Decided to take back some control over your digital privacy? You’re probably shopping for a VPN provider. 

But picking the right VPN provider can be tricky. And picking the wrong one can be disastrous for your privacy. 

In this post, we look at two major VPN providers and compare them side by side. ExpressVPN vs. IPVanish: which one comes out on top? Let’s find out.

ExpressVPN vs IPVanish - Side By Side

Name	IPvanish	ExpressVPN
Rating	6.0/10	9.0/10
User Friendliness Score	6	9
General features
Price per month (cheapest)	$7.49	$8.32
Simultaneous Connections	10	5
Servers	1600	3000
Countries	75	94
Allows torrenting / P2P	Yes	Yes
Streaming
Netflix	No	Yes
Hulu	No	Yes
Amazon Prime	Yes	Yes
Disney+	No	Yes
Security
Supports TOR	No	No
Split Tunneling	Yes	Yes
Router Support	Yes	Yes
Unlimited bandwidth	Yes	Yes
Refund Period	30 Days	30 Days
Free trial	No	No
Desktop Operating Software	Windows, MacOS, Linux	Windows, MacOS, Linux
Mobile Apps	iOS, Android	iOS, Android
Browser Extensions	No	Yes
VPN Protocols	IKEv2, OpenVPN, L2TP/IPSec, PPTP	IKEv2, OpenVPN, L2TP/IPSec, PPTP
Encryption	AES-256	AES-256
DNS Leak Protection	Yes	Yes
VPN Kill-switch	No	Yes
Rent/Own Infrastructure	Unclear	Rent
Hacked	No	No
Malware/Ad Blocker	No	No
Privacy
Logging Policy	No-logging Policy	No-logging Policy
Privacy Policy	Good, but we don't fully trust they conform to their policies.	Good
Jurisdiction	U.S.A.	British Virgin Islands
Out of 14 eyes	No	Yes
Warrant Canary	No	No
Accepts Cryptocurrency	No	Yes
Sign-up Information Required	Only Valid Email	Only Valid Email
Speed (average)
Avg. Ping NY	37 ms	23 ms
Avg. Download NY	Over a 45 Mbps Network (Download): 35.04 Mbps	Over a 60 Mbps Network (Download): 60.76 Mbps
Avg. Upload NY	Over a 15 Mbps Network (Upload): 11.12 Mbps	Over a 30 Mbps Network (Upload): 26.91 Mbps

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1. Speed

You want your VPN provider to help you take back some of your digital privacy, but you still want to keep that blazing fast connection you’re paying for, right? Right. 

So connection speed is a major consideration when choosing a VPN provider.

Of course, any VPN will slow down your connection to some degree. This is because of the encryption’s overhead. But it should be rather subtle, especially if connecting to a server that is geographically close to your actual location.

Let’s see how ExpressVPN and IPVanish compare on speed.

ExpressVPN

Tested on a 60Mbps (Download) and 30Mbps (Upload) network

Server: U.S.A., New York

Average Download Speed: 60.76Mbps

Average Upload Speed: 26.91Mbps

IPVanish

Tested on a 45Mbps (Download) and 15Mbps (Upload) network

Server: U.S.A., New York

Average Download Speed: 35.04Mbps

Average Upload Speed: 11.12Mbps

ExpressVPN Vs. IPVanish - Speed

So here we have one provider who does an OK job. And we have another provider giving you a close to a seamless experience. Who would you choose?

To be fair, IPVanish’s connection speed is better than it looks. I was averaging 42Mbps on my ISP connection at the time. So the drop in speed is not that dramatic. Still, for a nearby server, we could expect a little better.

There’s just no way around the fact that ExpressVPN offers more in terms of speed.

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2. User-Friendliness

Almost every VPN provider today has a native client app on offer, to connect to their network. 

Native clients are especially useful to new users who wouldn’t necessarily know what to do with a bunch of configuration files. Native apps keep things nice and simple while protecting the less experienced from misconfigurations.

Both ExpressVPN and IPVanish supply official client apps to their users. ExpressVPN also provide Chrome and Firefox browser extensions

They both offer unlimited bandwidth.

IPVanish allows up to 10 simultaneous connections, against ExpressVPN’s 5simultaneous connections.

IPVanish hosts over 1400 servers in 75 countries, while ExpressVPN offers access to more than 3000 servers in 94 countries.

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3. Streaming

Streaming services are quickly overtaking traditional cableTV. 

