Cover.me VPN evaluate: A VPN service full of options

Value When Reviewed

$9.95 per thirty days | $15 for 3 months | $49 for 17 months

Finest Costs Immediately: Cover.me

Cover.me VPN in short:

• P2P allowed: Sure
• Limitless gadget connections: No, 10 simultaneous gadget connections
• Enterprise location: Malaysia
• Variety of servers: 2,300+
• Variety of nation places: 85
• Value: $9.95 per thirty days, or $49.99 for 17 months

Cover.me from Malaysia-based eVenture Ltd. is a VPN that may not have the title recognition of in the present day’s hottest companies, but it surely packs simply as many options. It has slowly expanded its networks lately to embody extra places, and add extra servers. 

Since our final evaluate, Cover.me has added much more servers and nearly doubled its nation places. It has additionally decreased the worth on its longer-term subscriptions and added a couple of extra power-user options. So, with all of those advances let’s take one other look and see the place it stands within the present VPN market.

What are Cover.me’s options & companies?

Sam Singleton

Since our final evaluate of Cover.me, it has modified up its interface fairly a bit. Now whenever you open up the appliance you’re confronted with a dashboard that reveals some related info reminiscent of a Fast connect button that may connect with the final used server, info in your IP Deal with, Account info, an inventory of streaming optimized servers, and an inventory of your Favourite Places. 

Moreover, all of those widgets are movable and interchangeable as nicely, that means you possibly can customise the look to solely show the information you want. This can be a welcomed change of tempo from the extra simplistic residence display of outdated that solely displayed an Allow/Disable button within the middle. 

On the left sidebar you have got extra tabs for Places, Map, and Options, in addition to Your Account, and Assist. The Places tab shows a searchable record of all out there Cover.me server places with particularly quick 10G servers tagged with an icon subsequent to the server title. Alongside the highest you possibly can filter via all servers, these optimized for streaming, or Multi Hop servers as nicely. For individuals who are extra spatially inclined, the Map tab shows the bodily location of all of those servers on a world map as an alternative.

Sam Singleton

The Functions tab is the place Cover.me actually shines—there’s lots right here. There are the standard choices to launch on system startup, join robotically, and so forth. It additionally launched a function referred to as Bolt “Quick Proxy” which optimizes web pace efficiency over an OpenVPN connection. Theoretically, this could result in big pace will increase, notably in Home windows—I personally didn’t discover a lot of a distinction throughout my testing.

There may be additionally an choice to arrange Cut up Tunneling and its personal complementary proprietary firewall function referred to as Stealth Guard. This can be utilized to restrict both an app or your total web until a Cover.me VPN connection is current, thereby eliminating IP deal with leaks ought to your connection falter. There may be additionally a separate Kill Swap function out there as nicely beneath the settings menu.

Cover.me even gives extra unconventional instruments reminiscent of port forwarding and safety from DNS, IP, and IPv6 leaks. Like I stated, this service has a number of options. Add to that the huge array of protocols out there and the choice to make use of customized DNS and it shortly turns into obvious that Cover.me is an influence person’s dream.

With all of that being stated, as a result of sheer quantity of obtainable options and the maze of menus you must work via to tweak all of them, this service in all probability isn’t for rookies—or the faint of coronary heart. I personally discovered navigating the app a bit disorienting. I do just like the current revamp to its older simplistic interface, however I can’t assist however assume that it went too far in the wrong way. It’s a minor gripe although and determining the menu system is just a matter of spending a while within the utility itself.

Cover.me is out there for Home windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS, in addition to some consoles and good TVs. There are additionally browser add-ons for Chrome and Firefox that include assist for the SOCKS proxy. 

Lastly, it’s value noting that Cover.me has a helpful free model that gives all the nice safety features of its premium counterpart. The one draw back is that you just’re restricted to 10GB per thirty days and it solely supplies entry to eight of its servers. As a result of these limitations, I don’t suggest utilizing the free model to stream, but it surely’s an effective way to browse securely or simply to check out the service to see the way you prefer it.

How is Cover.me’s efficiency?

