Hotspot Shield Review | Gizmodo (2025)

Established in 2008, Hotspot Shield has become a familiar name among VPNs, especially with its popular free plan that promises secure browsing without spending a dime. If you’re curious about trying a VPN but unsure about committing to a premium service, Hotspot Shield’s free offering might seem like the perfect place to start.

But is it truly enough for your needs? While the free plan gives you a taste of online privacy and access to a limited number of servers, it also comes with restrictions that could leave you wanting more. As a result, many users debate whether to stick with the free version or upgrade to the premium plan for the full experience.

In this in-depth review, we’ll explore what makes Hotspot Shield’s free plan stand out, where it falls short, and whether the premium version is worth the investment.

Hotspot Shield Pricing and Subscription Plans

When considering VPNs, pricing plays a strong impact on the choice. Hotspot Shield offers a free plan that allows you to test the service before committing to a premium subscription. It’s a reasonable starting point if you want to try the VPN without spending money upfront.

Hotspot Shield offers two main pricing options, keeping it flexible for users with different needs. The monthly plan is $9.99, while the yearly subscription costs $6.66 per month when billed annually. Plus, it offers a 45-day money-back guarantee, allowing you to experience its features risk-free before making a long-term commitment.

What Are The Renewal Costs?

Hotspot Shield stands out by keeping its renewal pricing consistent with its introductory rates. Whether you opt for the monthly or yearly plan, the renewal cost remains the same, preventing the surprise price hikes that are common with many VPN services (see our analysis of VPN pricing for more details).

Based on our analysis, Hotspot Shield’s transparent plans allow you to purchase subscriptions without worrying about unexpected increases.

How Good is the Hotspot Shield Free Plan?

With unlimited bandwidth, an offering rarely seen in free VPNs, Hotspot Shield VPN has a fair share of restrictions. During our review and analysis, it was clear that to get unlimited bandwidth, one has to watch ads. Also, misses out on the special streaming and gaming modes.

Although it supports only one device connection at a time and does not offer chat support, it suits casual users seeking a basic VPN experience well. In our experience, it’s sufficient for general browsing, light streaming, and basic online tasks.

On the official website, it’s mentioned that only one virtual location in the USA is offered. However, when tested, the virtual locations are extended to Los Angeles, New York, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. Although the offer could be improved, Hotspot Shield can be considered one of the top free VPNs.

Security Features

Hotspot Shield VPN offers a solid foundation of security through a combination of basic and advanced features tailored to protect user data and enhance online privacy. Here’s a detailed analysis of its security offerings:

Basic Security Features

• AES-256 Encryption: Hotspot Shield employs AES-256 encryption, considered the best standard in the VPN industry. It makes sure that your data is protected from unauthorized access.
• Kill Switch: This essential feature ensures that your internet connection is automatically severed if the VPN connection drops, protecting sensitive information. With the kill switch enabled, you won’t accidentally expose your real IP address during unexpected network interruptions.
• Split Tunneling: Allows you to decide which apps or websites bypass the VPN, improving bandwidth management while maintaining security. It is useful for those who need secure browsing while accessing local apps.
• DNS Leak Protection: Keeps your online activity private by hiding the domains you visit, preventing DNS leaks. By preventing DNS queries from exposing your real IP address, this feature ensures your anonymity remains intact.

Advanced Security Features

• Traffic Obfuscation: Prevents trackers from identifying VPN usage, making it ideal for bypassing restrictions in heavily monitored regions. It disguises your traffic to look like normal internet data, ensuring uninterrupted access to restricted websites.
• Hydra Protocol: This proprietary protocol combines speed and security, optimizing VPN performance while safeguarding your online activities. It’s designed to mimic regular traffic, making it harder to detect and block even in restrictive environments.
• Tor Over VPN: Fortifies security by combining VPN protection with the Tor network, ensuring maximum anonymity. It is particularly useful for those seeking enhanced privacy while accessing dark web services.
• Traffic Proxy: Acts as a go-between for your device and the internet, enabling access to blocked websites while maintaining privacy. By routing traffic securely, the proxy feature enhances access without compromising your IP address or location.
• PKI Encryption: Provides an additional layer of security through mutual validation between your device and servers. This enterprise-grade encryption reinforces authentication, safeguarding sensitive transactions and communications.
• DNS Filtering and Non-VPN Protection: Blocks malicious websites and harmful content, enhancing your browsing safety. It identifies high-risk domains, shielding your device from malware and phishing attacks before they become a threat.

