Ivacy VPN Review

Ivacy VPN is one of the most exciting VPNs in the market today. It is famous for its affordable pricing and promises to help you protect your digital presence and access foreign content globally.

The VPN was launched in 2007 and has since built a network of more than 2,000 servers in over 100 locations. It’s well encrypted and comes with an impressive feature suite.

Under testing, Ivacy holds up quite well, but it’s still missing a few key pieces. 

In this Ivacy VPN review, we’re going to take a look at the VPN’s features, speed, privacy practices, and more.

Ready? Let’s dive in.

Pricing Plans & Payment Methods

Pricing remains one of Ivacy’s most attractive aspects. The VPN is incredibly priced and all its subscription plans outdo most of the top VPNs in the industry.

The provider offers three subscription plans – a 1-month plan, a 1-year plan, and a 2-year plan. Also, Ivacy has a short-term 7-day trial plan that is available at a massively discounted price.

Ivacy’s 2-year subscription plan offers the best value for value and sets you back only $2.25 per month. We were also pleased with the annual plan, which is priced at $3.50 per month.

Overall, the prices are affordable. However, the subscription packages do not include Ivacy’s perfect forwarding secrecy feature or dedicated IPs. For that, you’ll need to pay an extra $1.00 per month and $1.99 per month respectively.

Ivacy does not offer a free trial but has a 30-day money-back guarantee (7 days for the monthly plan), allowing you to try the service risk-free.

Payment Methods

Ivacy offers a good range of payment methods. You can use:

• Credit Cards – Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, JCB
• PayPal
• BitPay
• PerfectMoney
• Alipay
• Cryptocurrency

With cryptocurrency, the provider allows you to purchase the VPN anonymously, which gives you an extra layer of protection.

Servers and Locations

A VPN can be quite limiting if its server distribution is narrow. Remember, to view geo-blocked content, your VPN should have servers in a country where that particular content is accessible.

Ivacy claims to have 2000+ servers in its network. However, the apps provide access to only 766 servers in 100 locations spread across 54 countries in the Americas, Europe, the Asia Pacific, Africa, and the Middle East.

• North America – 129 servers
• South America – 79 servers
• Europe – 303 servers
• Asia – 149 servers
• Africa – 62 servers
• Oceania – 44 servers

Although the number of servers pales in comparison to the likes of NordVPN and ExpressVPN, Ivacy has done a nice job distributing them across the globe. The provider has servers in many regions of the world that VPNs often overlook, including China, the Philippines, Brunei, Nigeria, and Colombia.

Privacy & Jurisdiction

Ivacy places a great deal of importance on online safety and that shows through with its privacy policy. The provider starts by stating the following.

“We strictly do not log or monitor, online browsing activities, connection logs, VPN IPs assigned, original IP addresses, browsing history, outgoing traffic, connection times, data you have accessed and/or DNS queries generated by your end. We have no information that could associate specific activities to specific users.”

In short, Ivacy knows nothing about your online activities. That means your anonymity won’t be at risk if its servers get compromised or the authorities come knocking.

Besides maintaining a strict privacy policy, Ivacy is also located in Singapore, a privacy-friendly jurisdiction. The country is not a member of the “14 Eyes” spy alliance and does not have mandatory data retention laws.

Encryption

Ivacy is strong in the security department. We tested for vulnerabilities and we didn’t find IP, DNS, or WebRTC leaks whatsoever.

The VPN uses military-grade AES 256-bit encryption, which is a pretty sure bet. The cipher is impenetrable and can keep you safe on any public Wi-Fi network.

Like other top VPNs, Ivacy comes with OpenVPN as the default protocol. OpenVPN remains the gold-standard in VPN encryption and Ivacy supports both the more reliable OpenVPN over TCP and the much faster OpenVPN over UDP. 

However, this does not mean that you are stuck with OpenVPN; you can always switch to L2TP/IPsec, IKEv2, SSTP, or PPTP.

Ivacy Features

Ivacy boasts a wide array of features. Starting with the essentials, the VPN comes with an automatic kill switch that keeps you safe by instantly stopping your internet connection if the VPN fails.

Ivacy also offers IP/DNS leak prevention, auto-connect, and DDoS protection, which is great for online gamers.

Other great features include:

Dedicated IP

Besides shared IPs, Ivacy also allows you to obtain your own personal IP (US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, Singapore, and Hong Kong). Dedicated IPs are perfect for online transactions, remote working, and streaming on Netflix, and other on-demand services. Also, they help you avoid the annoying Google reCAPTCHA.

Secure Downloading

Ivacy includes a real-time threat detection technology that scans malware and removes it at the server level before it reaches your device. Secure Downloading also blocks pop-up windows and spam emails.

Port forwarding

Although it comes at an extra cost, Ivacy’s port forwarding feature is an incredible one to have. It not only allows you to optimize torrent performance but also protects your device from unauthorized traffic.

Split tunneling

One of the best features available with Ivacy is split tunneling. It allows you to send some of your traffic through the VPN while letting the rest access the internet directly.

Streaming Performance

Ivacy is capable of accessing most of the popular streaming services. We had no problem unblocking US Netflix and the service also worked reliably with BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime, and HBO GO.

Ivacy is certainly an ideal option for streaming. However, its speeds can sometimes be a bottleneck. If you experience any issues, we recommend switching from OpenVPN to a much faster protocol.

P2P & Torrenting

While torrenting is completely legal, downloading or streaming copyrighted material can land you in a whole lot of trouble. It, therefore, makes sense to protect your traffic with a VPN.

Ivacy does well in regards to torrenting. The VPN allows P2P traffic on servers located in the UK, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Bulgaria, Sweden, Turkey, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Panama, Costa Rica, Brunei, and Venezuela.

Security-wise, Ivacy gets the “all clear”. It’s equipped with robust encryption and does not keep logs. Additionally, the VPN allows unlimited bandwidth and you can download as much content as you need.

Multi-Platform Compatibility

Ivacy VPN is compatible with a wide range of devices. You can set it up on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Chromebook, Kodi, consoles, and routers. There are also browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.

Ivacy supports multi-logins and allows up to 5 simultaneous connections. That’s enough connections to cover most if not all of your devices.

Customer Support

The live chat is one of the first things you notice on the Ivacy website. It’s easily accessible and we were impressed by the responsiveness of the customer support agents.

In addition to the live chat, you can also contact Ivacy via email or support ticket. The provider also has a searchable knowledgebase, where you can find FAQs, video tutorials, and information on accounts and billing.

The Verdict

Ivacy is an impressive VPN that can go toe to toe with the top-tier secure VPNs. It delivers decent speeds, and we were impressed by its robust encryption and privacy practices. The VPN ticks all the right boxes when it comes to streaming and torrenting. And although Ivacy has a few flaws, those are easy to overlook given its price and features.