Hide.me Review — What Our Testing Shows in 2024

In this comprehensive hide.me review, we’re going to be taking a close look at one of the market’s lesser-known VPN brands to see how they compare in a crowded industry.

Hide.me has attracted a lot of attention in the past year or so for its robust VPN that delivers good speeds, unblocks a host of streaming services, and adheres to strict privacy settings.

We review the core features of the VPN, as well as testing how well it performs, identifying any unique features, exploring the server count, and much more.

Keep on reading to see how to hide.me fares following our hands-on testing and wherever it can match the industry giants like NordVPN and ExpressVPN.

Hide.me Pros and Cons

In a hurry? If you’re looking for some quick advantages and disadvantages of Hide.me, we’ve listed some of the most relevant pros and cons below for you.

What Is Hide.me?

Hide.me is a top VPN service that offers reliable speeds, a solid range of servers around the world, and a no-nonsense approach to security and privacy. However, it’s perhaps not as well-known as some of the contenders on our list of the top VPNs on the market.

But that’s not to say that it isn’t excellent in its own right – it can easily bypass geo-restrictions put in place by streaming services, meaning you can watch as much content on websites like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu without any fuss.

More importantly, you can enjoy your favorite streaming platforms without any annoying buffering, as the speeds on offer are very good.

We found it to be one of the more user-friendly VPNs out there, especially on the desktop clients for Windows and MacOS. This, along with the robust security and privacy features on offer, makes Hide.me an interesting choice for those looking for a new VPN to take into the New Year and stay safe online.

Is Hide.me Safe – Can You Trust It?

For all intents and purposes, hide.me is as safe as they come. The company has no history of any data breaches, leaks of personal information, or anything of note that could lead us to not trust them.

They back this up with their no-logs policy as a strict approach to anonymity. This means that they don’t keep any of your personal data on file, so there’s no risk of it being sold to third-party advertisers or being leaked in a data breach.

Hide.me allows you to sign up for an account and pay with cryptocurrency, meaning that you can stay totally anonymous throughout the whole signup process, just as long as you use a generic email that doesn’t include your name and date of birth.

All-in-all, our Hide.me review shows that you can certainly be trusted as your next VPN provider.

Best Use Case for Hide.me – What Does It Excel At?

Now, these are both useful features for a VPN to offer, as one of the most popular uses of VPNs as a whole is to unblock new content, and for others, it’s all about privacy.

Thankfully, Hide.me can satisfy both needs. Firstly, we found that it was able to unblock pretty much any streaming service we threw at it, including Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Max, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney Plus. This means you can enjoy brand-new content on all of these platforms from wherever you’re located.

Secondly, it actually excels with its favorable privacy features, including anonymous payments via crypto, a strict zero-logs policy, and an independent third-party audit to back this up. This is reassuring for people who want to remain anonymous online, and we hope to see more providers offering crypto payments in the future.

Top Hide.me Features – What Works and What Doesn’t

Hide.me has a lot of great features that truly make it stand out, but some are much more unique than others. To help you understand exactly what’s on offer, we’ve listed some of the key features below and how well they work following our vigorous testing.

SmartGuard

SmartGuard is a clever feature that essentially blocks any annoying ads when you’re browsing on the internet, as well as keeping you safe from any potential viruses and malware. This useful feature is turned on by default, and we found that its ad-blocking skills were excellent.

It even includes a parental control setting, which allows you to restrict the type of content your child can see online by hiding explicit images and websites.

As good as this is, we wish it allowed for more manual configuration, as it can sometimes block websites that aren’t harmful, so being able to customize this would be a welcome addition to an already great feature.

StealthGuard

Another top feature on offer with Hide.me is StealthGuard, which is a combination of a kill switch and split tunneling, two VPN essentials.

With this, you can select which apps you want to be protected by the VPN, for example, you can use a different Netflix library in another country using the VPN but opt for your banking app not to be connected, as this can sometimes cause issues – or anything along those lines.

Split tunneling and kill switches aren’t exactly groundbreaking VPN technology and have been around for a number of years, but packaged up together like this, they work seamlessly. While testing the feature for this Hide.me review, were able to stream content from a variety of different services on the VPN connection whilst still being able to read local news and more.

VPN Cascading

This is another fancy-sounding name for a typical VPN feature, in this instance, multi-hop or double VPN, connecting to two or even more VPN servers rather than just the standard one.

Hide.me’s Cascading works like this: a secure tunnel is established between you and the VPN server when you connect to it, and it shields your confidential information from third parties. You then build another secure tunnel inside the existing secure tunnel to connect to a second VPN server. 

It’s not necessary to stop at two, and you can theoretically connect to as many as you like but don’t count on your connection being fast enough to browse the web. The benefit of this is essentially a more secure connection and less chance of your browsing data being stolen or seen by external sources.

Port Forwarding

By using port forwarding, also known as port mapping, you can provide remote servers and internet-connected devices can access to your private local area network (LAN) and vice versa. When port forwarding is enabled, any device connected to the internal network can communicate with any other device.

Port forwarding is a useful way to access software running on your computer remotely, whether you’re hosting a small website for a business or simply enabling your friends to play a game of Minecraft – the possibilities are endless.

