When comparing IVPN vs NordVPN, the Slant community recommends IVPN for most people. In the question“What is the best VPN provider? ” IVPN is ranked 4th while NordVPN is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose IVPN is:
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.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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 Wireguard is available
Pro Multiple payment options
Bitcoin, cash and PayPal are accepted.
Pro Token-based account
You can create an account by generating a token and using it to login. If you don't believe it's secure you can also add 2FA.
Pro 2FA Supported
Can setup 2FA for extra security.
Pro Ethical company
Opened and runs DoINeedAVPN.com — A website to determine if you need a VPN or not. IVPN's website also offers a Blog to help determine if other VPN companies are trustworthy, what to ask companies, and other safety practices.
Pro Based in "No Eyes" Country
Company is based in Gibraltar, so IVPN is not obligated to provide access to three letter agencies.
Pro Warrant Canary is provided on their website
You can find it here.
Pro Non-persistent logs are kept for 10 minutes
They are kept for troubleshooting reasons.
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 Servers in 40+ countries
Server locations are nicely spread and covers many users. NordVPN constantly adds new servers to their service.
Pro Unlimited speed & bandwidth
NordVPN does not limit your Internet connection speed or bandwidth.
Pro Double VPN
Double VPN is a solution where you traffic uses two hops and is encrypted at both nodes. It gives a double security for the users.
Pro Includes a kill switch
Pro Tor over VPN
A very secure solution where your traffic is firstly encrypted at the NordVPN node and then it is directed to the Tor network where it is router through multiple hops and then exits at one of the Tor network exit nodes.
Pro Cheap if snagged on a sale
You can buy it for $107.55/3 Yr - that's $2.99 a month, which is pretty reasonable for the quality and development of service that can be found at Nord.
Pro Outside of Five, Nine, and Fourteen Eyes countries
Located outside of countries intent on degrading your privacy.
Pro Six simultaneous devices allowed
Users can use the same VPN account on six devices at the same time. Clients who have a lot of computers and smart-phones at home can set up their router with VPN which will use only 1 device slot and will provide VPN connection to all connected devices.
Pro User-friendly custom software for Windows
A very user-friendly custom software for Windows is a great VPN software solution for every user.Features include auto-connection, default protocol selection, process Kill-switch. More features are being developed such as DNS sink-hole and port-forwarding.
The software also comes with a 3-hour free trial hence new users can try this software out.
Pro Compatibility
NordVPN VPN service can be used on every device that is compatible to connect to a VPN.
Pro Allows filesharing
NordVPN is one of the best VPNs for filesharing. It also unblocks Netflix US, which seems impossible with other VPN's.
Pro No logs are kept
This aspect of their service is fairly straightforward - no logs are kept, whatsoever.
Pro Free security tools
For people who do not have an ability to purchase privacy tools but would like to use it, NordVPN offers free security tools such as Encrypted Chat, Secret Notes, Free Proxy List, Web Proxy, Google Chrome Web Proxy Extension.
Pro A strong encryption
NordVPN uses strong encryption algorithms to encrypt their user traffic:
- OpenVPN - 2048bit SSL
- L2TP - 256-bit AES
- PPTP - 128-bit MPPE
Pro 24/7 Customer Service
Customer service is available 24/7 via email and live chat.
Pro Easy to install
Pro Dedicated IPs
Cons
Con PSAD and rate-limiting are used
Con When breach happens, they wait a few months before telling customers about it
NordVPN said it found out about the breach a “few months ago,” but the spokesperson said the breach was not disclosed until today because the company wanted to be “100% sure that each component within our infrastructure is secure.”
So instead of allowing their customers to do their own damage limitation, they left their customers in the dark and continued to expose them to a breach they weren't sure they had fully contained.
Con Shady marketing
Fake countdown and always on sale.
Con Speed flucuates
Most of the time download speeds are great, however when rush hours occur (for instance, during the weekend), speed drops drastically.
Con P2P traffic only allowed on certain servers
If you transmit any kind of BitTorrent P2P traffic on certain servers, all of your active connections will be automatically terminated and you will be transferred onto a different server where file-sharing traffic is "allowed". This is not mentioned in the Terms of Service, and is only vaguely mentioned in the FAQ: "Yes, we allow P2P traffic on certain servers. The server list that allows it: Romania, Russia, Sweden, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Canada."
This suggests that NordVPN might do live deep packet inspection on your VPN traffic in order to determine if it's BitTorrent traffic or not.
Con Hid data breach
Con Reports of poor customer service
Con Basically impossible to connect with Amazon.com
Sometimes it loads a page on Amazon, but probably 90% of the time, it fails. Must disable Nord to do any shopping on the site.
Con Request for refunds sometimes ignored
Though most refund requests get handled promptly.
Con You have to input your username and password and then have another login sent to verify it's you
Can get it sent to your mobile phone as a one time password text, but very annoying. Or to another phone/tablet with Amazon App and get a Push.