When comparing IVPN vs Mullvad, the Slant community recommends Mullvad for most people. In the question“What is the best VPN provider? ” Mullvad is ranked 3rd while IVPN is ranked 23rd. The most important reason people chose Mullvad is:
According to Mullvad, they retain no traffic information or metadata. Here is their statement in 2014 when inquired by TorrentFreak if they store _any_ logs that would enable linking an IP address and a timestamp to a user: > No. This would make both us and our users more vulnerable so we certainly don’t. To make it harder to watch the activities of an IP address from the outside we also have many users share each address, both for IPv4 and our upcoming IPv6 support.
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Non-persistent logs are kept for 10 minutes
They are kept for troubleshooting reasons.
Pro Multiple payment options
Bitcoin, cash and PayPal are accepted.
Pro Multihop and Singlehop options
You can switch between a single VPN connection (singlehop), or routing your internet traffic through multiple VPN servers (multihop) at any time. The latter increases anonymity, but comes at the cost of a slightly worse performance. Furthermore their multihop system has a built in restriction that dictates that it must be a hop from one country to the next, so no Dallas to LA hop, but because of this there should be nothing too shocking about the overall latency. NY - Toronto - London can still edge under 100ms, LA - SLC - HK hitting 350 - 380ms is pretty normal for everyone. A single hop from Brooklyn to Jersey can be as low as 7ms, with 20ms to Atlanta.
To further the point, really this means that if you route through a US node they may throttle you, but it may help to be on a private tracker. It certainly wouldn't affect you if you're connecting from a peer through Canada or Bucharest.
Pro No traffic or protocol restricitions except for BitTorrent in US
Except for BitTorrent in US, you can use any and all protocols at your disposal, no traffic is restricted.
Pro No logs are kept
According to Mullvad, they retain no traffic information or metadata. Here is their statement in 2014 when inquired by TorrentFreak if they store any logs that would enable linking an IP address and a timestamp to a user:
No. This would make both us and our users more vulnerable so we
certainly don’t. To make it harder to watch the activities of an IP address from the outside we also have many users share each address, both for IPv4 and our upcoming IPv6 support.
Pro No traffic or protocol restrictions
Mullvad allows using any and all protocols that the user wishes, no traffic is restricted.
Pro Multiple payment methods
Bitcoin, cash, bank transfers, PayPal, credit cards are accepted.
Pro DNS leak protection
In the event of a DNS leak, not all traffic is routed through a secure network. Mullvad helps solve this issue by offering DNS leak protection.
Pro Has native applications for all popular platforms
The platforms that Mullvad can run on include: Windows, OSX, Linux, Android, and iOS. Additionally, Mullvad offers a source code that allows the program to be run on virtually any system.
Pro Includes a kill switch
It's possible to set up the software to disconnect from Internet in case the connection to the VPN service is lost to not expose traffic in case of service failures.
Pro Offers a free trial
One of the things that makes Mullvad's free trial attractive is the lack of personal information asked to sign up. Once downloaded, the free trial lasts three hours.
Cons
Con PSAD and rate-limiting are used
Con Not reliable
Multiple people have reported occasional connection issues as well as slow speeds. In one test, the users could only connect to servers within their own country.