Hide.me VPN review 2024: Cost, features and more

Hide.me VPN review 2024

Hide.me is a straightforward and relatively inexpensive VPN service. The hide.me VPN focuses heavily on privacy features. The company follows a strict no-logging policy (i.e. it doesn’t keep a record of your online activity) and its no-logging and privacy operations have been certified by third-party security testing consultants. For users looking for a long-term plan on a budget and not needing blazing-fast speeds, hide.me could be a reasonable choice.

It ranked around the middle of the pack in our testing for download and upload speeds but should be fast enough for typical business use, including web browsing and streaming. While its month-to-month paid plans are not as budget-friendly as other options, the longest-term plan is a very good value.

Hide.me VPN overview and facts

Hide.me is a product from Malaysia-based IT security company eVenture Ltd. Hide.me started in 2012 and is noteworthy for offering a free plan and support for many popular devices. 

While it isn’t the fastest VPN on our top rated VPNs list, it includes a long list of in-demand security features that can keep your web traffic private and encrypted, supporting five different encryption protocols.

With a Malaysian headquarters, hide.me operates outside a group of countries known as the five eyes, the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. 

The countries that make up the five eyes have a data-sharing agreement that could require companies located within their jurisdiction to share stored data with government officials. For example, Malaysian companies aren’t legally required to cooperate with U.S. law enforcement, a potential boon if you’re worried about the NSA or FBI spying on your web traffic.

While hide.me’s advertising claims it’s the world’s fastest VPN (similar to many VPN companies claims), testing speeds are around the middle of the pack for the VPNs we’ve reviewed. But even if it isn’t the fastest, the speeds are plenty fast for multiple simultaneous video streams and you should have no problems browsing the web. 

Depending on your internet service, location, and other connection factors, hide.me may present with faster download and upload speeds than the averages we found. In most cases, only heavy data users and computer experts would notice the speed difference between hide.me and the fastest VPNs we tested.

Overall, the one-year and two-year plans are a reasonable deal. The free plan is above average, but still quite limited. If you only need a VPN for one month, consider looking elsewhere, as you can find much faster speeds at a similar price point.

Hide.me VPN pricing

Hide.me has two main plans, Free and Premium. It’s convenient to test a free version of hide.me, but it’s limited enough that you’ll likely want to upgrade to a paid plan if you plan to do anything more than basic email and web browsing. The Premium tier includes unlimited data and access to all servers and locations.

The Premium plan comes with various pricing options, depending on how long of a term you pay for at once. Hunting around, you may find other terms available with a coupon. For example, a recent deal featured a 39-month term for $2.43 per month.

Business owners requiring 10 or more accounts can earn significant discounts, which increase as you add more users to your plan. Business plans range from $2.50 to $4.75 per user per month, depending on the size of your team.

Free

The free plan limits users to 10 gigabytes (GB) of data per month, but if you’re not doing work with multimedia or social networking, 10 GB will likely be more than enough. If you limit your activity on the VPN to surfing the web and email, this option will probably meet your needs.

A Premium plan may be a better fit if you’re looking for a plan that supports streaming and dynamic port forwarding. Free users are limited to connecting a single device at a time with only five server locations to choose from.

Premium

The Premium account from hide.me includes unlimited data traffic and all security features. Pricing for the Premium plan changes depending on the billing cycle length. As you pay for longer periods, the monthly price significantly decreases, as is common among VPN companies. Premium accounts also offer a 30-day money-back guarantee if you aren’t happy with your purchase.

Hide.me is a pretty good deal for large teams with 10 or more users. It offers an even balance between cost and performance. But there are some cheaper and faster competitors.

Business

Business pricing is available for teams of 10 or larger. With 10 members, the cost is $4.75 per user per month, a five percent discount. For every 10 additional users, discounts grow until you reach 100 accounts. At that size, you would pay just $2.50 per user account per month, a 50% discount.

Larger organizations should contact hide.me directly for custom pricing packages. 

Hide.me VPN plans

Free

Hide.me’s Free plan is an excellent resource if you want to test hide.me before choosing whether to upgrade to a Premium account. Hide.me doesn’t require a credit card for the free plan, so you can try it out almost completely risk-free. 