Factor-in geo-restrictions and the fact that some streaming services ban the use of VPNs (cough, cough, Netflix…) and you start to understand why streaming support has climbed up the list of important features for VPN providers.

This one won’t be difficult. Both ExpressVPN and IPVanish state that they streaming-friendly. But only ExpressVPN is able to bypass the Netflix VPN ban. 

IPVanish cannot. I wasn’t even able to log in while connected to IPVanish…

With ExpressVPN there were no hoops to jump through either. Just connect, login, and stream. As it should be.

For more information on streaming using these VPN providers, have a look at our Does ExpressVPN Work With Netflix? and Does IPVanish Work With Netflix? articles.

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4. Security and Encryption

A good VPN provider needs to support strong ciphers and secure VPN protocols. This is the crux of the security & privacy benefit you’re getting out of your VPN provider.

The industry-standard cipher is AES-256.

Both ExpressVPN and IPVanish support AES-256. And they lock you into that cipher. That is, you cannot change it. And this is good because it protects the less experienced from configuration errors.

So far, nothing to distinguish ExpressVPN and IPVanish on encryption. 

Let’s look at supported protocols.

Both ExpressVPN and IPVanish support the following VPN protocols:

• IKEv2/IPSec
• OpenVPN
• L2TP/IPSec
• PPTP

IPVanish Vs. ExpressVPN - Security & Encryption

While the first two (IKEv2/IPSec & OpenVPN) are considered secure, the last two (L2TP/IPSec & PPTP) are not.

I would prefer them to not support weak and obsolete protocols – these should be phased out.

But to their credit, both providers label them as weak and/or force you to jump through hoops to get them up and running. 

This is an indirect security measure that ensures that only those who know what they’re doing will end up using these protocols.

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5. Logs and Privacy

Like almost every commercial VPN provider out there, ExpressVPN and IPVanish both commit to a strongly worded no-logging policy. 

Let’s look at how they communicate this in their respective privacy policies.

Here’s an excerpt from ExpressVPN’s privacy policy:

"ExpressVPN is committed to protecting your privacy. We want you to understand what information we collect, what we don’t collect, and how we collect, use, and store information. We do not collect logs of your activity, including no logging of browsing history, traffic destination, data content, or DNS queries. We also never store connection logs, meaning no logs of your IP address, your outgoing VPN IP address, connection timestamp, or session duration.” 

And here’s an excerpt from IPVanish’s privacy policy:

“We care deeply about your privacy rights, and we do not log any traffic or usage of our VPN. We do not sell or rent personal information to others, under any circumstance. Your data is secured and rendered anonymous whenever you are connected to our Services. In order to provide you with our Services, we need to collect an email address and payment method to process transactions.” 

IPVanish Vs. ExpressVPN - Logs & Privacy

While I prefer the wording of ExpressVPN’s policy, we can nonetheless agree that they both cover the basics.

That’s all fine and good on paper. But there’s a disturbing precedent in IPVanish’s past…

In 2016, as reported by TorrentFreak, IPVanish shared the personal information of one of its users with Homeland Security (U.S.). The individual in question was under suspicion of downloading and sharing child pornography online.

IPVanish handed over the customer’s name, email address, details of his VPN subscription, his real IP address “as well as dates and times [he] connected to, and disconnected from, the IRC network”.

And yes, at that time, IPVanish claimed they were standing by their strongly-worded no-logging policy. Not bad for a company that claims to “care deeply about your privacy rights”…

And while nobody is going to be upset that a potential child pornographer pays for their crimes – and rightly so – the point is that it could just as well have been a political dissident, a journalist, or a whistleblower. 

And clearly, their infrastructure was set up in a way that allows for logging.

Once the genie is out of the bottle, it usually doesn’t go back in very easily… How can we trust IPVanish after this? The answer is: we can’t.

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6. Pricing

Let’s turn our attention to pricing now. 

Below, you’ll find the different packages, prices, and accepted payment methods for ExpressVPN and IPVanish:

ExpressVPN

Visit ExpressVPN (35% off)

Subscriptions

• 12.95 USD for one month of service
• 59.95 USD for six months of service (works out to 9.99 USD per month)
• 99.95 USD for one year of service (works out to 8.32 USD per month)

Payment Methods

• Credit Card
• PayPal
• Bitcoin
• Interac
• UnionPay
• Alipay
• WebMoney
• Giropay
• iDEAL
• Klarna
• And more (which aren’t listed)

IPVanish

Visit IPVanish (46% off)

Subscriptions

• 10.00 USD for one month of service
• 26.99 USD for three months of service (works out to 8.99 USD per month)
• 77.99 USD for one year of service (works out to 6.49 USD per month)

Payment Methods

• Credit Card
• PayPal

And both providers offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.

