HMA VPN (formerly Hide My Ass!) boasts one of the best user experiences we’ve seen among VPNs. It includes a large collection of server locations and some interesting extras, such as an IP address shuffler, and it turned in some killer results in our performance testing. However, some of its best security features aren’t available on every platform. Editors’ Choice winners Proton VPN and NordVPN both pack in more features across their entire range of platforms and have far more servers.How Much Does HMA VPN Cost?HMA VPN subscriptions start at $11.99 per month, a bit above average for the VPN industry, which hovers around $10.29 per month. Move up to the annual plan, and you only pay $59.88 per year ($4.99 per month), which is the same price as many other top-tier competitors like NordVPN and TunnelBear VPN. If you want to try HMA VPN before you buy it, you can do so with its seven-day trial. That free trial does require you to create an account and give your credit card information.
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The Best VPN Services for 2022
If you’re looking for a better month-to-month deal, Editors’ Choice winner Mullvad VPN costs a mere 5 euros per month ($5.65 USD, at the time of this writing), though its annual subscription runs about $60 per year, or about the same as HMA VPN. Kaspersky Secure Connection is one of the cheapest VPNs, at $29.99 per year.
You can use credit cards or PayPal—but not bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies—to pay for an HMA subscription. This may or may not be a problem in your book, but other VPNs do accept a much broader selection of payment methods. NordVPN, for example, takes not only credit cards and PayPal but also Amazon Pay, Google Pay, and three different cryptocurrencies.If you have a limited budget, but still need to protect your privacy, you can always try a free VPN. Most of these services place limitations on your usage unless you pay, however. TunnelBear, for example, limits its free users to a certain allotment of data. ProtonVPN’s free plan places no data limits on users, making it the best we’ve tested.What Do You Get With HMA VPN?Most VPN services we’ve reviewed offer at least five licenses without restriction, and HMA follows suit. If you’re willing to bump your subscription up to $95.88 per year, the number of simultaneous connections goes up to 10.That’s sure to cover even a device-heavy household. Some companies are starting to do away with license restrictions altogether, however. Avira Phantom, Ghostery Midnight, IPVanish, Editors’ Choice winner Surfshark, and Windscribe place no limit on the number of devices you can use at a time. (Note: IPVanish is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag.com’s parent company. For more, see the ethics policy in our Editorial Mission Statement.) Paying more than the average for a VPN is easier to swallow if you’re getting a float of useful features. HMA, however, makes some advanced features available on only one of the platforms for which it offers apps. For example, many VPNs include split tunneling, which lets you designate which apps use the VPN connection and which do not. This feature is great for low-stakes activities that require a lot of bandwidth, such as streaming video or gaming. HMA VPN offers this feature only in its Android app. HMA VPN on PC offers a kill switch, too (more on this below), but not split tunneling.HMA does provide VPN access to the free Tor anonymization network. You don’t need a VPN to access Tor, but it is an easy way to further obscure all your online activities. Other competitors offer multi-hop connections, which route your traffic through a second VPN server for additional security. Notably, NordVPN and ProtonVPN are two VPNs we’ve reviewed that provide split tunneling, multi-hop, and access to Tor via VPN.Although it is owned by the same company that owns Avast and AVG antivirus, HMA isn’t bundled with any of those products. Those brands have VPNs of their own, too. Avast Secure Line VPN is bundled with the Avast One security suite, and AVG Secure VPN is bundled with AVG Ultimate. Kaspersky, Bitdefender, and Norton LifeLock are all antivirus companies that offer standalone VPN products.Remember that there’s a lot VPNs can’t protect against. We strongly recommend you enable multi-factor authentication wherever it’s available, use a password manager to create unique and complex passwords for each site and service, and use standalone antivirus software.What VPN Protocols Does HMA VPN Offer?There are many ways to create a VPN connection. We have long preferred services that support Wireguard or OpenVPN, as they are open-source and can be checked for potential vulnerabilities by anyone who wants to.