The most significant downsides to this plan are that you’ll only have access to servers in five locations and can’t use the VPN on multiple devices simultaneously. Therefore, it likely won’t be a good fit for businesses that need multiple employees to connect to more than one device at a time.

Premium

A Premium plan will unlock all of hide.me’s best features including access to 2,100+ servers in 78 locations, support for streaming services, and the ability to have ten simultaneous connections to the VPN. Unlike the Free plan, there is no limit here on your data usage.

Premium features include dynamic port forwarding, split tunneling, and IP leak protection. All of which are great for businesses. Dynamic port forwarding is a helpful tool in connecting to trusted servers behind your business’s firewall.

Split tunneling is another option that helps route specific traffic through your VPN, while the rest is sent through your normal internet service provider. And IP leak protection acts as a kill switch that stops your connection at the first sign of a disruption to ensure none of your data can be leaked upon VPN failure.

Hide.me doesn’t provide static IP addresses, however, you can reserve a fixed IP address on each server for whenever you connect. Though, fixed IPs aren’t the same as static IPs. You’ll still share fixed IPs with other users, and the fixed IP may not be available every time you connect.

Users with the know-how can choose between their preferred protocols, including WireGuard, IKEv2, SSTP, OpenVPN and SoftEther. Some protocols are limited to specific operating systems.

Native hide.me applications are available for download on Windows, Android, iOS, MacOS, Linux and Fire TV devices, and browser extensions are available for Chrome, Firefox and Edge. You can also install it on a router for network-level protection, covering all devices connected to your Wi-Fi.

Business

If you need 10 accounts or more, business pricing is available. Business plans include all features from the premium plan for each user, plus the added option to customize some options for your users and devices.

A unique, standout feature for hide.me business users is the option for self-managed dedicated VPN servers. Depending on your business needs, the self-managed option enables you to manage specific settings and isolate your traffic from the rest of the hide.me network.

Hide.me add-ons and optional features

With a paid plan, you don’t need to pay more for additional bells and whistles. The Premium plan gives you access to all of hide.me’s features and capabilities. 

A notable VPN feature that hide.me includes support for IPv6 addresses. IPv6 is the most recent and expansive protocol used to assign unique IP addresses to devices connecting to the Internet.

If you’re interested in using the VPN for torrenting (where you download or upload files through BitTorrent), you should follow a few extra steps to ensure a private connection. Hide.me advises users to enable hide.me Stealth Guard, enable the Kill Switch (automatically disconnects your computer from the internet if the VPN goes down), set up a SOCKS proxy, and enable UPnP. These are somewhat advanced steps that could be challenging for less technically inclined users.

Tip: Torrenting is a file-sharing protocol enabling both illegal and legal transfers. Look into applicable laws to ensure you’re not doing anything illegal.

Hide.me customer support and experience

Hide.me customer support is available through live chat, and emailed customer support tickets. You can send messages through a chat feature on the website and will likely hear back within 24 hours. It also has an extensive knowledge base, with step-by-step instructions and answers to common questions and set-up problems. 

Current and past users are overwhelmingly positive about hide.me, with the VPN currently boasting a 4.9-star rating on Trustpilot with 500+ reviews. User reviews on the Google Play Store are also generally positive, with an average rating of 4.1 stars and over 24,000 reviews. 

Efficient customer support, fast data speed and reliable pricing are frequently mentioned in positive reviews. Critical reviews mention connection issues, a faulty kill switch and a higher-than-expected ping time.

Hide.me vs. NordVPN

NordVPN is one of the biggest names in the VPN industry. It blows hide.me out of the water as it has 5,500 servers worldwide (compared to hide.me’s comparatively paltry 2,100). NordVPN also outshines hide.me with download and upload speeds. 

If price matters more to you, though, there’s a chance you’ll prefer hide.me. Compared to NordVPN, hide.me plans cost about $3 less per month than NordVPN. However, if you opt for annual or multi-year pricing, the price gap levels out and both VPNs offer rates of around $3 to $4 per month.