As a way to check Cover.me’s efficiency, I rated connection speeds throughout its servers in 5 totally different international locations all all over the world for a number of days after which in contrast them to my baseline web pace. Throughout all places examined, the speeds averaged simply over 31 p.c of the bottom obtain pace and 67 p.c of the bottom add pace. That’s okay, however in need of our record of the quickest VPNs.

Inside that mixture, nonetheless, have been some actually unimaginable speeds. I simply discovered they weren’t constant. It was fairly frequent for every location to indicate some nice relative speeds sooner or later after which fall off utterly the next day. I additionally discovered that the drop in pace was fairly vital the additional the Cover.me server was from my bodily location. That is in fact not unusual as distance tends to have an effect on ping, but it surely was so drastic in some cases it caught me a bit unexpectedly.

Please notice nonetheless that on-line speeds can differ wildly in pure Mbps checks from day after day and even hour to hour. It’s greatest to take any and all pace checks with a grain of salt. Your expertise with Cover.me could differ from these within the checks for this evaluate.

Regardless of all of this, nonetheless, I by no means actually bumped into any main issues with utilizing the service to stream video or obtain information. Subsequently, I’m assured that Cover.me has sufficient pace to care for absolutely anything you must do over a VPN connection.

With reference to streaming, Cover.me carried out admirably. Each optimized streaming server I linked to was capable of entry streaming websites reminiscent of Netflix and Amazon Prime. I even examined its non-optimized servers and so they had no points as nicely. Because of the inconsistent speeds although I did discover that my video tended to drop in high quality for very temporary durations of time. Nonetheless, Cover.me ought to serve you nicely for streaming and getting round area blocks.

How is Cover.me’s safety and privateness?

Cover.me

Cover.me has a really thorough privateness coverage on its web site. It states that it doesn’t monitor your exercise whenever you’re linked to the VPN. It doesn’t maintain connection logs or retailer IP addresses. The corporate does, nonetheless, maintain troubleshooting logs that embody a randomly generated username and an internally assigned IP deal with for every person. The troubleshooting logs are erased each few hours, in keeping with the privateness coverage. Moreover, it logs month-to-month information visitors quantities for high quality assurance functions.

The corporate did go an impartial safety audit of its ‘No-log’ coverage by Protection Code Ltd., however that was in 2015. Sadly, a more moderen audit has not been accomplished since that point. The truth that it was one of many first VPN companies to endure an impartial audit reveals that it takes privateness significantly. Nevertheless, seeing as what number of VPNs at the moment are present process audits yearly or two, an up to date model would go a good distance in the direction of assuring customers that Cover.me is constant its privateness commitments. Having stated that, it does publish annual “Transparency studies” detailing all information requests the corporate has acquired in a given yr.

Sam Singleton

The VPN itself comes with trade customary AES 256-bit encryption. It additionally gives an entire vary of protocols together with IKEv2, OpenVPN, SoftEtherVPN, WireGuard, and SSTP—that’s greater than most different companies. Moreover, it even gives superior configuration choices for a lot of of those protocols so as to add to the customization. And in my testing I discovered that there have been no IP deal with leaks when utilizing Cover.me throughout any of its servers and protocols. 

When signing up for Cover.me you do have to supply private billing info and it accepts funds through Credit score Card, PayPal, Google Pay, and varied cryptocurrencies.

Is Cover.me value it?

Cover.me is a very intriguing VPN service. On the one hand it gives implausible instruments to assist energy customers tweak and configure to their coronary heart’s content material. On the opposite, it might’t fairly nail down some fundamental stuff you need from a VPN reminiscent of constant speeds throughout servers and a user-friendly interface.

It makes all the proper privateness guarantees although and the service was capable of unblock all streaming websites that I examined. Total, it’s a well-rounded service that ticks nearly each field you can need from a high VPN. I can simply suggest it for knowledgeable energy customers, however rookies may need to attempt the free model first earlier than committing to the premium service.

Editor’s notice: As a result of on-line companies are sometimes iterative, gaining new options and efficiency enhancements over time, this evaluate is topic to vary to be able to precisely mirror the present state of the service. Any adjustments to textual content or our remaining evaluate verdict will probably be famous on the high of this text.