Hotspot Shield review: Feeling the need, the need for speed

In our previous reviews, Hotspot Shield has been our reigning speed champion, taking our top spot for fastest VPN by a mile. But with so many VPN services bolstering their servers and adopting faster protocols, it’s worth taking another look to see how it stacks up in today’s market.

Hotspot Shield in brief:

• P2P allowed: Yes
• Simultaneous device connections: 10
• Business location: United States
• Number of servers: 1,800+
• Number of country locations: 90
• Cost: $9.99 per month or $79.92 for a yearly subscription

What are Hotspot Shield’s features and services?

When you start Hotspot Shield it shows a matte-black background with a giant power button in the center of the window. The default screen includes two tiles below the power button. One is for choosing your location, and the other displays your cumulative daily data usage. It’s a pleasing interface that feels slick and easy to use.

When you open up the server locations tab, you’ll find an extensive list of 1,800 or so servers spread across an impressive 90-plus countries. By far the majority of these are located in the U.S., but the impressive server spread means you’re likely to find an available server in most major countries.

Hotspot Shield also provides optimized servers for specific activities. Rather than making a blanket statement that its servers will work with streaming services, it actually has dedicated streaming servers in both the U.S. and UK. In addition, you can choose servers dedicated to gaming as well.  

Zooming back out to the main menu, there are a number of options on the left rail to choose from. These include a handy built-in speed test, account information, a support page, and a settings menu.

Under “Settings” there are most of your standard VPN features. There’s an internet kill switch that temporarily stops all web traffic if the VPN connection crashes unexpectedly. There’s also the option for split tunneling and more advanced features such as “Auto-protect” to automatically connect to the VPN while on public Wi-Fi, and “Prevent IP leak” to further shield your IP from being collected by sites, cache, or cookies. 

Notably, it doesn’t offer multi-hop connections. These aren’t necessary for most users, but the additional privacy they can offer is a draw for some. Plus, multi-hop connections are becoming a common feature with most VPNs nowadays.

Once you’re connected, the app displays small informational tiles that show your VPN location, the VPN IP address you’re using, the amount of bandwidth you’ve used going up and down, speed data, plus the name of the local network you’re currently on. The server information tile also has some nice data in it, including your current IP address, the load of the server (as a percentage), the latency, and length of time connected. 

Since my last review, Hotspot Shield doubled its device connection limit from 5 to 10, which is more in line with the current VPN market standard. It currently supports Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and some routers.

While Hotspot Shield does have the VPN basics nailed down, it’s lacking additional security features that many competitors are beginning to offer. I don’t mean this as a slight to Hotspot Shield, but it should be taken into consideration when looking for the best value in a VPN. Users should consider whether spending a few more dollars per month for a competitor with built-in ad- and tracker-blockers, password managers, and identity-theft features is worth it to them.

How much does Hotspot Shield cost?

Hotspot Shield offers both monthly or 1-year subscription plans. The monthly plan will set you back $9.99 per month, which is actually a drop in price from my last review. The yearly plan was also reduced to $6.66 per month or $79.92 for the whole year. Hotspot Shield used to be one of the most expensive VPN services, but now with the price reduction, it is much more affordable and offers better value for your money. 

Hotspot Shield does also offer a free version of its VPN for no charge whatsoever. The free version limits you to 500MB of data per day, which can be increased if you sit through some ads. Connection speeds are capped at 2Mbps and there is only one U.S. server available so you’re not going to be able to torrent or stream on the free version, but it’s a convenient way to privately browse for no charge. While these restrictions are a bit annoying, they’re by no means a dealbreaker and the free version is still one of the better options out there.

Hotspot Shield accepts payments via credit card and PayPal.

Hotspot Shield used to be one of the most expensive VPN services, but now with the price reduction, it is much more affordable.

How is Hotspot Shield’s performance?

