NordVPN vs IPVanish – Which one is the best VPN Service for you

In today’s world, the Internet is growing at a very crazy pace. The amount of data and information available across the internet is immeasurable. However, with so much data available to use, there are bound to be some people who like to misuse that for their benefit. That is why, internet security is becoming the need of the hour for every internet user, whether on a desktop, personal computer, or on smartphone. One of the easiest ways you can ensure the online safety of your data is to have a high-quality VPN service protecting your devices.

What is a VPN and how are they useful?

A VPN is a Virtual Private Network where you can connect to any of the remote servers located across the world and all your internet traffic would be routed via any random IP Address on that server. This ensures that your real location and IP Address are not visible to any intruder and helps to keep your privacy and data intact. Currently, the Internet is full of several VPN service providers but the two that stand out from the rest are NordVPN and IPVanish. These two VPN services enjoy a major market share in the industry and it is not difficult to understand considering the high number of features they provide at a very affordable price along with the VPN servers variety they have. Let’s see how these two stack against each other.

Connectivity and Availability:

The team at IPVanish has set up its headquarters in the United States and has done well to spread its servers across 60+ countries with a total of 950 VPN servers currently active in their operations. These servers account for over 40,000 unique IP Addresses for you to choose from and protect yourself online.

NordVPN, with headquarters in Panama, enjoy a much more relaxed jurisdiction as compared to IPVanish, which has to deal with a number of surveillances and tough laws. NordVPN has successfully managed to expand its servers across 61 different countries around the world but the number of servers in operation is over 2200, double that IPVanish’s number. In addition to a wider variety of servers, NordVPN allows you to connect 6 devices simultaneously to your network as compared to the 5 allowed by IPVanish.

Speed Test:

At present, IPVanish can deliver users a maximum speed of up to 90 Mbps on some of their servers. One of the major reasons for this is that none of their servers are third-party-owned and is fully maintained by the guys in their office.

NordVPN enjoys a much larger and wider server network as compared to IPVanish but is still not able to deliver as many speeds. However, NordVPN has improved a lot in the past couple of years with their average speed in the European servers having gone up from 32 Mbps to almost 73 Mbps now. This is because the addition of new servers in Europe has added additional bandwidth to their network and as a result, improved their performance levels.

Reliability:

NordVPN and IPVanish are relatively very similar to each other in terms of their server reliability. NordVPN manages to shade this domain slightly better because of their larger network which allows segregating the whole traffic on their network in a better way.

Windows users have not reported any complaints from any of the two VPN service providers but Mac OS users have reported issues in terms of system crashes while using IPVanish in the past year.

Protocols:

For advanced users, a problem of concern with several VPN service providers is the number of protocols they allow to use. Currently, both IPVanish and NordVPN allow their customers to make use of several platforms on their networks such as OpenVPN, PPTP, and L2TP/IPsec VPN protocols. Both the providers have added support for these protocols but NordVPN has gone slightly out of the way to include support for the IPSec/IKEv2 protocol as well which IPVanish doesn’t provide.

Data Security:

Both the VPN service providers make use of the 256-key bit Advanced Encryption Standard to ensure that your online data is protected at all times. This is military-grade encryption which was earlier used by US Government and NASA to protect classified data from people.

Additional Features:

This is the domain where NordVPN leaves IPVanish very far down the line with several high-quality features in its arsenal. NordVPN provides several features such as an Automatic Kill Switch to cut off your online usage if your connection ends abruptly, an option to make use of Double VPN protection where your internet traffic will be routed via two IP addresses instead of one on two different remote servers and providing with an option to purchase your IP Address on a remote server for your own. This will ensure that you will retain the IP Address forever and won’t use a random IP Address while connecting to their Network.

Pricing:

Currently, NordVPN is available for as low as $2.75 per month if you choose to enroll in their 3-year plan at a single go. Otherwise, their monthly plan costs $11.95 with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

On the other hand, IPVanish’s lowest price plan is $6.49 per month if paid together for a year. They also have a single-month and a 3-month plan as well which is costlier than the 1-year plan.

The Final Say:

NordVPN and IPVanish are very similar in terms of reliability and performance data. However, NordVPN takes a march over IPVanish given the total number of servers under them which allows NordVPN to ensure smooth traffic throughout their network. Additionally, NordVPN can provide a higher number of useful features to its customers at a price that is less than half of its nearest competitor ensuring that its users avail the best services at the best price possible.