VPNHub Premium

What is VPNHub?

VPNHub is a virtual private network service from Appatomic, a subsidiary of MindGeek, the company behind the PornHub online adult entertainment empire. Launched shortly after the announcement that MindGeek would be providing services to help the UK government block general access to online porn, there’s a certain aura of ironic symmetry – not to mention opportunism – at work here.

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VPNHub – Features and usability

Although VPNHub is one of the newest entrants to the industry and has a very bare-bones website and online user interface, its desktop client is easy to use and it offers a decent range of features.

Furthermore, Appatomic states that it connects no traffic logs of user activity when connected to its VPN.

You can choose from a selection of endpoints in 50 countries, including a few less common endpoint locations such as Cyprus, Costa Rica and the Philippines. By the default, the VPN tunnel will automatically attempt to reconnect if it goes down for any reason.

You can also enable a kill switch to prevent any traffic from being sent when the VPN connection goes down. This is particularly important for the privacy-conscious and those on insecure public internet hotspots.

The application can be configured to start and connect when you log in to your computer, while more unusual options include a Scramble feature that attempts to hide the fact that you’re using a VPN from your ISP.

You can also view logs and switch between the default IKEv2 protocol and our preferred, highly secure OpenVPN protocol.

VPNHub – Performance

We were pleased with VPNHub’s performance in our speed tests. When connected to both UK and Netherlands endpoints, our FTP and HTTP downloads from those countries came in at a rate of around 10MB/s (80Mbit/s).

US connection speeds were also good, at 4.8MB/s (40.26Mbit/s) via FTP and 4.2MB/s (35.23/Mbit/s) via HTTP. That’s good enough to provide an entirely smooth browsing and streaming experience, which you’ll welcome if you use the service to view US Netflix, which didn’t detect that we were using a VPN.

As per usual, BBC iPlayer was harder to convince – we couldn’t view any of its content when connected to VPNHub’s UK endpoints during our tests.

Related: What is a VPN?

Why buy VPNHub?

Unfortunately, VPNHub is among the more expensive services around. A month-to-month subscription costs a massive £11.46, and even the best-value annual subscription, which converts to £68.72, works out at £5.73 a month.

A seven-day free trial is available but, unlike most VPN providers, VPNHost demands your payment information upfront and will automatically bill you after seven days if you don’t cancel your subscription first.

Disappointingly, although VPNHub heavily advertises this free trial, that’s an offer that’s only available on smartphones. Desktop users have to subscribe to VPNHub Premium, and even that only works under Windows and macOS.

Verdict

VPNHub’s performance, features and service are all good. However, it’s expensive and doesn’t provide any features or documentation that allow it to be used to minority operating systems or hardware such as routers.

We’re also not keen on free trials that demand payment information upfront.

Kaspersky Secure Connection provides a similar but faster service for significantly less monthly cost, while Windscribe is better for streaming and Private Internet Access has more of a privacy focus, as well as more options for advanced users.

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