Ivacy VPN

Company Background

As mentioned above, Ivacy’s headquarters are located in the faraway island of Singapore. Even though Ivacy has over 10 years of experience on VPN services, it is still a relatively small actor among the market giants. Has the location of the service, far away from Europe and North America, affected this?

The experts of the branch, Tech of Tomorrow, Sayf and PC World, advocate for Ivacy. Over 500 comments on Trustpilot have deemed the service worth 5 stars. Moreover, in January Ivacy snatched the fastest VPN prize of BestVPN.com. As if these merits were not enough, it should be mentioned that a month ago Ivacy became the official VPN partner of the renowned East London based West Ham United. If asking one of the most famous and oldest football clubs in the world, Ivacy is certainly not a useless VPN service!

According to what we have heard, the effort of the team behind Ivacy can also be seen in the shared split tunneling technology, which was introduced to the world of VPN in 2010. It is a technique that allows users to decide what internet traffic is sent through the normal Internet provider (for example, public WiFi) and what through the VPN service. In other words, this technology enables the usage of several Internet connections simultaneously. Furthermore, the VPN services offered by Ivacy are compatible with almost all devices and browsers on the market, including Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, Chrome and Firefox, smart TVs, and even Xbox and PS4. The beginning of Ivacy looks therefore very promising!

Ivacy VPN Products and Features

At the time of review, Ivacy offers four different packages.

Monthly billing, price 9.95 dollars
Annual billing, price 3.99 dollars a month, 40 dollars per year
Quinquennial billing, price 1.19 dollars a month, less than 80 dollars in five years
All the packages include the following features:

Advanced IPsec & IKEV protocols
Antivirus
Over a thousand servers in over a hundred different countries
No client log
Kill Switch feature
Premium download speed
Smart Connect feature
256-bit encryption
Unlimited bandwidth
Up to 5 simultaneous connections
Kodi App
P2P support

Apart from the monthly billing plan, Ivacy offers very competitive prices . In fact, it one of the most affordable VPN services that we have seen thus far. The accepted payment method are also very diverse, because in addition to the well-known credit cards, even PayPal, Bitcoin, Alipay, PerfectMoney and a long list of other e-wallets are among the offered payment methods. Moreover, for a price of 1.19 dollars the user can choose a permanent IP address in Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom or the United States.

As many competitors on the market, Ivacy offers a 30-day Money-Back Guarantee for its packages, although there is a significant issue regarding this promise. Firstly, the guarantee is valid only when you buy a package for longer than a month. In the Monthly plan, the money-back guarantee is seven days. Secondly, the guarantee must be applied for within 30 days of the moment of purchase, so you cannot wait for the promised 30 days to expire. Thirdly, the account must still be up, in other words Ivacy has not shut down the account due to breach of terms, misuse or any similar reason. Fourthly, you must have not used the guarantee before. And fifthly, you must have not paid your order with Bitcoin or an e-wallet. It is to be noted, that these conditions are not explicitly stated before the payment, but the user has to find them independently on the website. Even though the information is available, it is slightly difficult to find, and it seems like a hoax. Therefore we recommend reading the terms and conditions carefully before paying!

Connection Speed

The connections offered by Ivacy have done relatively well in reviews. Even though we know that using a VPN service always slows down the connection speed – no matter how fast the VPN service – using Ivacy does not affect speed dramatically. Using Western servers, Ivacy performs quite superbly, and the download speed using European and American servers dropped at most a third from the original speed. If your normal download speed was 100 Mbit/s, you would get to surf safely on the Internet with a speed of approximately 70 Mbit/s. Asian servers were significantly slower compared to the European and American servers. The affordable price does not seem to affect the connection speed, and therefore the plans that last for a minimum of one year have a great quality-price ratio.

Safety and Privacy

Ivacy uses the OpenVPN protocol with the 256-bit AES encryption as their standard, which might be the best and safest option on the market at the moment. Unfortunately, OpenVPN does not support all devices, to which Ivacy offers other common protocols such as PPTP, SSTP, L2TP ja IKEv2. IKEv2 may be the best option, since for example PPTP and L2TP are such outdated and slow protocols, that one must avoid them in every way possible.

Ivacy has a zero tolerance for upholding a client log, and according to their data protection policy the only things that are logged are the the name, email address and payment method from the customer’s profile. This information is used to improve the quality of the service. In other words, no activities, services, websites, downloads or apps are saved in a client log. It seems that Ivacy protects the customers’ connection in the best possible way that is currently offered on the market.

Customer Service

Affordable prices do not usually guarantee first class customer service, but even in this case Ivacy is a refreshing exception. When it comes to customer service, a big plus is the 24 hours live chat service, where the enthusiastic customer service agent greets the guest before one can even open the chat window.

First, the customer service agents greets in a friendly manner and asks how they could help. Thist is a small detail which is often forgotten by customer servants. We send a question, and in a split second the chat window informs hat the question has been read. Another second passes by and the chat window tells that the customer service agent is writing. The answer appears on the screen in less than 15 seconds. Talk about efficient customer service!

In our case, the customer service agent was quick and friendly. We asked questions about the 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee. The replies were understandable, and the agent did not try to divert the conversation and answered the question directly. In addition to the live chat service, there is a quite comprehensive FAQ section and an email address. It took a few hours to get an answer by email, but the efficiency of the live chat left a positive impression.

In conclusion, we can confirm that the quality-price ratio offered by Ivacy is excellent. Affordable prices include high safety protocols, an extensive selection of servers all over the world and with many devices, relatively fast download speed and a 24-hour customer service that actually works. Even though the slightly unclear and suspicious 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee can be considered Ivacy’s disadvantage, the service overall is an affordable and safe choice for all-round Internet usage.