Are you looking for an ExpressVPN vs Ivacy VPN comparison?
In this article, we are going to compare these two VPNs in order to establish which is a better VPN between the two.
We’ll compare these two VPNs along the lines of their speeds, streaming and torrenting capabilities.
I hope that by the end of this ExpressVPN vs Ivacy VPN comparison, you’ll be able to make a choice between either of the two VPNs.
So let’s get started.
About
ExpressVPN is a VPN company based in the British Virgin Islands that enables you to access the internet anonymously and securely.
It was founded in the year 2009 and has since been able to get over 100 million downloads of their Android app on the Google Play Store.
Check out my detailed review of ExpressVPN.
Ivacy, on the other hand, is a VPN service provider located in Singapore that enables you to access the internet securely, including unblocking content on geo-restricted platforms like Netflix and Hulu.
It was, in fact, founded a little earlier than ExpressVPN… being founded in 2007.
Check out my unbiased Ivacy review.
Server Collection
How many servers do both ExpressVPN and Ivacy VPN have?
In order to be able to deliver a great user experience, a VPN needs to have a large collection of super fast servers. The more servers there are, the more options you’ll have when choosing a server to connect to.
ExpressVPN wins over Ivacy since it has a collection of 3,000 servers that are based in 94 different countries.
Ivacy only has 1,000 servers located in 50 different countries at the time of writing this Ivacy vs ExpressVPN comparison in 2021.
So if you are looking for a VPN that has more servers and that are spread out over more countries, then ExpressVPN is the clear winner here.
Streaming
In order to be able to enjoy a great streaming experience, a VPN needs to be able to unblock a large number of streaming platforms. This is because, for most of the popular streaming platforms, content is restricted to the particular region that you are located.
So you need to spoof your IP to make you look like you are based in the location whose content library you’d like to stream.
ExpressVPN is able to unblock Netlifx in the US, UK, Brazil, Germany and Canada… among other regions.
In addition to Netflix, you can also use ExpressVPN to stream Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and BBC iPlayer.
Ivacy, on the other hand, has great streaming capabilities.
Ivacy can unblock Netflix in the US, UK and Germany… just connect to any of their servers based in any of these countries.
In addition to Netflix, Ivacy can also unblock Amazon Prime, Hulu, BBC iPlayer, HBO Go, among other popular streaming platforms. In fact, the streaming servers on Ivacy are labelled.
This makes it quite easy to find the appropriate server for the kind of platform you want to stream.
As you can see, when it comes to streaming, both Ivacy and ExpressVPN square it out in terms of the number of platforms that they can unblock.
Speed
How do you get to appreciate the unblocking capabilities of a VPN if they are not fast enough to stream flawlessly?
Internet speeds is a key feature when looking for a VPN that will serve your needs.
In order to establish the faster VPN between ExpressVPN and Ivacy, I tested their servers based in three different continents and then calculated the average drop in speeds.
I used the website, speedtest.net to measure the upload speeds, download speeds and ping times before and after connecting to their servers.
Here is what I established.
ExpressVPN had an average download speed that was 87% of my initial speeds before connecting to any of their servers.
Ivacy, on the other hand, also had great speeds that were 82% on average of my before internet speeds.
So as you can see, both Ivacy VPN and ExpressVPN are able to deliver fast connection speeds as they can maintain at least 80% of your before speeds.
Torrenting
How does ExpressVPN compare with Ivacy in terms of their ability to download torrent files privately and anonymous?
If you are a torrent enthusiast, you should ensure that you only download torrent files after hiding your real IP address through a VPN or proxy server.
It is the only way to avoid a lawsuit in case you download any kind of copyrighted material.
ExpressVPN has great support for anonymous torrenting.
All their servers are optimized for torrent downloads, so all you need to do is launch you torrent client and start downloading from any server.
Torrenting is also anonymous on their servers because they do not keep any logs that can be used to tie you to any activities on their servers.
Ivacy, on the flip side, also has great support for torrenting.
It has special dedicated P2P servers that are super optimized for fast and anonymous torrent downloads.
