HMA’s VPN team has two firm beliefs upon which its business philosophy is based. The first is that privacy should be inviolable. The second is that when you trust your privacy to someone, you need to make sure that trust is mutual and transparent. In this article, we will examine whether the HMA VPN is worth its money and whether it provides the proper level of security to its users.
Pros & Cons
- High connection speed
- Large number of locations and servers
- Strong encryption
- Free 7 day trial
- 30 day money back guarantee
- Torrent and streaming support
- Monthly subscription not available in all regions
- Security issues
- Unstable at unlocking services
- Availability of features depends on the device type
Security
HMA VPN provides AES 256-bit encryption, which is cutting-edge in the VPN industry and securely protects user data. The company is headquartered in the UK, which is unfavorable for user privacy. The U.K. is part of the 5-eye alliance, and if the VPN company gets under pressure, user data could be handed over to the government.
HMA VPN maintains a zero-logs policy, which is an integral part of a premium VPN.
We also conducted a DNS leak test. No DNS leaks are observed on the HMA VPN servers, which is good. We would like to point out that HMA VPN offers both IPv4 and IPv6 leak protection.
Summarizing all of the above, we give HMA VPN 4 for “Security” criterion.
Speed
Developers claim that the HMA VPN servers are optimized for high speed – 20 Gbps – and security. We conducted our own speed tests to personally check how good the speed on servers is. The results of the tests are presented on the screenshots below.
Without HMA VPN:
With HMA VPN:
In both cases we used the same server in order to level out the speed loss due to ping and get a net loss due to VPN. According to the results of the tests, with connected HMA VPN internet speed decreased by about 21%. That value almost falls within the limits of the normal speed reduction caused by VPN, which is 10-20%.
In terms of “Speed” we give HMA VPN a solid 4,7.
Features
Protocols: HMA VPN supports following VPN protocols: OpenVPN, IKEv2, L2TP/IPsec and Wireguard. And in addition to all of the above protocols, HMA VPN offers its own proprietary Mimic protocol, which should help users to bypass any blocking of the VPN connection.
Availability: Users can set up VPN on popular devices (Windows, MacOS, Android, Linux. etc.), routers, smart TVs (AndroidTV, AppleTV) and even Xbox and Playstation. HMA VPN currently does not offer browser extensions.
Servers: The HMA VPN network has 1080+ servers in more than 210 countries around the world, which is pretty impressive. HMA VPN offers both physical and virtual servers. Servers have a dynamic IP, the availability of static IPs on the site of the VPN is not declared.
Useful Features: HMA VPN supports KillSwitch, which you can also use for applications specifically. If you want your IP to change from time to time automatically without your interference – you can do this by enabling the appropriate settings in the VPN application. With the Android app, you can use the SplitTunneling feature, which allows you to select the applications that must bypass the VPN tunnel. HMA VPN servers are equipped with DDOS attack protection and also it is possible to choose from which network type the VPN should automatically connect.
HMA VPN has a pretty good set of features as for a premium VPN. However, we want to note that the available functionality is limited to the type of device used, which is not very convenient. We rate HMA VPN 4.5 for the “Features” criterion.
Price
A monthly subscription will cost an ordinary user about $10, which is quite inexpensive. Like with any other premium VPN, when buying an HMA VPN subscription for a longer period of time you save by discounting the monthly cost. HMA VPN also offers “Business” and “Family” subscription plans. It should be noted that HMA VPN offers a wide range of subscription payment methods, where in addition to standard payment methods you can find QIWI, AliPay, etc. If suddenly the subscription did not suit you – you can request a refund within 30 days from the date of purchase. VPN offers a limited number of simultaneous connections of 5 or 10, and the final subscription price will depend on the selected number.
For users who want to test the capabilities of HMA VPN, a 7-day trial period is available.
Having evaluated the capabilities of HMA VPN, we can say that the price is quite consistent with the declared functionality. The availability of a money back guarantee + free trial period is a plus. However, the restriction on the number of connected devices is a disadvantage. We give HMA VPN 4.5 for the “Price” criterion.
Streaming services and torrents
HMA VPN offers a number of servers dedicated to streaming activity. However, all of these servers are distributed only in 3 countries, most of which is the United States. The site says that you can access Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime and some sports services with HMA VPN. However, when trying to watch Netflix, we had some problems with loading the site, which was not resolved by changing the IP.
As for torrent activity – HMA VPN also has dedicated servers for that specific purpose. They, like dedicated servers for streaming, are also not that many.
For the “Streaming services and torrent” criterion, we give HMA VPN 3.5.
Conclusion
HMA VPN is a decent VPN that performs its main task without problems for a reasonable price. A good set of features and support for streaming and torrent activities is a plus, and the simple interface will be understandable even to a person without a technical background. We can recommend HMA VPN, but if you need VPN for serious streaming and torrenting activity – we advise you to look for alternatives for the same price.