Are you looking for a vpn that delivers great connection speeds?
ExpressVPN and IPVanish are some of the best vpns that deliver excellent internet connection speeds…
But how does ExpressVPN and IPVanish compare against each other?
In this ExpressVPN vs IPVanish comparison in 2021 we are going to pitch IPVanish against ExpressVPN alongs the lines of speed, streaming and torrenting to see which the better vpn for you between the two.
I hope that by the end of this ExpressVPN vs IPVanish comparison you’ll be able to choose either ExpressVPN or IPVanish.
Let’s get started…
Here is a quick summary.
| ExpressVPN | IPVanish | |
| Website | expressvpn.com | ipvanish.com |
| Servers | 3,000 | 1,400 |
| Jurisdiction | BVI | United States |
| Streaming | Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, iPlayer | Netflix US, Hulu, Amazon |
| Speed | 4.4/5 | 4.2/5 |
| Torrenting | All servers | P2P servers |
| Kill Switch | YES | YES |
| Works in China? | YES | NO |
| Devices | 5 | 10 |
| Pricing | $ 8.32/month | $ 6.49/month |
About
ExpressVPN is a VPN company based in the British Virgin Islands that enable you to access the internet anonymously and securely using some of the strongest encryption technologies and VPN connection protocols.
Check out my detailed review of ExpressVPN.
IPVanish, on the other hand, is a VPN company based in the United States of America that enables you to securely browse the internet and unblock geo-restricted content on streaming platforms like Netflix.
Here is a detailed IPVanish review.
Server Collection
ExpressVPN, the time of writing this IPVanish vs ExpressVPN comparison, has a total of 3,000 servers based in 94 different countries.
IPVanish also currently has a total of 1,300 vpn servers that are spread over 75 different countries.
It is clear that ExpressVPN has a larger collection of servers and better geographical distribution that IPVanish.
If you are looking for a vpn that will avail a server in almost any country that visit then I recommend ExpressVPN instead of IPVanish.
Streaming
Online video streaming platforms are all the rage these days.
However, popular streaming platforms like Netflix restrict certain content to only be available to people in certain countries.
So in order for you to be able to stream content destined for these countries you have to either be located in these countries or at least appear to be.
This is where a vpn comes in to help you stream this geo restricted content.
A vpn gives you an IP address belonging to that country so that you are able to access this content without a problem.
ExpressVPN is able to unblock Netflix for different countries including the US, UK, Brazil and Japan.
Apart from Netflix, you’ll also be able to streaming content from other platforms like Hulu, Amazon Prime and BBC iPlayer.
IPVanish, on the other hand, is also capable of unblocking Netflix for various countries where they have their servers.
However, from the tests I carried out, I was not able to stream content on other streaming platforms like Hulu, Amazon Prime or BBC iPlayer.
If you are looking for a vpn that is great for streaming content on various platforms then I recommend ExpressVPN.
Speed
In order for you to be able to stream content in great qualities like HD and 4K you need a fast internet connection speed.
So in case you are using a vpn, you should ensure that you speeds don’t drop to an extent that you streaming quality is affected.
I tested the connection speeds of both ExpressVPN and IPVanish and here is what I found out.
Before connecting to their servers, I first used speedtest.net to test for my speeds without a vpn.
After that I connected to three different servers based in the US, UK and Hong Kong and then used tested the ping, download and upload speeds.
ExpressVPN maintained an average speed of 87% of my original connection speeds for the three servers that I connected to.
IPVanish delivered an average download speed of 84% of my original download speeds for the three servers.
From this ExpressVPN vs IPVanish speed comparison it is clear that ExpressVPN has better connection speeds than IPVanish even though both are gave excellent speeds as it as above 80%.
If you are looking for a vpn with great speeds then I recommend ExpressVPN.
Torrenting
Will you be able to download torrent files when connected to either ExpressVPN or IPVanish servers?
Because anti piracy laws are tough these days, you should never download any torrent file without first connecting to a vpn or proxy server.
Every time you torrent, you should ensure that it is completely private and anonymous.
This is because your torrenting history, if traced back to you, can be used against you in a court of law and get you in trouble.
ExpressVPN supports torrenting on all its servers.
So you don’t need to connect to any special servers in order to start torrenting… just start your torrent client from the current servers you are connected to.
IPVanish, even though it supports torrenting, only allows torrenting on certain specialized P2P optimized servers.
In order to start torrenting when connected to an IPVanish vpn, you first need to located P2P servers from the servers list and connect to any one of them.
Otherwise, your torrenting traffic will get throttled or blocked if you try to use the wrong server.
It therefore looks like ExpressVPN is more optimized for torrenting than IPVanish.
If you are looking for a vpn that is great for torrenting then I recommend ExpressVPN.
Privacy Policy
How does IPVanish vs ExpressVPN privacy policies compare?
More than half of internet users never actually the privacy policies whenever they are signing up for any service online.
VPN companies are aware of this too.
So they usually hide some clauses in their privacy policies about the users logs that they keep… knowing that you won’t even bother to read them anyway.