Does Hotspot Shield Keep Logs?

When choosing a VPN, understanding its logging policy is crucial to evaluating its commitment to privacy. Hotspot Shield claims a strict no-logs policy for its VPN sessions, but like many VPNs, there lies a catch.

Here’s an in-depth review and analysis of what Hotspot Shield logs and why it matters.

What Information Hotspot Shield Collects

Hotspot Shield is based in the United States and is part of the Five Eyes Alliance. However, it takes a balanced approach to privacy, combining essential logging practices with anonymization to enhance its services while maintaining user anonymity. Here’s what we found from our analysis.

• Temporary IP Collection: Hotspot Shield temporarily collects and encrypts your IP address to establish a VPN connection. The IP is deleted after the session, ensuring no connection to your browsing activity.
• Session Data for Optimization: To improve performance, Hotspot Shield logs session duration and bandwidth usage, but this data is never tied to specific users.
• Aggregated Domain Access: It tracks accessed domains anonymously, without associating them with individual users. This data helps monitor server performance and optimize reliability.
• Device Hashes: Device hashes identify devices for analytics and support purposes. They are not linked to browsing activity, allowing user anonymity.

What About Log Collection on the Free Plan?

The free version of Hotspot Shield operates with slightly different privacy practices due to the inclusion of ads. Based on our experience and analysis, here’s what is logged on the free plan:

• Ad-Related Data: Device advertising IDs, IP addresses, approximate locations, and app interaction data are logged for ad personalization. However, browsing activity remains private.
• Device Information: Basic device details like make, model, OS version, and language are collected to deliver ads effectively.
• VPN Browsing Privacy: Even on the free plan, Hotspot Shield ensures no tracking or sharing of your browsing activity, maintaining strong privacy standards.

Regardless of the Hotspot Shield promises, the data gathering on the free plan felt significant. It is ideal to stick to the paid plan to prevent SDKs from continuously tracking your activities.

If you’re worried about such extensive data gatherings, it is ideal to stick to VPNs with strict no-log policies like NordVPN or ExpressVPN. These VPNs also offer reassurance with their independent audits and are from privacy-friendly jurisdictions.

How Good is Hotspot Shield Server Network?

Hotspot Shield boasts a server network spread across 80+ countries, providing reasonable coverage for users seeking to access geographically restricted content or ensure online privacy.

However, the server network has some notable limitations, the most crucial one being that all servers are virtual. During our review and analysis, we found out that the network has dedicated streaming, gaming, and P2P servers in only the US and UK.

Plus, the available locations are limited to just 127, where most countries have only one server to choose from. Always consider VPNs like NordVPN, ExpressVPN, or PIA, as they have an expansive server network, and all servers for optimised for various servers.

How Does Hotspot Shield Perform?

When it comes to performance, a VPN is judged on how well it balances speed, reliability, and security. How does Hotspot Shield perform in real-world scenarios? In this section, we’ll dive into an in-depth review of its speed, encryption standards, and leak protection based on our analysis and experience.

Speed Tests: How Fast is Hotspot Shield?

Performance is key when selecting a VPN. Unfortunately, Hotspot Shield didn’t impress us. Before conducting our speed tests, our baseline download and upload speeds were 100 Mbps. Here’s how it performed.

Regional Servers

When connected to nearby servers, speeds dropped by around 15-18%. This slight reduction didn’t hinder bandwidth-demanding activities like streaming, browsing, or downloading files. Medium ping values made it a decent choice for most online tasks, ensuring a smooth experience.

Long-Distance Servers

The speed drop was more pronounced on long-distance servers, at 18-20%. The higher ping was noticeable, and while it worked well for casual streaming and browsing, the performance might not satisfy users requiring ultra-low latency. Upload speeds on these servers were consistently below average, which could impact tasks like file uploads or video calls.

