Why not Hola?
Hola is free, unlimited and has no ads. So, why don’t we recommend it?
The problem with Hola is that it uses a peer-to-peer system, which means that you share your bandwidth with other users. This has two consequences.
The first is that the peer-to-peer slows down your connection because you are sharing it with someone else. The second is that you are also sharing your IP address , you have no control over what it is used for, leaving you vulnerable so that someone else’s disgusting (or illegal!) Activity is traced back to your IP address.
Hola’s peer-to-peer system puts it at the top of our list of VPNs to avoid. To learn more about the reasons why you should stay away from Hola, see our full review of Hola .
Free VPNs: the good, the bad and the very bad
Free VPNs seem like a good idea, after all, who wants to pay to surf the Internet? But despite the large number of options available, free VPNs are rarely a good idea.
The fact is that all companies need to make money in some way. So, even if you’re not paying for your VPN in dollars, you may be paying for it in other ways.
- Mining and selling user data – Many companies are willing to pay a lot of money for data about their activities. Some free VPNs aggregate and sell this data, which means that your personal activities suddenly belong to a corporation. So much for private browsing.
- Saving – Almost all free VPNs slow bandwidth and impose download limits on their users. They do not have the same features as paid VPNs, so they cannot offer the same service.
This is a big disadvantage if you use VPN to download torrents, as it slows down the download and limits the amount allowed to download. Free VPNs also use lower quality encryption, which compromises your privacy in addition to performance. - Misleading advertising – Yes, this version may be free, but most companies use the free version to sell the paid version. They limit the download speed of the free version, the amount of data, the number of countries available, hoping that you will end up paying for the paid version to get a better service. What is the purpose? Just jump to the paid version and avoid the hassle.
- Advertising – Many free VPNs use advertising – either on the VPN client itself or in your online session – to fund your service. Ads are not only annoying, they can also consume your bandwidth, making your user experience slow and frustrating.
Worse, if the VPN is hacked (which can happen with free versions), some of the ads you accidentally click on may be malware. Irritating, slow and dangerous? No thank you.
When it comes to free VPNs, remember , if you are not paying for it, you are not the customer, you are the product. There is no such thing as “free lunch”, so you can also pay for your lunch with your money and not with your privacy.
Looking for a safe, secure and fast quality VPN?
5 free VPNs to use instead of Hola:
If you’re not ready to invest in a paid VPN, you have some decent options.
We recommend opting for legitimate VPNs that offer a free trial as an incentive to purchase your premium VPN. They impose limits on speed and data, as well as on server selection, but at least they are more secure than other free versions.
Although no free VPN is perfect, these are the best in the group:
1. Windscribe
If it has to be free, it must be Windscribe . It has reasonably good speeds and is also quite reliable overall. It’s a real VPN, not a connection to a proxy network like Hola. To ensure that it is free, data usage is limited. However, users receive a considerable 10 GB per month, which is a good amount for browsing and watching videos with geographic restrictions.
In addition to covering data usage, WindScribe does not allow free users to access all servers. This can be a major drawback if the server you want is only accessible to paying users. However, the free server locations available still offer good speeds.
2. TunnelBear
The TunnelBear is probably the simplest VPN free and easy to use affordable, simple to MacOS applications, Windows and all mobile devices. It also has a wide range of servers worldwide to ensure uninterrupted routing of traffic information everywhere, from Norway to Hong Kong, but its nodes in India and Australia have been limited in the free VPN version. However, the free version does not have the annoying pop-up ads
that you find on Hola.
TunnelBear promises not to save the traffic record as well as offering high quality encryption. However, there is a major disadvantage that you have to face in the free version, which is the fact that it is limited to 500 MB per month (besides that it doesn’t work well with Netflix ). This means that it will be reasonably useless to use it if you want the benefits of location spoofing to watch geographically restricted video.
3. Hide.me
The Hide.me is also one of the best free VPNs that you can use tody. Although Hola is based in Israel, Hide Me is headquartered in Malaysia, but has 28 servers spread across 22 countries. Security is guaranteed with OpenVPN encryption, and the connection speed is reasonable. There is a limit of 2 GB of data usage per month for the free service. This will certainly be sufficient when you only need to unblock some sites or obtain some privacy when using a public hotspot.
4. Trust.Zone
The Trust.Zone, a Seychelles-based VPN provider that does not store records of any kind, has a good free customer. They have more than 50 servers in 21 countries and are extremely secure, using 256-bit AES encryption. In addition, unlike Hola, Trust.zone also implements clearly defined protocols. They do not require any name or personal information when signing up, just an email. The paid version allows up to three simultaneous connections, while the free version allows only one. Their service also has a kill switch, which we think is indispensable. Not to mention that they have a score of 4.7 in our review. The great disadvantage of this free VPN is that it can only be used for three days. So it’s good if, for example,
5. Betternet
The Betternet is primarily for use in mobile devices, but it has plugins for Chrome , Firefox and an application for Windows. They are 100% funded by ads in their apps and are 100% transparent about it on their website. They keep virtually no records (except for connection logs), have no data limits and their service is quite easy to use. You do not share your bandwidth or IP address with other users, as is the case with Hola. They earn money by offering sponsored apps via an “Install and app” button within their app. In summary, it is a reasonable free VPN, but it would not be fair to compare it to a paid VPN service, which they also offer.