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HMA supports each of those and its own proprietary connection protocol, which the company calls Mimic. We ran all our testing over Mimic and found it to be both speedy and responsive. However, as you’ll see in our Netflix testing, it didn’t always live up to the claim of being able to avoid VPN restrictions entirely.HMA VPN’s Servers and Server LocationsHaving servers in many different countries gives you many options for spoofing your location. It also means you’re more likely to find a server near you, wherever you happen to be. On its face, HMA VPN has the largest selection of server locations. The company boasts that it offers servers in 290+ locations across “210+” countries, which is odd considering there are only 195 countries on Earth. We asked Avast about this, and a rep said, “HMA! [has] virtual locations that we consider countries.” Either way, the base figure still far exceeds the next-highest contender, Express VPN, which has servers in 94 countries. That sounds great, but until we know how many countries it’s actually in, we can’t say it has the most geographically diverse set of servers. We’ve asked HMA to clarify, but haven’t received a response as of this writing.
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The list of available server locations offered by HMA is particularly noteworthy because it covers regions often ignored by other VPN companies. For example, it has numerous server locations across the continent of Africa. Some VPNs might offer one or two server locations in Africa, while most ignore the continent completely. The service says it has 1,100+ servers, which is not a large number, regardless of how many countries HMA’s servers are spread across. It looks especially small when compared to some of the competition, which has as many as five (Proton VPN) or six (NordVPN) times its servers.Can You Trust HMA With Your Privacy?We commend HMA on its clear privacy policy. A few years ago, the company made enormous changes to its practices, gathering far less data and improving privacy for customers.The policy states, and company representatives confirm, that HMA does not log users’ originating IP addresses, their DNS requests, any data transferred over HMA’s network, or users’ browsing history. That’s as it should be. HMA is owned by the Avast Group, of Avast antivirus fame. Note that Avast SecureLine VPN, AVG Secure VPN, and HMA VPN are all owned by the same company. While HMA VPN operates on its own infrastructure, Avast and AVG-branded VPNs share the same back end.
(Credit: HMA/PCMag)
The actual location of a VPN company also matters as it can inform what protections are afforded to customers. HMA has its company headquarters in London and operates under the legal jurisdiction of the United Kingdom. Notably, the UK does have mandatory data retention laws. That’s not ideal from a privacy point of view, but HMA doesn’t log much, and what it doesn’t log it can’t retain.Many VPN companies have started publishing the results of third-party audits to establish their privacy bona fides. These audits aren’t always useful, but a good audit is an excellent way for a company to make itself accountable to customers. In 2020, HMA announced that VerSprite had completed an audit of its no-logs policy. We would like to see an updated version in 2024.Avast, HMA’s parent company, also publishes a warrant canary. This subtly allows the company to communicate if it has been subject to legal requirements that prevent the company from even acknowledging those requirements. Hands On With HMA’s Windows VPN ClientWe had no trouble installing the Windows version on an Intel NUC 13 Extreme Kit (Raptor Canyon) desktop running the latest version of Windows 10. Interestingly, you can log in with either a username and password or with an activation code. Mullvad and ExpressVPN have both done away with logins entirely and instead use anonymous codes to activate the client software.The latest version of the HMA client looks very modern. It’s built around a single, monochromatic blue window with Jack, the donkey mascot of HMA, in the center. Elements animate subtly, and menus snap open nicely. Between the colorful interface and cartoon mascot, it has much in common with TunnelBear, although we think TunnelBear has the edge in the friendliness and ease-of-use departments.
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Something adorable in particular about HMA (and potentially offensive, but we’re not too concerned) is how Jack changes each time you connect to a new server. For example, clicking on the US servers gets you cowboy-mascot Jack, while connecting to Australia turns Jack into a redheaded mascot wearing something out of Crocodile Dundee.Unfortunately, cuteness alone can’t overcome the fact that the HMA app doesn’t let you select specific servers. The finest level of granularity available is selecting a server from a given city but not a specific server within that city. We also noticed that P2P and streaming servers were clearly marked, but it’s still unclear which servers are virtual. HMA VPN provides this information on its website, but it should also be in the app.In the app, you’ll find the kill switch mentioned above, which shuts down internet access should your VPN become disconnected. You can also opt to have HMA cut off internet access for only specific apps instead of halting all the traffic from your machine.
