless cloud storage?