For a long time, Hotspot Shield’s Hydra protocol was the flat-out fastest VPN you could find. In recent years, however, that’s changed, as many competitors have adopted the newer WireGuard protocol. The lightning-fast speeds of WireGuard mean that Hotspot Shield no longer stands alone at the top of the fastest VPNs.

When testing Hotspot Shield’s speeds I measured connection speeds across its servers in six different countries around the world for multiple days and then compared them to my baseline internet speed. I did this using both its proprietary Hydra protocol as well as WireGuard.

The average download speeds for the once-vaunted Hydra were 66 percent of base download speeds. Upload speeds clocked in at 71 percent of my base upload speeds. These are a bit higher than the last time I tested them and easily put it in the top five fastest VPNs.

When connected to WireGuard, I noticed almost identical connection speeds with average download speeds hovering at 64 percent of base and average upload speeds at the same 71 percent. Hydra might not be the vaunted speedster it once was, but it’s still plenty fast enough to give every other protocol a run for their money.

While the connection speeds of the top VPNs may have finally caught up to HotSpot Shield, it’s still much faster than most other competitors—it just no longer runs away with the fastest title. Other VPNs such as NordVPN and ProtonVPN have caught up and taken the lead.

For those who’re looking to use Hotspot Shield to unblock streaming content you’re in luck. It worked surprisingly well when it came to accessing geo-restricted content on sites such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and others. The service maintains a few streaming optimized servers in the U.S. and UK, but I actually found that even random servers I connected to in places like Japan and Australia allowed me to access content as well.

How is Hotspot Shield’s security and privacy?

Hotspot Shield offers three protocols: WireGuard, IKEv2, and its own proprietary protocol called Hydra. There isn’t too much known about Hydra, but it is used by Bitdefender and McAfee, among other trustworthy security brands so that goes a long way towards trusting its security.

The service also offers a kill-switch, turned off by default, which in my testing successfully blocked my internet traffic when my VPN connection was unexpectedly terminated. I also ran the connections through DNS and IP leak tests which showed that my real IP was never revealed and no leaks were detected.

Hotspot Shield may offer strong security, but when it comes to user privacy it fumbles a bit. Its parent company Aura still collects browsing history. Although this is done in aggregate form and Aura claims it can’t be linked to any individual users, there is no way to prove that is accurate.

In addition to the domains, Hotspot Shield also creates a hash based on your device attributes and uses that to measure bandwidth use, provide support, analytics, and so on. Your IP address is also kept (in an encrypted state) during your VPN session and then deleted. Finally, the company also collects the duration of your sessions and bandwidth consumption. Aura says it does this “to monitor, support, and optimize our VPN services, as well as enforce free app usage limits.”

Although Hotspot Shield claims that all of this data is anonymized and logs can’t be traced back to specific users, this has unfortunately never been verified by independent audit. So it’s up to you whether or not you’re willing to take them at their word.

Hotspot Shield was bought in 2020 and is now owned by the U.S.-based Aura. This will likely be a red flag for privacy-conscious users as the U.S. is known to have rather intrusive data retention laws and is a member of all Five, Nine, and Fourteen Eyes data sharing alliances.

Is Hotspot Shield worth it?

Hotspot Shield is a great option if your only concern is VPN speeds for streaming, gaming, and so on. It’s no longer the standout that it once was, but it’s still plenty fast. The Windows and Android apps are easy to use and it works with Netflix and other streaming services.

The company’s privacy policy leaves a lot to be desired though and proprietary VPN protocols, even one with wide support like Hydra, are still a little questionable. The reality is that there are other VPN services that log less data and still have acceptable speeds. That being said, Hotspot Shield is a good overall VPN for most people and just like any service, it comes with tradeoffs. Go with Hotspot Shield for the speed, but not the privacy.

Editor’s note: Because online services are often iterative, gaining new features and performance improvements over time, this review is subject to change in order to accurately reflect the current state of the service. Any changes to text or our final review verdict will be noted at the top of this article.