In 2019, NordVPN admitted to being the victim of a data breach. Because one of the primary purposes of a VPN is to keep your internet activity private, a data breach is a reason to question NordVPN’s true privacy offerings. Hide.me has not experienced a similar situation. Their record of early audits of their no-logs policy and years worth of transparency reports that reflect the number of requests to share users’ data may make them a more reliable company in some users’ eyes.

Hide.me vs. ExpressVPN

Similar to Hide.me, ExpressVPN is based in a country outside the jurisdiction of the five eyes and strict data retention laws, the British Virgin Islands. ExpressVPN has a no-log policy similar to hide.me, though they collect data for third-party services like Google Analytics and Adwords if you don’t manually opt-out.

Average download speeds are higher with ExpressVPN, which isn’t a surprise with its larger network of servers. However, the price of the two services may make you lean toward hide.me, as it comes in $3 less per month with a monthly plan. Hide.me also supports WireGuard, a popular VPN protocol ExpressVPN does not support, instead prioritizing their proprietary VPN protocol, Lightway. 

ExpressVPN also faced controversy after being acquired by Kape Technologies in 2021. Controversy surrounded the history of Kape Technologies and its reputation as a malware provider. Further questions were raised, in regard to ExpressVPN��s CIO, who was fined by the U.S. Department of Justice for spying on U.S. citizens. Though much of the controversy could be called speculative, hide.me hasn’t faced nearly as much public scrutiny for news related to its parent company or owners.

You may prefer ExpressVPN over hide.me if your main focus is speed. Otherwise, hide.me is likely the better choice for most entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Is hide.me right for your business?

Hide.me is an impressive VPN with an easy-to-navigate interface and relatively low cost. While its monthly cost of $9.95 is on the higher side, the $2.22 per month 27-month plan is more affordable than most other VPNs.

Hide.me offers 2,100 servers across six continents, a number that doesn’t reach industry leaders, but is still very respectable. What might hold hide.me back for many is its download and upload speeds, which are average compared to other VPNs.

Customer service for the company is generally very good, and hide.me supports a wide range of devices with flexible setup options. If you’re looking for a VPN that’s easy to use and has a history of total privacy, and average speeds aren’t a dealbreaker, hide.me may be a good choice for you.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Does hide.me offer a free trial?

Yes, hide.me offers an indefinite free version of its VPN, meaning you can keep using hide.me without ever spending a dollar or even setting up a credit card in the app. However, the free plan comes with a limited number of server choices and a cap of 10 GB of data transfer per month.

Where is hide.me based?

Hide.me is based in Malaysia, with minimal data retention laws. By being based outside of the five eyes (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the U.S.), hide.me offers users a strong no-logging policy.

Where are hide.me’s VPN servers?

Hide.me has over 2,100 servers in more than 45 countries. Servers are located throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, with a limited number of locations in Central America and Africa.

How secure is hide.me?

Hide.me has a strong history of privacy and we couldn’t turn up any reports of data breaches or customer privacy violations. Their privacy policy shows they collect minimal user data and protect connections with up to AES-256 military-grade encryption.

What VPN protocols does hide.me offer?

Hide.me offers the following protocols to users: WireGuard, OpenVPN, SoftEther, IKEv2 and SSTP. Both OpenVPN and IKEv2 support AES-256 military-grade encryption.

How do I connect to hide.me’s VPN?

The quickest way to connect to hide.me’s VPN is with the browser plugin for Chrome, Firefox, or Microsoft Edge. Hide.me also supports app installation on a computer, smart TV, or smartphone. Some routers are compatible with hide.me, if you have the tech skills to tinker with your router’s firmware.

Does hide.me keep logs?

No, hide.me does not keep logs. The VPN provider has a strict no-log policy, though it collects minimal information, including your email and login information, internally assigned (non-public) IP addresses, and how much data you used during each VPN session.

How fast is hide.me?

Hide.me has an average download speed of 168 Mbps and 46 Mbps for uploads. This places the VPN well above the slowest VPNs in our Best VPNs list, but still about 100 Mbps slower than the top providers in our tests.

What devices work with hide.me VPN?

Hide.me is compatible with various devices and browsers, including most Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS devices. It also works with many smart TVs and routers.