When it comes to choosing VPNs, great care must be taken. As you know, it's only a fine line between data privacy and security breach.
And if you're like most people out there - looking to save up on a few bucks - chances are you must have come across free VPNs like Hola. Unfortunately, as with most free VPNs, Hola has done very meager in keeping user data safe - Or even worse.
Fact is, if there is a score of good free VPNs out there, Hola is not one of them. And we will tell you why shortly before recommending some of the best free Hola alternatives.
At a glance, Hola seems quite like an irresistible offer. I mean it's absolutely free, unrestricted, and has unblocking capabilities. A total steal, until you realize you have risked every information you hold dear and private.
While Hola provider markets itself as a VPN service, we like to disagree that it is a true VPN. The provider claims to be the first peer to peer VPN available. Fair enough, but the service clearly goes against all what a VPN stands for.
Let's expose you to how Hola works: As a peer to peer service, it has no catalogue of servers whatsoever. Users on the platform basically share each other's IP addresses and bandwidths. In fact, the moment you sign up for Hola's free service, you automatically hand your IP address and bandwidth to them for commercial use.
Now is this worth raising an eyebrow? Certainly! The fact that you have zero control over who you share your IP address with is very concerning. But if you still think it's nothing to worry about, we will paint a clearer picture.
Imagine a creepy guy in his basement - doing something illegal - is hooked on your IP address the whole time. Peradventure he is spotted, guess who's door law enforcement comes knocking at when they try to nab him? Definitely not his! All his online activity is traced back to your IP address.
Tip: If you will only be needing a VPN for a short time, our expert tip is that you use NordVPN for free
Sign up for the service, they offer a 30-day grace period, within which you can get your money back. We took a deep dive and made sure to confirm their refund policy. And just as they promised - it was no questions asked and completely hassle-free.
NordVPN is by far one of the best Hola alternatives available in the market. Serving the most advanced security features on top of a watertight privacy - you'll need nothing in addition to keep you secured.
When you sign up for NordVPN, you’ll be able to enjoy all of its premium offerings (until you're ready to take your money back).
NordVPN easily unlocks Netflix and you can enjoy hours of unlimited streaming.
The VPN provider is based in Panama, so it doesn’t sacrifice your privacy on the slaughterhouse of a privacy intrusive jurisdiction.
Overall, if 30days works just fine for your VPN needs, you can end your search here and enjoy unbanded VPN service with NordVPN.
If you don't have deep pockets to accommodate the cost of premium VPN services (which are the best Hola alternatives available), the following free VPNs options below, will avail you decent protection online.
While these VPNs may impose certain restrictions, they are by far the best free hola alternatives.
If "Premium" feels anyhow like running up costs, Windscribe currently gives one of the most fantastic and reliable free offerings. It's security features are the same on all plans and the free version includes malware and ad blocker.
Not only does Windscribe offer fairly decent speeds, free plan subscriber's data bandwidth is set at 10GB per month. But if this still isn't enough, interestingly, you have the opportunity to get more data - and at zero cost. A simple tweet or an invite can award you more data.
More so, when it comes down to privacy, Windscribe is the provider to trust. From the moment you sign up, you are not asked to give away any personal data. While some free Vpns may ask for your email address, Windscribe does not. A sign up would mean just a username and password.
In addition to that, Windscribe does not store any connection logs. However to monitor data spend for free subscribers, they may gather minute data information that are mostly deleted within few minutes.
Having been around over a decade, Hotspot Shield Free VPN is very popular in the market today. Its free plan guarantees users 100% accessibility to advanced security features including DNS & IP leaks protection.
With Hotspot Shield free plan, you also get a daily cap of 500MB data usage. This works out at around 15GB per month - quite fair if you don't spend so much time online.
As a free Hola alternative, Hotspot shield is compatible on a range of devices. So whether its your Windows or MacOS, Android or iOS you can use Hotspot Shield for free.
The popular ProtonMail are the developers of this incredible 100% free VPN service - ProtonVPN. We would like to add that its offerings are by far the best we have come across. Users get to enjoy unlimited data usage with zero ads, no malware and no logs.
ProtonVPN offers strong online protection with its top rate security features. It uses a military-grade encryption on top of an OpenVPN protocol to keep you secured while browsing the internet.
In addition, when it comes to bypassing censorships, ProtonVPN Free plan does a brilliant job. Users can unblock Netflix -and all thanks to unlimited bandwidth - you won't miss an episode.
As a free hola alternative VPN, TunnelBear gives you high quality encryption and absolute privacy - as it logs no traffic.
TunnelBear has very easy to use and beginner friendly apps so you'll have no troubling showing yourself around. TunnelBear is compatible with Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS, to mention but a few. And it's apps/clients are well adapted for each individual device.
On Android, it has an incredible split tunneling feature that gives users and overall pleasant experience with speedy connections.
We were happy to see that its free plan has no annoying popup ads, however, we were a little disappointed that we could not unblock Netflix. You'll need to upgrade to access this feature.
Hide.me is another free Hola alternative that doesn't fund its existence through Ads. Unlike Hola VPN, you are sure that no advert will get in the way of your smooth browsing.
With Hide.me free VPN, you will get access to 3servers and have your data capped at 2GB per month. This may not be so much of a worry, if you are a casual browser seeking occasional privacy/security.
In terms of Privacy, it will interest you to know that this VPN provider keeps no logs at all (not even for internal use as Hola may claim).
When it comes to security, Hide.me VPN's servers are encrypted and run on protocols such as PPTP, OpenVPN, L2TP, IKEv1& IKEv2. However, OpenVPN is only available when you upgrade to a paid plan.
Hide.me is available for Windows, Mac, Android, Linux, and iOS. If you just want to unblock any site instantly without going through the trouble of downloading apps, you can use their free proxy. However, its apps are quite intuitive and should not give a hard time.
You can try it for free. However, its paid plans are not so friendly starting at $4.99/month for basic plan with access to 30 locations and 75 GB data transfer.
No, we do not recommend free VPNs as the safest option out there, if you're really all about your privacy and security. But it is worthy of note that some free VPNs are relatively better than others.
And yes, we get it - Not spending money for a service sounds like a mouth-watering takeaway. But the thing is, while you may not hand in your money, you probably will pay for such services in other ways.
Just like HolaVPN, most free VPNs - while providing you their service at no cost - make money by allowing Adverts on their platform. Users are seen to be regularly greeted with irrelevant sponsored advertisements.
What happens is that these free VPN services sell your logging and browsing history to advertising companies - and from that point forward you become a target.
Now for every advert that you watch, your Free VPN provider is paid a commission based upon the agreement with the advertising companies.
If you don't mind the above threats to exceptional privacy and safety, you can make do with Free VPNs. But if these are a major concern for you; be sure to make an informed decision or otherwise avoid Free VPNs.
Good thing however is, many premium VPN services offer free trials and a good number of them offer money-back guarantees. Some as much as 30days with no questions asked. So if one month sounds like a perfect solution for your VPN need, you can check out our best VPN services for 2022 here. Sign up with them and you're sure of top protection with zero compromise. Most of them are compatible with any device you can think of including routers.
If you ask us, Hola VPN is one VPN to steer clear off. If you want an actual VPN that keeps you safe with zero limitations, you really should consider signing up for a paid service. Most of them are generally inexpensive - You can find NordVPN offers very pocket-friendly plans.