Unlike ExpressVPN, you first have to connect to the Ivacy P2P servers if you want to be able to torrent without your traffic getting throttled. And since Ivacy does not keep logs of your activities, you also get to enjoy private torrenting.
Again, there is a tie here as both ExpressVPN and Ivacy VPN have great support for P2P file sharing.
Privacy Policy
As I already hinted above, both ExpressVPN and Ivacy are great VPNs for privacy and anonymity on the internet.
But let’s take a deeper look into these two VPNs to establish what kind of logs they actually keep and what they don’t.
ExpressVPN, to begin with, is located in the BVI, which is a privacy-friendly location for a VPN company as this country does not have mandatory data retention laws that obligate VPN companies to keep logs.
In addition to that, they also state in their privacy policies that they do not keep logs of your IP address or DNS queries.
Even though ExpressVPN does keep logs of your connection timestamps and bandwidth usage, an independent audit by a security firm established that these logs are kept in an anonymized format.
So they cannot be used to tie any one particular person to certain activities on their servers.
Ivacy is based in Singapore, which is also a privacy friendly location.
First is because this country does not form part of the 14 eyes surveillance alliance of countries that spy on their citizens and then share their personal information.
In addition to that, Singapore also does not have laws that obligate VPN companies to keep logs.
Beside, Ivacy also states in their privacy policy that they do not keep logs of your IP address, bandwidth or even connection timestamps.
However, they do log your connection attempts to their servers.
Again, since this is not information that can be used to tie you to certain activities on their servers, it is a pretty much private VPN.
Encryption and Data Protection
In order to protect your personal information from hackers, you need to encrypt your data using a tamper-proof encryption technology.
Which kind of encryption technologies do both ExpressVPN and Ivacy use?
At the time of writing this ExpressVPN vs Ivacy VPN comparison, I established that both these VPNs use a military-grade AES 256-bit encryption to encrypt your data.
Since this encryption technology has never been hacked before, it is safe to say that your data is secure.
In addition to the encryption algorithms, VPNs also use certain connection protocols to ensure that there is secure communication between the VPN apps and the VPN servers.
ExpressVPN supports both OpenVPN and IKEv2/IPSec protocols in their apps… OpenVPN being the default for Android and desktop apps while IKEv2 is used in the iOS apps.
Ivacy, on the flip side, supports a tad more protocols.
Some of the VPN protocols that Ivacy supports include OpenVPN, L2TP, SSTP, PPTP and IKEV2/IPSec protocols.
So if you are looking for a VPN that supports more protocols then I recommend Ivacy over ExpressVPN.
Ad Blockers
Are you looking for more advanced features in a VPN like ad blockers?
If you want to enjoy an ad-free browsing experience and not be bothered with ad trackers following you around the web then you need a VPN with an ad blocker.
Once you turn on an ad blocker, it will disable ads on all the sites that you visit as well as block the ad tracking scripts that these websites install in your browser.
So do ExpressVPN and Ivacy have ad blockers?
Unfortunately, neither ExpressVPN nor Ivacy VPN have any ad blocking capabilities.
This is rather disappointing as you’d expected such a feature in sophisticated and expensive VPNs like ExpressVPN.
So if you are particularly interested in VPN ad blockers, then I recommend you check out this list of the best VPNs with ad blockers in 2021.
Dedicated IPs
Most VPNs will connect you to the internet using a shared IP address.
There is also a higher probability that this IP address will have changed the next time you connect to the same server.
If you want to be able to connect to the internet by always using the same IP address, then you need a VPN that supports dedicated IPs.
In fact, for some security sensitive networks like your work network, you first need to whitelist an IP address before you can use it for secure remote access.
ExpressVPN, unfortunately, does not support dedicated IPs at the time of writing this Ivacy vs ExpressVPN comparison.
Ivacy, on the flip side, actually supports dedicated IP address.
Once you purchase these dedicated IPs separately, you can use them to access your more sensitive applications, like you home security camera feed.
However, you should remember that since a dedicated IP address is tied to your account, any activities on this IP can be traced back to you. So you don’t want to do anything controversial, like torrenting, when on your dedicated IP.
For those, the usual shared IPs are the best.