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7. Torrenting

Neither ExpressVPN nor IPVanish really mentions torrenting on their website. But they’re apparently both P2P-friendly. 

IPVanish does provide a support document that explains how to use their SOCKS5 proxy for torrenting.

A proxy server is a bit like a VPN, in that you bounce your traffic over the proxy server and hence your traffic appears to come from that server. But your traffic is not encrypted. 

A proxy server can give you better speeds, at the cost of your security.

Why a VPN provider, that provides encryption for a living, would recommend to their users that they torrent over an unencrypted proxy rather than a VPN is beyond me. 

Do not torrent without a VPN.

Still, I tested them both (the VPNs, not IPVanish’s proxy). And I was able to download torrents without any issues on both networks. Download speeds were good with both providers. 

I saw no reason to switch to an unencrypted proxy – not even for speed.

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8. Other Features

There are also other areas in which these two providers differ:

• IPVanish provides a SOCKS5 proxy
• IPVanish bundles a free SugarSync subscription with their service
• IPVanish shouldn’t be trusted (I had to mention it again – it’s a big deal)

• ExpressVPN support split tunneling
• ExpressVPN operate diskless servers
• ExpressVPN provides a VPN Kill Switch

Standout Features

ExpressVPN

• Split Tunnelling: Split tunneling is a feature that enables policy-based routing. Policy-based routing allows you to selectively route traffic through the VPN. This means you can send your torrent traffic through the VPN, for example, while routing the rest of your traffic outside the VPN. Or inversely, you could route everything through the VPN, except your streaming traffic. This also enables you to keep local LAN access while connected to the VPN network. Split tunneling is very flexible and can be configured to fit your needs.
• Diskless Infrastructure: ExpressVPN rent their infrastructure just like, as many other VPN providers do. However, ExpressVPN has an additional trick up their sleeve. They run all of their infrastructure from volatile memory (RAM), booted from read-only disks. Running everything from volatile memory is a huge boon to the security of their service. Every time the server is rebooted, it comes back up at factory spec. And if a vulnerability were ever discovered on a server, a reboot gets rid of it. We hope more VPN providers go down this road moving forward.

IPVanish

• Free SugarSync Subscription: IPVanish bundle a free SugarSync subscription with all of their VPN plans. SugarSync is a secure online backup service. The bundled subscription provides up to 250GBs of remote storage space. SugarSync’s 250 GB subscription normally, costs 10 USD per month.
• SOCKS5 Proxy: IPVanish provides its users access to their SOCKS5 proxy server. And they promote it for torrenting use. A proxy server will change your IP address and location but won’t encrypt your traffic. This makes your connection faster, but far less secure than if you were using a VPN. I’m having a hard time understanding why a VPN provider would promote this.

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Conclusion: ExpressVPN vs IPVanish

Care to guess who wins? 

One point is awarded to the winner in each category. In the event of a tie, both providers get a point.

So things look like this:

• Speed – (ExpressVPN)
• User-friendliness – (ExpressVPN)
• Streaming – (ExpressVPN)
• Security & Encryption – (Tie)
• Logs and Privacy –  (ExpressVPN)
• Pricing – (ExpressVPN)
• Torrenting – (ExpressVPN)
• Features – (ExpressVPN)

So let’s take our time counting here… 

That’s 8 points for ExpressVPN and, uhm… 1 point for IPVanish. Not so close this time. And rightfully so. 

Trust is critical in the commercial VPN space, and IPVanish has a definite trust deficit. They simply cannot beat a provider like ExpressVPN, who is the clear winner here.

ExpressVPN

Go With ExpressVPN if:

• You want the high level of security provided by diskless servers
• You want to use split tunneling
• You want to unblock Netflix

Visit ExpressVPN (35% off)

IPVanish

Go With IPVanish if:

• You don’t really care about privacy & security
• You want a free SugarSync subscription
• You want to download torrents insecurely, using a SOCKS5 proxy, for some reason…

Visit IPVanish (save 46%)

For more information on these two VPN providers, check out our ExpressVPN review and our IPVanish review.