HotVPN has been in operation since 2006, and it has been working out of an undisclosed “offshore zone” location. It’s unwilling to disclose its location, but to point out that it’s definitely not in Russia is concerning. The IP address and hosting company are identifiable as being from Poland, but HotVPN doesn’t openly state that it’s based there.
The site itself hasn’t been updated in years. It looks old and clunky, so it’s unlikely that this HotVPN review is going to turn up any news of a growing VPN service. This provider seems stagnant.
HotVPN is, at best, an average VPN with all of the standard features you’d want to see. It has great encryption, a no-logging policy, malware protection, and a decent client. The issue is that it looks like it gave up a long time ago. You deserve a VPN provider which is always growing, see our list of the top VPNs for better options.
This HotVPN review should make it quite clear that HotVPN’s features are not at par with the best VPNs in the industry. Worst of all, it does not have a VPN client for Windows 10 yet; just for XP, Vista, 7, and 8.
Here are the features we could find:
While these are all good features, they are quite basic. The only truly advanced feature is the four-hop VPN connections. This is where your VPN connection is sent through four different VPN servers, adding layers of encryption and making it all the more difficult to trace you.
This is where HotVPN is really weak as it only has servers in eight countries:
Having servers within Russia is not a good idea right now. If you choose HotVPN, do not choose its Russian server as it is likely censored and controlled by the Russian government. This only leaves you with seven countries to choose from, which is way behind a top provider like IPVanish, a VPN with 60+ country selections.
While HotVPN openly states that it has unlimited speed and bandwidth, it makes no mention of what its VPN servers are capable of. Surely not having a speed limit is great…unless the server itself isn’t up to the task of matching your speed requirement. More information on HotVPN’s server speed capabilities would have been appreciated here.
HotVPN also needs to be a bit more open than simply stating that it has 100% uptime. No one has 100% uptime. With HotVPN’s very small server network, one dropped server could mean that you’re unable to connect to anything nearby. This means that HotVPN’s reliability will be far below than that of Private Internet Access which has 3000+ servers.
Hot VPN has divided its offerings into three different tier structures. The difference is in the number of VPN servers where your connection goes through, with more servers costing you more money.
The first option is the standard package known as, well, Standard. None of these prices are particularly great and are above-average for what HotVPN offers:
The next option is a double-hop VPN service which the company calls Pro or Double. This means that your connection goes through two VPN servers. Prices are high, and only those needing next-level security should ever pay for these prices:
The last option is called Crazy or Quad, and you’ll soon see the crazy price you need to pay for your connection to go through four VPN servers:
These are, quite simply, the highest prices we’ve ever seen for any VPN service…ever. We understand quite well that using more servers costs more, but NordVPN offers this same multi-hop tool for much less.
HotVPN accepts PayPal, credit cards, Qiwi, Bitcoin, and WebMoney.
Our HotVPN review wouldn’t be complete without a thorough testing of the support network. Here’s what we found after using HotVPN’s support channels:
HotVPN has decent support, but the live chat was a letdown. It’s listed as live when we connected, said we were first in line, but we never heard back after 25+ minutes of waiting. We get better service than that from our crummy ISP!
There are two main documents to review for HotVPN’s policies:
The privacy policy is quite standard and also covers the company’s no-logging policy. The refund policy is, however, far below average, with quality VPNs like StrongVPN offering refunds of up to 30 days.
This HotVPN review should show that there’s nothing terribly wrong with this provider. HotVPN is just average and could be the perfect fit for someone who has to have multi-hop VPN server capabilities. It’s also great to see another provider with auto-IP switching on offer as that is becoming more and more rare lately.
The issues come up when you look at the prices (which are incredibly high) and the website (which is incredibly outdated). We got the feeling that no one has worked much on HotVPN in the last few years, and it’s not a good sign when you want a VPN provider that will last. At the very least, HotVPN could write a new blog post, but it hasn’t even done that since 2014! Our list of the best VPN providers is going to help you find much better providers. Visit them now!
Our ratings for hotvpn review are based on our professional experience and extensive tests with VPN providers between April 2014 – July 2014, taking into account user feedback and reviews we receive. As a friendly disclosure, some VPN providers do compensate us for customers we refer them, but this in no way effects their ranking on our website, nor our reviews.
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