Hotspot Shield’s regional speeds were poor, but its long-distance speeds were competitively promising. These inconsistencies were noticeable, making it ideal to choose a VPN that remains stable on both regional and distant servers, like NordVPN or ExpressVPN. On that note, we’ve recently done a side-by-side comparison of NordVPN and Hotspot Shield.

Protocol Efficiency

Hotspot Shield offers the flexibility to switch between Hydra, IKEv2, and WireGuard protocols. This adaptability lets you optimize performance based on your activity. Switching protocols was simple and required only a quick reconnection to the server, improving the overall convenience.

Encryption Test: How Secure is Hotspot Shield?

Encryption is the backbone of any VPN, and during our review, Hotspot Shield showcased its robust security framework. From our in-depth analysis and testing experience, we inspected all packets flowing through Hotspot Shield using Wireshark and noticed everything was encrypted, and the contents were randomized.

IP Leak Test

A VPN’s ability to mask your real IP address is crucial, and Hotspot Shield performed well in this area. During our tests, tools like ipleak.net confirmed that Hotspot Shield effectively hid real IP addresses throughout each session.

No leaks were detected, even when switching servers or protocols, reinforcing its reliability. Based on our analysis, you can count on Hotspot Shield to protect your identity and maintain privacy during every connection.

DNS Leak Test

Hotspot Shield also passed our DNS leak tests, proving its ability to safeguard your online activity. By rerouting DNS queries through its secure servers, the VPN ensured no traffic was exposed during our evaluation.

Tools like browserleaks.com confirmed the absence of DNS leaks, even during speed tests across different protocols.

WebRTC Leak Test

WebRTC leaks are common in browsers, and if not addressed, privacy is at risk. Using tools like browserleaks.com, we found an issue where the WebRTC IP didn’t match the Remote IP. This could be a serious concern, but as none of the IPs were ours, we could call it a partial pass.

To avoid such issues, the best approach is to use secure and privacy-focused VPNs.

Streaming, Torrenting and Gaming

When it comes to daily online activities like streaming, ad-blocking, torrenting, and gaming, Hotspot Shield positions itself in a confused state. In this section, based on our in-depth review and experience, we’ll analyze its real-world performance through a series of different tests.

Access Various Streaming Platforms

Hotspot Shield is capable of unblocking popular streaming platforms, thanks to its dedicated streaming servers. During our test, it successfully unlocked Netflix’s Japan library after connecting to a Japan server.

On the other hand, after connecting to the UK, local streaming platforms like Channel 5 are unblocked easily. While this makes it a capable choice for streaming, the limitation of having dedicated servers only in specific countries can pose challenges for accessing FHD or 4K content when servers in your desired region aren’t optimized.

In contrast, providers like NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and Private Internet Access offer optimized streaming servers in virtually all countries, ensuring unrestricted access to high-quality content without buffering or server restrictions.

This makes them better options, whether for accessing the U.S. Paramount+ catalog from the UK or watching American Netflix while in Canada.

Can It Block Ads?

Hotspot Shield claims to enhance your browsing with ad-blocking capabilities, but our tests delivered surprising results. Without a VPN, the score on d3ward’s ad block test was 11%. While basic VPNs with ad-blocking features usually score over 60%, Hotspot Shield’s score was a disappointing 4%—even worse than without using a VPN.

Thinking it might be an issue with the tool, we switched to another ad-block test, and Hotspot Shield performed no better, with a score of just under 40%. Clearing the browser cache and rebooting didn’t improve the results.

We tried to be fair and performed the test several times, but it was ineffective. Unfortunately, there isn’t an option to enable/disable the ad blocker either, so we have no choice but to mark it as a fail.

For comparison, NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and Private Internet Access all scored above 95% in ad-blocking tests, offering a far superior browsing experience by effectively filtering ads and trackers.

Torrenting Capabilities

Hotspot Shield delivers decent performance for torrenting safely, but it’s not without limitations. While it supports P2P connections, they work well only in selected locations, which may restrict optimal torrenting speeds depending on your region—making it suitable for occasional torrenting.

