There’s an increasing number of people using their phones to browse the internet, download files, check emails, make online transactions and communicate through text & video calling. So it’s pretty obvious that there’s a need for a VPN on your mobile device.
Hence, today we’ve decided to cover one such service that offers privacy and protection for that computer in your pocket: HotVPN. Although HotVPN offers protection for nearly every platform, we’re about to cover the mobile option.
In a Hurry? You can download the apps here:
Performance
Your VPN can have the greatest security, stellar customer support and just the right UI for you to get used to but if it can’t deliver on performance then everything else feels like vanity.
The practical usability begins with performance. Whether you can connect successfully and get the best possible upload and download speeds for your purpose is an essential requirement.
For the test, we’ll be using Speedtest, a free online service that gauges your download and upload speeds to test our network. In the above picture, we used Speedtest to check our current unfiltered network speed.
Next, we launched the app and randomly selected Great Britain as the choice of server and clicked ‘GO’ on Speedtest again…
…and the results aren’t bad at all. We’re receiving around 12 Mbps over the previous 25 Mbps, which don’t seem great but are very capable speeds considering the access point being a mobile device.
Half as good speeds get the job done. Browsing and Youtube felt smooth with no buffering. Although on the other hand, we’re getting a slight increase in upload speeds as well which is a good thing for sure.
Is this speed enough to stream Netflix?
You bet. We tried running this filtered speed through Netflix and it worked flawlessly at HD quality. Although, streaming at above HD or 1080p might raise issues.
Is this speed good enough for torrenting?
You can rest assured, torrenting is no problem too, as long as you’re not downloading mountains of data with little to none seeds on your phone or tablet.
Everything seems good on the performance side. The download and upload speeds are commendable, supports Netflix in HD and torrenting is available.
Ease of Use
When it comes to VPNs, the operation is pretty straight forward. You launch the app, select a preferred location to your liking and click on a big switch that immediately starts routing your network through a foreign server.
But are all VPNs the same? No. There are certain UI knick-knacks that differ but other than that, they all serve the same purpose. Since we’re dealing with a mobile app, things are a bit simpler.
The app looks and works similar to a browser extension than a desktop application. Above the switch, you can see our current location set to Great Britain with the IP address being displayed below it. The timer at the bottom displays elapsed time.
Clicking on the location button opens a list of global servers to choose from. With Ireland being a free server and everything else marked as VIP, there’s enough room to choose from and switch at any given moment.
Next, switching over to the ‘Streaming’ tab, Netflix and Disney+ users couldn’t be happier. HotVPN has dedicated servers for streaming services. You can see the names of suitable streaming services for that country’s server.
Last but not least is the sidebar panel on the app’s home screen. Its functions are typical. It has an upgrade option, an About page, rating, sharing, and contact us to get help from customer support.
That’s it for ease of use. Click on the current location, choose a specific server, click on the big switch and you’re connected. Same thing for the streaming option as well.
Pricing
Pricing when it comes to mobile VPNs is as important as the full-scale counterparts. You can get the best features but if they get the best of your wallet, you can end up losing more money than gaining any benefit.
When it comes to pricing, HotVPN doesn’t hold back. The cost is premium for the premium features. Although remaining the same for all plans, the pricing only varies over the term of validity.
The cheapest offer on the table is the year-long contract for $6.99/month, behind $9.99/month for 6 months and the highest one being $12.99/month for a specific month.
Customer Support
Most people often tend to skim over this section due to the fact that the chances of anyone actually requiring assistance while operating a VPN are slim to none. Nonetheless, customer support is an essential part of any online service.
In HotVPN’s case, there’s only one form of support available which is Email Support. Although live chat support would be good, the Email support wasn’t disappointing either.
Clicking on the ‘Contact Us’ option in the side panel redirected us to our Gmail with their tech support address preset. You can ask any questions regarding any issue or inquire about their service which is what we did.
We posted a question about the management of their servers, whether they did most of the maintenance themselves or had third party companies take care of it for them and we received a reply in a matter of minutes.
The reply was short and to the point, as expected. Least to say, the customer support was responsive and quick to work with. It won’t be illogical to say that you can get around any issues without any issues.
Conclusion
That concludes the review. We laid out every facet of HotVPN. We benchmarked the performance, went over the UI, talked about the features & pricing and communicated with customer support over Email.
So, n the end, is HotVPN worth it? YES and NO.
YES if you spend the majority of your time on the phone and deal with sensitive information like important emails, online transactions and require instant access to sites with elevated censorship.
NO, if the phone isn’t your primary route of access and only has to deal with a limited amount of interactions per day then the default security measures available could be enough considering the premium price.