Kill Switch
In order to be able to keep your IP address hidden you have to ensure that you only access the internet after securely connecting to a VPN server.
However, since VPN apps can sometimes disconnect from the servers without notice, you should use a kill switch to ensure that anytime that that happens, your real IP is not exposed.
So what you are looking for is a VPN with an automatic internet kill switch.
Luckily, both Ivacy VPN and ExpressVPN have an internet kill switch.
These kill switches will help you ensure that any application that tries to access the internet after your VPN app disconnects from the server is not able to do so.
The kill switch will block internet access for your entire device until you reconnect to the server. So your torrent client running in the background does not get to expose your IP address.
Split Tunnelling
How about the ability to split your internet traffic?
Sometimes, you may want to have some of your traffic exempted from the VPN tunnel.
This is especially the case if you have certain applications that are having a problem functioning normally with your VPN connection.
For example, your internet banking app might keep asking for additional verification if you keep logging in with a strange, VPN issued IP address.
In order to remedy that without using a dedicated IP, you need to whitelist your banking app.
Once whitelisted, traffic from your banking app flows through your ISP as usual while the rest of the traffic goes through your VPN tunnel. ExpressVPN has a split tunnelling feature that enables you to do exactly this.
You can whitelist certain applications whose traffic will not be encrypted, but passed as usual through your ISP.
Ivacy also has a split tunneling capability that enables you to split traffic between these two tunnels.
In fact, you might be able to increase internet speeds for the whitelisted apps if your VPN is causing huge drops in your internet speeds.
However, you must know that traffic through these whitelisted apps is visible to your ISP because they are not encrypted. So your ISP will see the sites that you visit when you are on these apps.
Works in China?
Let’s now look at the ability of any of these VPNs to work in China.
China has a powerful deep packet inspection technology that is able to detect and block any VPN traffic.
This is because certain websites are blocked in China, and the Chinese government doesn’t like it when you try to use a VPN to circumvent these content blocks and restrictions.
In order for a VPN to bypass the great firewall of China, it needs to make its traffic look like normal HTTPS traffic.
ExpressVPN is able to make it’s traffic look like normal https traffic and hence bypass China’s firewall. So you’ll be able to use it to access censored sites like Facebook, Google and Twitter.
Ivacy, on the other, is also able to work flawlessly in China.
Just like ExpressVPN, Ivacy VPN enables you to fly under the radar of China’s firewall undetected and therefore access blocked content.
So if you are looking for the best VPNs for China, then clearly both ExpressVPN and Ivacy are great options.
Pricing
As we near the end of this Ivacy vs ExpressVPN comparison, let’s now look at their various pricing plans to establish the cheaper VPN.
Usually, the longer the plan that you choose the greater the discount.
So which is more expensive between ExpressVPN and Ivacy VPN?
ExpressVPN costs $ 8.32/month on their 1 year plan. This is also their cheapest and longest plan.
Ivacy VPN will set you back $ 1.99/month if you opt for their 2 years plan, which is also their cheapest plan.
So as you can see, Ivacy is a much cheaper VPN compared to ExpressVPN.
If you are looking to save a ton of bucks on a VPN, then Ivacy is obviously a budget-friendly VPN service provider than ExpressVPN.
Payment Options
Let’s finish this Ivacy vs ExpressVPN comparison by looking at the payment methods that each one of them accepts.
The more payment options a VPN has, the greater the chances that you’ll find a payment method that works for you. I particularly prefer anonymous payment method like Bitcoins and gift cards.
ExpressVPN and Ivacy both accept credit card payments, PayPal as well as anonymous Bitcoin payments.
So if you want to stay anonymous then you can signup with a fake email address and then pay with some Bitcoins… then nobody gets to know who you are.
In Conclusion
I hope this comparison of Ivacy VPN and ExpressVPN has helped you understand the strengths and weaknesses of these two VPNs.
Are you now ready to make a choice of the best VPN for you?
If you are on a tight budget and are looking for a VPN that just works, then I recommend Ivacy VPN.
However, if you are power VPN user and wants the best of both speeds and functionality then ExpressVPN is a VPN that will not let you down.
Have you used any of these vpns before?
Please share your experience in the comments below.