During our analysis, we downloaded a sample file on uTorrent, and the connection was stable. However, it was not as seamless as VPNs that have a broader network of dedicated P2P servers, as seen in NordVPN.

Gaming Performance

For gaming, Hotspot Shield provides a reliable experience, particularly on its dedicated gaming servers (available in the UK and US). Our speed test results revealed excellent ping on regional servers, making it ideal for smooth and lag-free gameplay on regional servers with dedicated gaming servers.

However, distant servers posed a challenge, with increased latency that isn’t ideal for competitive gaming. If gaming is your priority, sticking to nearby servers is key to avoiding delays.

While this is the case with most VPNs, it is important to choose a VPN that offers stability on both regional and distant servers when gaming. Regardless of the VPN, do a latency test before getting on to the game.

Ease of Use & Compatibility

Hotspot Shield is a user-friendly VPN, ideal for those new to VPNs. In this part of the review, we’ll analyze its usability, compatibility, and overall experience across devices and find out how reliable it is.

Hotspot Shield App Interface

Your first interaction with Hotspot Shield feels smooth, it has a clean and intuitive interface. During our test, we found that connecting to servers required just one click, making the process easy even for new users.

The layout is straightforward, offering easy access to features. However, we disliked Hotspot Shield when it didn’t present any options for most features. In this case, it isn’t just lacking in terms of customization but limiting you entirely from taking an action.

The same goes for its app on other platforms, and we would recommend the simple and usable interface of ExpressVPN or PIA over this any day.

Device Compatibility

Hotspot Shield boasts wide compatibility, working seamlessly across major platforms, including Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux, Smart TVs, and routers. Our review confirmed that with a premium subscription, you can use it on up to 10 devices simultaneously, which is ideal for families or users managing multiple gadgets.

During our test, we didn’t encounter any issues installing or using the app on various devices, and it performed reliably across platforms. That being said, we believe it is still far from being one of the best VPNs for Smart TVs or Windows, for example.

Setting Up Hotspot Shield on Routers

If you’re looking for comprehensive protection across your entire network, Hotspot Shield supports router configuration. This allows you to protect every device connected to your Wi-Fi without installing the app on each one.

Based on our experience, setting up Hotspot Shield on a router involves straightforward instructions, but it does require a bit of technical knowledge. If you’re not familiar with router settings, you can use their detailed guides or reach out to their support team.

Customer Support: How Reliable Is Hotspot Shield?

When it comes to VPNs, having access to dependable customer support can significantly impact your experience. Whether you’re troubleshooting connection issues or configuring advanced settings, the quality of support you receive matters.

Here’s an in-depth review of Hotspot Shield’s customer service based on our analysis and experience.

Available Support Channels

Hotspot Shield offers a range of support options, catering to both free and premium users. As a free user, you’ll primarily rely on the knowledge base and FAQ section, which provides answers to common queries.

The experience improves significantly for premium users. You get access to 24/7 live chat support and email assistance. However, during our review, we noticed the live chat response was basically a hoax—there were no agents, and the bot tried to help. When an agent is requested, it asks for an email and follows up through the mail.

Response Quality

Our test of Hotspot Shield’s support quality showed mixed results. However, it can be considered decent, as the replies were as quick, ranging between 6 hours to a day. The lack of an active community is a downside, as troubleshooting and diagnosis need to be done from the knowledge base.

While this doesn’t concern technically aware users, those who are beginners must wait until an agent responds to your request and approves for support.

Final Verdict: Better Look for Alternatives

Hotspot Shield is a recognizable name in the VPN world, but its performance is underwhelming. While the free plan offers unlimited bandwidth, it feels more like a limited trial due to ad reliance and restricted server locations.

The premium plan offers better security features, but it struggles with speed consistency, poor ad-blocking, no options to manage features, and limited dedicated servers that are restricted to specific regions.

While Hotspot Shield is easy to use and compatible with multiple devices, including routers, it lacks customization and doesn’t meet the standards of its top competitors. For a better VPN experience, NordVPN, ExpressVPN, or Private Internet Access are far more reliable choices.