Privacy is becoming harder to come by on the internet and finding a vpn company that is true to their privacy policy is even harder.
Before writing this IPVanish vs ExpressVPN comparison, I read through the privacy policies of both vpns back to back to ensure that there wasn’t more than meets the eye.
Here is what I found out…
ExpressVPN, to begin with, is based in the British Virgin Islands which is a privacy friendly country as it doesn’t for part of the 14 eyes countries.
The BVI also does not have mandatory data retention laws that obligate vpn companies to keep logs of their users.
In addition to that, ExpressVPN does not keep traffic logs of their vpn users… or better put they do not keep any logs that could be used to identify you.
However, after reading deeper in the policy, I discovered that ExpressVPN collects more connection logs about me than I thought.
Every time you connect to their servers, they collect your connection location, bandwidth usage and internet service provider.
I am personally not comfortable with this… I think it’s too much information to collect about me when you really want to make my invisible online.
IPVanish, on the other hand, is based in the United States which is not a very privacy friendly location.
USA forms part of the 14 eyes countries that spy on their citizens and share this information amongst each other.
Even though the United States currently does not have laws that obligate vpn companies to keep activity logs, they are required to comply any time the government asks for specific logs through a court order.
Reading their privacy policy, I found this clause that the “do no log traffic data”.
I find that rather vague because we know all vpns keep logs of some kind… IPVanish could make life easier for everyone by specify what particular logs they keep and which one they don’t.
If anything, IPVanish has handed over users logs to the authorities that were used to identify one of the users in 2016.
While I find myself very skeptical of the amount of connection logs that ExpressVPN keeps, a security firm conducted an audit and confirmed that none of the logs on their servers can be used to identify any particular users.
For that reason, I recommend ExpressVPN if you are looking for a vpn that does not keep logs that can be used to identify you.
Encryption and Data Protection
In order for your data to be safe during transmission over the internet, it needs to be encrypted in a tamper proof format.
This ensures that even if a hacker was to hijack your traffic they won’t be able to decrypt and see the actual information being transmitted.
And achieving this requires you to use some of the best encryption technologies out there.
Both IPVanish and ExpressVPN use an NSA recommended AES 256-bit encryption technology that is impossible to crack.
It is this same technology that is used by governments and militaries to encrypt sensitive classified information.
In addition to that, these vpns also use some of the best vpn connection protocols to guarantee your security.
ExpressVPN supports both OpenVPN and IKEv2/IPSec protocols to communicate between the vpn apps and servers.
IPVanish, on the other hand, supports more connection protocols including OpenVPN, L2TP, SSTP and PPTP.
OpenVPN is the most secure and is what you should use in most cases.
Protocols like PPTP have proven prone to attacks and vulnerabilities and I don’t recommend you use it under any circumstance.
Some vpns, however, require you to use PPTP protocol if you want to bypass China’s great firewall.
Overall, both ExpressVPN and IPVanish provide you with the best encryption and protocols for you security online.
Ad Blocker
In the early ages of the infancy of the internet, people were excited about clicking anything with a link on it.
So ads worked great as internet users were so excited to click them.
However, as time went by, people got fatigued with these ads as they became too much that they led to ad fatigue.
This made online businesses and website owners to become even more aggressive with ads in order to draw your attention…
It happened to an extent that today, it becomes even hard to read content on certain websites because you have to be constantly scrolling through ads.
It for this reason that premium vpn companies decided to ship their apps with inbuilt ad blockers.
Once turned on, these ad blockers will enable you to have an ad free browsing experience which is hard to come by these days.
So does ExpressVPN or IPVanish have an ad blocker?
Unfortunately, neither ExpressVPN not IPVanish have an ad blocker or malware blocker in any of the applications.
This is quite surprising because, ExpressVPN being such an expensive vpn as we’ll soon find out, is skimping on a very important and needed functionality in 2021.
If you are looking for a vpn with an inbuilt ad blocker then neither IPVanish nor ExpressVPN can help you… consider NordVPN or CyberGhost.
Dedicated IPs
Everytime you connect to your vpn you will be assigned a new random IP address.
This is particularly very great if you want to stay anonymous online because many people using the same IP at the same time makes it hard to tie back certain activities to you.
However, this doesn’t work well with certain security conscious applications that need to know in advance what IP address you’ll be connecting with.
For example, you cannot access your home security feed remotely using any random IP address that you pick out of your head.
If you want to access your work network from home, most secure networks will require you to provide a particular IP address that they can then whitelist in order to grant you remote access.
This is where vpn dedicated IPs come into play.
A dedicated IP will enable you to connect to the internet using the same IP address every time you connect to the vpn.
It is this IP that you can then whitelist in your applications that require it.
So will IPVanish or ExpressVPN provide you with a dedicated IP for your single personal use?
Unfortunately, neither ExpressVPN nor IPVanish supports dedicated IPs.
So you won’t get an IP address that you can use in your applications that require a dedicated IP for remote access.
