Invisible Browsing VPN (ibVPN) was launched in 2010 and has since grown into a thriving VPN and SmartDNS services. The ibVPN team is genuine in their efforts. While a lot of VPN services are mysterious entities, the ibVPN team is front and center. You can learn more about them in the “about us” section of their website. The project history page outlines the milestones they have achieved over the years to make the service what it is today. I’ll cover a number of major innovations in my review of ibVPN.
The ibVPN team has paired down the number of account options over the years. This means that you don’t have as many VPN plans to choose from which makes it easier to select the one that best suits your needs. Given the low price of ibVPN, I think most users will turn to the Standard VPN account. Torrent users will want to step up to the Ultimate VPN plan. You can also try ibVPN free for 24 hours to test the service.
I prefer an all-in-one plan. In the case of ibVPN the Ultimate VPN plans gives you every feature ibVPN has to offer. The Standard VPN package gives you access to over 100 VPN servers in 44 countries and ibDNS, but lacks support for P2P/torrents. The ibDNS plan is specifically for those who want SmarrDNS access without the privacy protection of a VPN.
| Ultimate | Standard | Torrent | ibDNS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Servers | 130 | 100 | 21 | N/A |
| Countries | 47 | 44 | 9 | N/A |
| Connections | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| P2P Support | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Socks5 Proxy | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| SmartDNS | Yes | No | No | Yes |
There is one other option for small business customers. You can protect your employees privacy using ibVPN. The price of the service is based on the number of connections you need. Regardless of which small business plan you choose the service will include access to 95 servers in 43 countries. It also supports torrent use and SmartDNS which seems less important for business accounts. You can choose between 5, 10, and 20 connections.
Regardless of which plan you select the payment options are the same. You can pay for ibVPN using credit card (Visa, MasterCard, American Express), Perfect Money, SMS, Payza, OKPay, and Paymentwall. Unfortunately Paypal is not an option. However, you can pay for ibVPN using a number of cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Litecoin, Blackcoin, Dogecoin, and Ripple.
After signing up for ibVPN you will receive an email to help you get started. The first step is to download their VPN client. I downloaded the Windows all-in-one app. You can use it to connect to any VPN server available in your chosen plan. The first time you run the client it will ask for your login information. You can have the app save your login details for future logins.
The latest all-in-one VPN client is very simple yo use. You can easily use both their VPN and SmartDNS (ibDNS) services through the app. You can click on the connect button to let the client select the fastest VPN server near your current location. Before you do that I suggest changing protocols. Otherwise the app connected using PPTP which is less secure than other protocols.
To make the change you will want to click on the servers tab to the left. Look to the top right hand side of the app and select the protocols tab. From here you can choose between L2TP, PPTP, SSTP, IPSec, OpenVPN (UDP), and OpenVPN (TCP). I recommend using OpenVPN (UDP) for a good mix of 256-bit encryption and fast performance. OpenVPN (TCP) adds error checking.
You can select any server on the ibVPN network that is included in your VPN plan through the all-in-one app. To do so click on the servers tab. You will see a list of server locations along with the percentage of free resources available for each server. At the time of my ibVPN review the busiest servers were in Australia, Canada, UK, and The Netherlands.
Here’s a full list of countries available in the ibVPN client:
- Africa: Egypt, South Africa
- Asia: China, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Turkey, Vietnam
- Europe: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom
- North & Central America: Canada, Mexico, Panama, United States
- South America: Brazil, Chile, Argentina
- Oceania: Australia, New Zealand
One of the most important aspects of a VPN service is the speed so a performance test is a good way to end the review. I connected to a server in the United States using OpenVPN (UDP) for testing. I used ibVPN all-in-one client on Windows 10 and connected to a server in Atlanta, Georgia.
The first site I used (speedtest.net) showed that the speed was well above my ISP speed which normally indicates a VPN provider is compressing data. This can skew speed test results. In this case I chose another website (speedof.me) to test the service and found the download speed was 28.12 Mbps and upload speed was 5.28 Mbps. This was fast enough to stream HD content.
The Invisible Browsing VPN service was a pleasure to test. They offer a full range of VPN apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. ibVPN has setup instructions for other devices. The ibVPN site includes guides for DD-WRT routers, ibDNS, and proxy. Performance was decent and reliability was good. The price is definitely a value. If the performance is fast enough for your needs then we recommend you give ibVPN a try.
