A comprehensive review of AirVPN

AirVPN If you have never used a VPN (Virtual Private Network),[1] you might consider using one after you read all about the advantages of AirVPN. AirVPN[2] is developed to prevent criminal organizations, Internet Service Providers (ISP) and even governments to spy on user online activities and communications. The creators of AirVPN come from Italy, and the company is a bit smaller than your average VPN business. However, they managed to create something that rivals the market leaders. AirVPN was initially released in 2010, by a small group of activists, hacktivists an hackers, with help of lawyers and a financial company.[3] AirVPN started as free-to-use service in April 2010 in order to raise awareness of the VPN.

A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defense of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship.

In comparison to industry giants, AirVPN is a small VPN provider and does not cover wide geographical reaches as NordVPN, CyberGhost, PIA or Hotspot Shield. When these companies offer thousands of servers, AirVPN has only 219 servers in 20 countries across the globe.

PROS CONS VERDICT
Strong protection and encryption Small geographical reaches even though it is not as widely known as the market giants, AirVPN does a pretty good job at protecting its users and creating a secure environment to browse in.
Thorough and honest logging policy Questionable customer support
Unlimited torrenting  

AirVPN is one of the more basic VPN providers based on open-source software, but it offers all the features a user needs. It differs from other VPN services in its subscription options – you can try AirVPN for as little as €1 for three days.

The Pricing plans of AirVPN are flexible and affordable

AirVPN provides users with various plans:

  • Three days for 1€ ~ $1.145
  • One month for 7€ ~ $8.018
  • Three months for 15€ ~ $17.181
  • Six months for 21€ ~ $34.362
  • One year for 54€ ~ $61.852
  • Two years for 84€ ~ $96.214

Discounts and offers are often available. Users can pay using various methods, including Credit Card, PayPal, gift vouchers, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Users also can get a free trial by submitting the contact form available at the official AirVPN website. 

AirVPN user interface

A broad set of security features makes AirVPN strong player in the market

According to the provider, AirVPN offers Network Lock, which covers ALL the limited purposes of a kill switch, plus tons of cases for which a kill switch does not prevent leaks. Only our Network Lock is the proper way to prevent traffic leaks.This VPN provider offers quite a lot of features.

  • Hide user IP address
  • Strict monitoring and logging policy of user online activities
  • Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Re-keying is performed every 60 minutes
  • Additional connection types supported by every Air VPN server.
  • Allows all protocols
  • Internal VPN DNS based on root servers anti-ICE/ICANN censorship
  • Port Forwarding / DDNS
  • No traffic, time, speed or servers switch limits.

Strong and Military-grade encryption provides you an invisible online presence

With AirVPN, your surfing is 100% anonymous because the service gives you a different IP address, which will be displayed as your own, for example, when you comment or post something. You can also connect to any WiFi network knowing that nobody will be able to spy on your activity. The encryption is very strong (256-bit), making it an extremely secure Virtual Private Network. It is better than what many other VPN providers offer, making it a great deal if privacy is your main goal. Only OpenVPN protocol is supported by AirVPN because it is thought to be one of the most secure protocols. The developers state that PPTP and L2TP are too insecure, so they chose the best option.

Flexible and cross-platform support is included

Once you buy the subscription, you can use it for 5 devices simultaneously – your phone, your personal computer, or any other device. 

AirVPN servers

Privacy and Protections are just great

OpenVPN protocol is supported by AirVPN because it is thought to be one of the most secure protocols. The developers state that PPTP and L2TP are too insecure, so they chose the best option. However, it supports SSL and SSH tunneling in countries, in which OpenVPN is not supported. AirVPN also uses DNS Leak Protection, which adds an additional layer between the Internet and encrypted data. Another aspect worth mentioning is that this Virtual Private Network offers VPN through Tor. This really raises the level of privacy, as Tor itself is a free piece of software designed to protect users' anonymity on the Web.

AirVPN offers one of the strongest protections in the VPN industry as it uses reliable and trustworthy Open VPN.

AirVPN uses OpenVPN to establish the connection between your computer and our servers. OpenVPN is the most reliable and secure solution for encrypted tunnels, offering a higher than military degree of security.

The company offers OpenVPN on ports 80 TCP / UDP, 443 TCP / UDP, and 53 TCP / UDP and supports directly OpenVPN over SSH. OpenVPN over SSL and OpenVPN over Tor. AirVPN uses strong encryption 4096 bit RSA keys size, AES-256, CBC Data Channel, HMAC SHA1 Control Channel. The company claims that even brutal techniques of monitoring, censorship, throttling an traffic shaping will fail. In addition, AirVPN is based in Italy and is fully compliant with the EU legal framework. Italy belongs to 14 Eyes surveillance alliance which is known to share information gathering efforts with 13 other countries, including the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and others. As the VPN claims to log zero of your information, you should not worry about this. What we did not like, is the small server pack. As it was mentioned before, the company only has 218 servers in 20 countries. In comparison, VPN giants offer users to connect in thousands of servers in 60-80 countries around the world.

Performance and connection speed shows an excellent results

Even though VPNs tend to slow down Internet connection, AirVPN demonstrates reliable performance rates. The company recommends users to connect to the server which will provide the best performance. The company claims that minimum allocated granted bandwidth is 4 Mbit/s download and 4 Mbit/s upload. In 24 hours the connection dropped only once which is not a bad result at all. The VPN service gives users updates on which of the servers are working, not working and run the fastest.

The customer support could be better…

If you have any questions regarding the services, the first thing you can do is visiting the online forum featured on the official AirVPN website. The company has FAQ and forums so you can read some threads and see, what other users think about it and what problems they encounter. When you already have the VPN, you can go there first in case you have any questions – they might have already been answered. You can also create posts and ask the community for help. Unfortunately, AirVPN does not have customer support via chat or phone. Instead, AirVPN offers users to contact the customer support team by filing the direct contact form. We tried to contact the customer support and received an answer within 6-7 hours. Once you fill the form, you should get an automatic confirmation that the request was received, otherwise, it probably got stuck in the system. However, the support team instead of answering our question, just directed us to the support website to look for information ourselves. 

User Interface looks complicated and not so easy to navigate

This can be both an advantage and a disadvantage. There are a lot of options to configure your AirVPN. The user interface might be confusing if you are a beginner with VPNs, and this can discourage some not-so-technical users. After buying the subscription, you have to configure your application and there are simply too many options to choose from. 

AirVPN countries

Overal it is a reliable VPN, but with outdated user interface

To sum up, even though it is not as widely known as the market giants, AirVPN does a pretty good job at protecting its users and creating a secure environment to browse in. However, you should keep in mind that there are some technical details when setting it up, so it would be recommended to read on it before the installation. If you are a total beginner, you can also consider trying ZenMate and VyprVPN. One of the best things about this service is that you can try it for as low as 1 euro for 3 days, so you can buy this subscription right away and check it out for yourself.

  • Supported platforms: Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux, ChromeOS.
  • Allows the 3rd-party connection: Yes, for Above and DD-WRT, Tomato, AsusWRT routers, pfSense, TOR, SSH Tunnel and SSL Tunnel.
  • Simultaneous connections: Up to 5 devices.
  • User data required: real name, email address.
  • Supported protocols: all protocols allowed. The company claims to have 4 entry-IPv4 addresses and 4 entry-IPv6 addresses that support different ports and protocols.
About the author
Tomas Statkus
Tomas Statkus - Team leader

Tomas Statkus is an IT specialist, the team leader, and the founder of Reviewedbypro.com. He has worked in the IT area for over 10 years.

Contact Tomas Statkus
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References
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