If you are looking for a vpn that will provide you with a dedicated IP that I don’t recommend either ExpressVPN or IPVanish… instead consider NordVPN or Surfshark.
Kill Switch
In order to always stay protected with a vpn, you should ensure that you are always connected to the vpn server.
However, this is not always possible.
For example, your vpn app disconnects from the server whenever you are switching servers or whenever there is an internet connection drop.
It is during these few seconds that your real IP address is revealed and both the websites that you visit and your ISP, and by extension the government, can know what you were doing online.
You need to worry about this especially if you were downloading some torrent files.
An automatic internet kill switch comes to the rescue to ensure that internet access for your entire device is cut of anytime your vpn app disconnects from the server.
So any download or uploads that were in progress have to pause and wait until the connection reestablishes.
And this usually happens automatically without you even realizing it.
Both ExpressVPN and IPVanish have an inbuilt kill switch that ensures that you are always safe online.
Once you activate this kill switch you’ll never be able to access the internet without a vpn… unless you go back and deactivate it.
If you are looking for a vpn with a great kill switch capability then I recommend either ExpressVPN or IPVanish.
Split Tunnelling
Even though using a kill switch to force all your internet traffic through your vpn tunnel, it not always a practical move in all the cases.
There are instances where you might still want certains apps to have their traffic routed through your ISP as usual.
For example, if you don’t want your banking to lock you out for using a new IP address or if you don’t want you backup app slowed down because of speed drops caused by a vpn connection.
So does ExpressVPN vs IPVanish compare in terms of their split tunnelling capabilities in 2021?
ExpressVPN has a powerful split tunnel that allows you to exempt certain apps from having their traffic channelled through your vpn.
It is important to remember that applications exempted from using the vpn do not benefit from the additional security and anonymity that a vpn provides.
IPVanish, unfortunately, does not have any such thing as a split tunnel in any of its apps.
So you won’t have to whitelist some apps and exempt them from the vpn.
If you are looking for a vpn with a split tunnelling capability then ExpressVPN it is.
Works in China?
Will you be able to use either IPVanish or ExpressVPN in China?
Because of the great firewall of China’s ability to detect and block vpn traffic, especially those that use OpenVPN protocol, it is getting harder for most vpns to be able to bypass China’s firewall.
But would you need a vpn in China in the first place?
It’s because internet access heavily controlled in China and some popular websites that you need like Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are blocked in China.
It takes a vpn with the ability to make its vpn traffic look like normal https traffic to bypass the deep packet inspection technology of the firewall.
And this, most vpns cannot do…
ExpressVPN, luckily, has a server obfuscation technology that makes it possible to bypass China’s firewall.
So you’ll be able to access all the restricted and censored content in China using ExpressVPN without a problem.
IPVanish, on the other hand, cannot bypass the great firewall of China and is completely blocked.
If you are looking for a vpn for internet access in China then I recommend ExpressVPN.
Pricing
As we near the end of this IPVanish vs ExpressVPN comparison, let’s compare the different pricing options of these two vpns to find the cheaper one.
If you want to get a cheap for cheap it is best to commit to a longer plan instead of a month by month payment.
This is because the longer your plan, the bigger the discount you get.
ExpressVPN has its best plan being the 1 year plan that costs $ 8.32/month whereas IPVanish has a similar 1 year plan that costs $ 6.49/month.
It is therefore clear that IPVanish is a more budget friendly vpn as compared to ExpressVPN.
However, I don’t know why none of these vpns offers plans longer than 1 year because I find it cumbersome to have to renew my plans every year to comes.
If you are looking for a vpn that will enable you spare a couple bucks in vpn fees then I recommend IPVanish.
Payment Options
Let’s finish this ExpressVPN vs IPVanish review by looking at the different payment options that are available with these vpns.
When comparing these payment options, I was particularly interested in finding a vpn company that supports anonymous payment options like gift cards or cryptocurrencies.
ExpressVPN at the time of writing this vpn comparison supports payments through all the major credit cards and payment platforms like PayPal.
In addition to that, ExpressVPN supports cryptocurrency payments through Bitcoin.
IPVanish currently only supports all the major credit cards and PayPal payments.
It does not support any kind of crypto payments.
Cryptocurrency payments enable you to give as little information about you as possible when signing up.
You could sign up with a disposable email address and pay with some Bitcoins and nobody will get to know who you are.
If you are looking for a vpn that supports Bitcoin payments then I recommend ExpressVPN.
In Conclusion
We have come to the end of this ExpressVPN vs IPVanish comparison in 2021.
I hope this vpn comparison has helped you learn a thing or two about the pros and cons of either ExpressVPN or IPVanish.
Are you now ready to make a choice between these two vpns?
If you are looking for a cheaper vpn that offers you more vpn connection protocols and allows you to connect more devices at the same time then I recommend IPVanish.
However, if you are looking for a vpn with great streaming capabilities, that works in China and are willing to cough out a few more bucks then I recommend ExpressVPN.
Have you used ExpressVPN or IPVanish before?
Please share your experience in the comments below.