Hide.me decided against using static port forwarding in favor of the safer Universal Plug and Play since port forwarding can be potentially dangerous.

Better yet, instead of mapping a network port constantly, it does so only upon request from an app. Plus, it won’t ask for a specific IP address, which can be problematic if you use a VPN to maintain your anonymity.

Fixed IP

A Fixed IP isn’t the same as the usual static IP you pay extra for with most VPN services, allowing you to have your own unique IP address. A fixed IP address is more like reserving a space on an open VPN server.

This means that every time you connect to the same server on the VPN, you’ll get the exact same IP address. It’s worth noting that Hide.me states that if a server is overcrowded, they may assign your IP address to someone else – so bear this in mind.

We never ran into this issue ourselves, and we were able to connect to our designated IP address without any hassle on the multiple times we tested this feature out.

Optimized Streaming Servers

As we mentioned above in the ‘best use case’ section, Hide.me is a great choice for casual VPN users to watch content from a ton of different streaming services. Not only can it bypass geo-locked content easily, but it even offers servers optimized for streaming.

We put them to the test and were really impressed with the overall experience. Some slower VPNs that don’t use the Wireguard protocol can often struggle with streaming, as the speeds on offer are poor, and you’re met with the annoying wheel of buffering content.

Thankfully, there were no such issues with Hide.me, partly due to what the provider calls ‘Bolt Technology’, which offers lightning-fast streaming on Windows. They also use the Wireguard protocol for mobile and MacOS devices, so you can safely and speedily stream on all devices.

Hide.me Pricing – Is It a Good Value Purchase

Like all great VPNs, Hide.me goes the extra mile by offering a free plan for everyone to use before they potentially decide to upgrade. We’re always thrilled to see VPN providers off these types of plans, as the market is so crowded you don’t always want to spend your hard-earned money on a service that may not be for you.

With the free plan, you’ll get a generous 10GB of data every month, which is much more than some of its competitors, like TunnelBear, which only offers 2GB.

Sure, you’re likely to burn through this in a few days if you use it heavily, but considering it’s free, it’s not a bad deal.

Our review of Hide.me revealed that it does include some limitations, which is not uncommon. For example, only one connection and five locations are available to free users. Other restrictions include the absence of the Fixed IP feature, port forwarding, and streaming-optimized servers.

Moving on to the paid plans, Hide.me does come with a pretty big price tag when compared with some of the leading competitors like Surfshark (when paying on a monthly basis.). However, you can bag yourself a deal by opting for the 3-year plan, which only costs $2.22/month.

This unlocks the whole fleet of servers and gives you access to the VPN on up to 10 devices, introduces port forwarding and other premium features, and much more. You’re also protected by a 30-day money-back guarantee on all of these plans, so if you decide it’s not the VPN for you, canceling is easy.

Hide.me Interface – Is It User-Friendly?

Hide.me has apps for all major devices, and each of them looks and operates in a different way, so to help you understand what you’re getting on each platform, we’ve created a useful guide to all the major ones below.

Windows

The Windows app for Hide.me is highly customizable but perhaps more for tech-savvy individuals. Most of the important features, like the kill switch and leak protection, are all turned on as standard, so most can start using the VPN straightaway without any changes.

Some uncommon but helpful features exist, such as the option to activate automated protocol switching. You can even choose which protocols this function is permitted to use in case you are having trouble connecting.

It has something called Stealth Guard, which we touched upon earlier. It’s essentially an app-specific kill switch that can also work in tandem with the system-wide kill switch. You can use it to initiate personalized scripts when the kill switch is activated – again, this might be for the more advanced user.

We really like that you can search for a location of your choice instead of having to scroll through all of the countries and cities on offer. This may seem minimal, but we can’t think of many other VPNs that allow you to find your desired server so effortlessly.

macOS

The Mac app is almost identical to the Windows app in terms of features and layout, both of which make them easy to use for beginners and fun to customize for more advanced users. We were also delighted to see that Mac users can benefit from Wireguard support, something that is often cut for macOS apps from other VPNs.

Android and iOS

The Hide.me VPN app for Android provides a simple user interface that’s easy to both navigate and customize to your liking. It may be argued that it’s a little too straightforward because the majority of prompts use stock Android features.

The app disconnects when you close it, and the settings are less extensive than on desktop clients, as you’d expect. The notification bar doesn’t have a symbol that shows you are connected, which we found to be a little annoying. It’s a little frustrating that you have to launch and dismiss the app each time in order to see the status of your connection.

The Hide.me VPN iOS app makes use of the standard iOS app template, much like the Android version does. It’s not really eye-catching, but if you need to locate anything fast, it’s fairly intuitive. You can also alternate between the light and dark modes, which is a nice touch.

There’s even access to the Wireguard tunneling protocol on both the iOS and Android apps, something that is again often overlooked by other top VPNs – so speed and streaming won’t be an issue for those on the move. Plus, both apps offer a kill switch, which is even more unusual – so top marks for the mobile versions.

What Security Does Hide.me Offer?