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While HMA doesn’t have the privacy tools competitors offer, it does have some unique features that are quite handy. On the main page, you can click a button next to your IP address to cycle to a new IP address. The app says that this might unblock sites that refuse access to VPN users, but we like the privacy implications of being able to change IP addresses easily. You can configure the app to automatically cycle your IP address at set intervals, which is very nifty.HMA VPN on Other PlatformsHMA’s apps for Android, ChromeOS, iOS, and macOS are all capable and easy to use. We like the playful, donkey-themed graphics on every platform and the personality-filled flavor text found in the feature descriptions. In testing, we found that the Android, ChromeOS, and macOS versions all offer useful features. The iOS version lets you automatically connect via the VPN app when accessing to the internet via Wi-Fi or cellular networks, but that’s about it for special features.
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HMA’s features are at their best on macOS, where it has a particularly attractive user interface. There’s also a Mac-exclusive tool, the Location Speed Test. We tried it out, and it confirmed that, unsurprisingly, the Southeastern US-based servers near our Atlanta location were the fastest servers available to us at that moment. It’s a handy tool to use if you’re traveling and looking for the fastest server in a new location. The macOS version includes auto-connect options, a kill switch, and IP Shuffle, which is an IP address randomizer.The ChromeOS app is the Android app reskinned, and the graphics occasionally look a little distorted on our Chromebook monitor. The Android and Chrome apps have the same features, including auto-connect, device-level split tunneling, kill switch, and IP Shuffle. There’s also something called Wi-Fi Threat Shield. HMA claims it scans your Wi-Fi network to catch possible man-in-the-middle attacks. The app will alert users to enable the VPN connection when a threat is detected. The company’s website does not explain how it scans your network or what network activity constitutes a threat.
(Credit: HMA/PCMag)
On each platform, we connected to HMA servers in Copenhagen, Madrid, Toronto, and Havana and tested the servers using DNSleaktest.com. HMA did not reveal our IP address or other DNS information throughout the testing period. To test the VPN’s connection speed and reliability, we watched live streaming video content on Twitch.tv and YouTube while connected to servers in Hamilton, Frankfurt, Mexico City, and Montego Bay. We didn’t experience lagging or other interruptions during that portion of the test.Can You Use HMA VPN for Netflix?Netflix and other streaming platforms offer specific content to specific parts of the world. With a VPN, you can jump those invisible borders to see how the other half lives or to continue watching your shows while traveling. Netflix is wise to this scheme, however, and actively works to block users who connect via VPN.
In our testing, we found Netflix was open in four of the five regions we tested, including the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The only region we found that didn’t allow us to view the full Netflix library was Japan, where our results were limited.Speed and PerformanceUsing a VPN makes your web traffic jump through more hoops than normal. As a result, you’re probably going to see a decrease in speed and an increase in latency. To get a sense of this impact, we compare the average results from Ookla’s speed test tool to find the percentage change with the VPN on and off. To learn more about our testing and its limitations, see how we test VPNs. (Note: Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag.com’s parent company. For more, see the ethics policy in our Editorial Mission Statement.)In testing, we found that HMA VPN reduced download results by 11.40%, which puts it in our top ten for the category, and actually improved upload speeds by +11.76%. This makes it the top pick for anyone who does a lot of uploading while connected to their VPN network, like journalists, film industry workers sending footage back home from locations with unfavorable or restrictive governments, and more.
That said, we recommend against selecting a VPN solely based on speed, as there’s no guarantee you’ll have similar results. Consider, instead, the privacy protections and overall value of the product, as well as our speed testing and your personal VPN priorities.Verdict: A Fine Way to Hide OnlineWhile we’ll always mourn the company retiring its cheeky “Hide My Ass!” branding, HMA carries on the best of the storied brand. Its interface is one of the most user-friendly VPNs we’ve tested, making it easy to get online quickly. It offers many ways to spoof your location, and its upload speed results using its own Mimic protocol are impressive. We also like the tools HMA VPN includes with its app, such as the IP Shuffler, but we’re disappointed that split tunneling and multi-hop connections aren’t available in all its apps. Ultimately, NordVPN and ProtonVPN offer more features across more platforms, earning our Editors’ Choice award.
Pros
Friendly, simple interface
Exceptional upload speed test results
Wide global distribution of servers
Handy IP shuffler
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The Bottom Line
HMA VPN offers an excellent user experience, impressive global server distribution, and some unique features. Not all its key security extras are available on every platform, however.
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