One of (if not the) most important aspects of a VPN is the security features that come included, as they’re ultimately designed to keep you safe. Below, we take a dive into the security measures in place on Hide.me and evaluate their usefulness.

Encryption

As previously stated, your connection is encrypted when you connect to Hide.me VPN servers, and all that will be visible to someone who chooses to monitor your network is incomprehensible nonsense. Hide.me ensures this by using the AES-256-CBC cipher.

Both your username and password are randomly generated during the authentication process, along with your connection. The SHA-256 cryptography is employed by the service for this reason. Therefore, the only versions of your credentials that are stored on their systems are hashed versions, making them hard to decipher.

Self-Managed DNS

If you rely on third-party DNS servers, then this means that they have access to your connection logs. So, if you’re using DNS addresses assigned by your Internet Service Provider, every accessed domain can be easily retrieved.

Thankfully, Hide.me makes use of its own exclusive DNS servers. Therefore, the same level of encryption that protects your VPN connection will protect your DNS requests when you connect to their network. This helps prevent DNS poisoning situations from spreading and also increases the privacy of your internet history.

Hide.me Compared With Other VPNs

Now you know a good amount about what Hide.me VPN offers, we feel it’s time to see how it fairs against its rivals. To help with this, we’ve created a useful table that compares all the vital elements of a top VPN, like price, features, and much more.

As is apparent in the data above, Hide.me doesn’t quite offer the same level of unique or advanced features as the likes of ExpressVPN, Nord, and Surfshark. However, as it’s incredibly easy to use and great for streaming, so there’s still definitely a market for it.

What Do Hide.me Reviews Say?

If you’re still not entirely convinced or put off by Hide.me at this stage, then let’s explore what actual users of this VPN are saying. To do this, we scrolled through page after page on reputable review sites like Trustpilot, G2, and even Reddit.

In this review, the user praises the generous free trial on offer from Hide.me, something we alluded to earlier in this review. There’s the added bonus of not needing a credit card to sign up for the free trial, a huge plus in our books.

Another review was quick to sing the praises of the IPv6 support offered by Hide.me, as well as another tick for the excellent free trial. They do mention a brief issue with streaming on certain unspecified platforms, but servers can sometimes be blocked via a streaming provider, so connecting to another should fix this.

Overall, the reviews for Hide.me from real users are very good, with the free plan and streaming capabilities, in particular, impressing many customers.

We mostly agree with them as well, as we mentioned that Hide.me is excellent for streaming, and the free plan is one of the best we’ve tested with that generous 10GB monthly data allowance.

Good Hide.me Alternatives

If Hide.me still really isn’t for you at this point, then don’t panic! We’ve tested dozens of the leading VPN providers on the market in the same way – by testing them hands-on and looking at what real-life users have to say. We’ve listed some of our top VPN reviews below:

Why You Can Trust Our Review of Hide.me

We look for any unique features that a VPN offers, like SmartGuard for Hide.me. To back up any claims we make, we also explore the depths of the internet for real user reviews using popular websites like Trustpilot and G2. We even look for feedback from the harshest of critics – Reddit, or more explicitly, the Subreddit R/VPNs.

Lastly, we’re able to fall back onto a wealth of knowledge and expertise in the VPN market, as we’ve previously tested hundreds of different VPNs and put them through their paces in the same way. So overall, we think we’re in a solid position to cast assertions on what we think are good VPNs and which are weaker than others.

How to Use Hide.me Step-By-Step

Getting set up and running with Hide.me is an absolute breeze, and it took us just a matter of minutes to have everything ready to go on all major devices. Here’s how we did it:

1. Go to the Hide.me Website

Head over to the official Hide.me website and click the ‘Get Hide.me’ button in the top right-hand corner of the page.

2. Pick Your Plan

Next, you’ll need to pick your plan from one of the three available: monthly, 6-monthly, or 27-month plan (with 3 months free.) Be aware this is a current deal available on the Hide.me website and may no longer be available.

3. Create an Account

Next, you’ll need to create an account using your email and password. You’ll use this to sign in to your account on each device you want Hide.me to secure – you can protect up to 8 devices with one subscription.

4. Download and Install Hide.me

The last step is to download Hide.me onto your devices – as it can be used on 8 devices at once, you can protect your phones, tablet, or PC with one subscription.

5. Connect to a Server

Lastly, test out your new VPN by connecting to a server. You can use it to bypass geo-restricted content on popular streaming services like Netflix and BBC iPlayer.

Should You Use Hide.me?

Hide.me is a great VPN for casual users looking to do some streaming and bypassing of geo-locked content on major streaming platforms like Netflix. During our hands-on testing, we found that it was more than capable of unlocking a ton of content, and thanks to the Wireguard support and streaming-optimized servers, its performance is top-notch.

Sure, it doesn’t have quite the depth of features we’ve seen with some of the top providers, like Nord, ExpressVPN, and Surfshark – but for the everyday person, just having a user-friendly VPN that can excel at the basics is more than enough.

You can even use the service totally free thanks to the generous free plan Hide.me offers. With it, you get 10GB of data each month and access to a handful of servers that can be used to unblock a few Netflix content libraries.

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