Hotspot Shield Prices: Fair or Not?

When we tested and reviewed Hotspot Shield, we gave it a more-than-respectable 8.9 points out of 10. We even named it one of the best VPNs of 2024, mainly because of its fast speed and its well-built proprietary VPN protocol called Catapult Hydra. There’s a lot to love about Hotspot Shield, which is why we’re going to take our time here to discuss if it’s a good VPN to buy. And if not, maybe the free version of Hotspot Shield is a good alternative? We’ll break it all down below, so keep on reading.

Features

Free Trial

Not all VPNs have a free trial. Most of the time, if you want to try out a VPN for free, you’d need to buy a subscription first and then cancel within the money-back guarantee period to qualify for a refund. That’s how we tested one of the top VPNs – NordVPN – for free (technically!). We paid for a NordVPN subscription, cancelled within 30 days, and got a refund.

Hotspot Shield offers the same option, and a generous one. It gives users up to 45 days to change their minds. But on top of that, Hotspot Shield also offers a free VPN that you can use without shelling out any amount. The Hotspot Shield free VPN is ad-supported and has limits, but it’s one of the best free VPNs we’ve tested.

We got to use the free VPN on only one device, had limited access to streaming, and were able to use only four server locations (2 USA locations, Singapore, and London) with the free VPN. But the speed was great! It even rivaled the premium Hotspot Shield VPN, despite the company’s claim that the premium version is faster. That probably has only something to do with the limited servers. Since free users all have to share a limited pool of servers in those four locations, traffic is more likely to congest than the premium version with over a hundred locations.

The biggest catch with the free Hotspot Shield VPN was the ad-supported structure. We had to watch an ad (between 15 and 30 seconds) to access 15 minutes of VPN usage. That meant no data usage limits, but also, watching ads can be insufferable. The good news is you can stack up your ad views to earn hours and hours of access. We once earned four hours of access by spending 10 minutes of our lunch break watching ads.

Subscription Options

Since we wanted the full Hotspot Shield experience and not just a taste of the free plan, we invested in the Premium individual plan, which covered five devices under one account. However, if we wanted more coverage, we could’ve opted for the family plan, which would have covered 25 devices across five accounts.

Refund and Cancellation Policy

Say you bit the bullet and paid for Hotspot Shield, but later wanted to cancel. We’ve all had buyer’s remorse before, and Hotspot Shield understands that implicitly. That’s why it gave us 45 days from our purchase date to get a full refund on Hotspot Shield. As if the free version wasn’t enough of a test run!

For comparison, 45 days is one of the more generous money-back options in the market. Most VPNs like NordVPN and Surfshark offer only 30 days. Besides Hotspot Shield, the only top-rated VPN with a 45-day money-back guarantee we’ve tested was CyberGhost. Check out our CyberGhost review for more.

Favorite Features

Let’s get back to the topic at hand, Hotspot Shield, and whether or not it’s worth its pricing. We think it is for the following reasons:

• Worldwide availability: With servers in more than 80 countries around the world, we connected to Hotspot Shield at home as well as while traveling.
• Won’t log web activity: Although we took issues with some of the data collected in Hotspot Shield’s privacy policy, ultimately, we were most grateful that it didn’t keep track of the websites we visited.
• Torrenting: Downloading non-copyrighted material was easy with Hotspot Shield encrypting our activity.
• Netflix: We got bored with everything on Netflix, so we connected to Hotspot Shield and changed our Netflix region, seeing the different content they had in store.
• Dynamic IP addresses: Every time we connected to Hotspot Shield, we got a new IP address, which made tracing our identity online about as difficult as finding a needle in a very large haystack.
• Free option: Sure, it only worked on one device, but we loved that Hotspot Shield’s free plan didn’t have a time limit.
• Smart VPN: Smart VPN, otherwise known as split tunneling, allowed us to route some internet traffic through Hotspot Shield, and others through the public internet, a handy feature for multi-taskers.
• Money-back guarantee: Even if we put down a card, Hotspot Shield gave us 45 days, ample time to cancel our subscription and receive a full refund.
• User-friendly Hotspot Shield app for VPN services: When we were waiting in line at CVS and simply couldn’t take the boredom, we protected ourselves online with Hotspot Shield’s easy-to-use iOS and Android apps, currently rated at 4.5 and 4.1 on the Apple and Google Play stores, respectively.

Background Information

Hotspot Shield is part of the ever-expanding portfolio of a company called Aura, which purchased Hotspot Shield’s parent company, Pango, in July 2020.1 Aura owns a number of digital security services, like VPNs, antivirus software, and identity theft protection services like Aura identity theft protection. Since being acquired by Aura, Hotspot Shield’s offering has expanded tremendously, adding new features like anti-phishing.

The downside? Aura’s headquarters is in the United States, as is Hotspot Shield itself in sunny California. While we love California for its beaches and cities, this location means that the U.S government could force Hotspot Shield to hand over customer data due to the surveillance alliance Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, and 14 Eyes, of which the U.S is a member.

That’s not ideal under any circumstances, but it’s especially not ideal with Hotspot Shield, as its privacy policy is more than barebones. Essentially, as we said before, Hotspot Shield didn’t log our web activity, but it did log information such as our:

• Email addresses
• IP addresses
• Usernames
• Mobile IDs
• Device information
• Duration of VPN sessions
• Amount of bandwidth we used

Most VPNs keep our IP addresses hidden even from themselves, so the fact that Hotspot Shield takes notes is an issue for those concerned with privacy. Hopefully, Aura will rethink this privacy policy, as it’s less than ideal for anyone handling sensitive information, like activists, journalists, and medical professionals. So while we’re happy that we can bundle Hotspot Shield with a bunch of other great digital security services, its privacy policy makes it a poor choice for the privacy-weary.

Compatible Operating Systems, Devices and Browsers

We tested out Hotspot Shield on Windows and Mac laptops primarily, which you can read about in our Hotspot Shield review, but here’s a full list of the devices and browsers it works on:

Payment Methods

If you choose to go with a Premium subscription, there are a good amount of different payment options for Hotspot Shield, including the following:

• Visa
• Mastercard
• American Express
• JCB
• Discover
• PayPal
• Diner’s Club International

Recap

Hotspot Shield is a company in flux, and we consider that a good thing. It’s generous with a free option, a 45-day money-back guarantee, and extra services that Hotspot Shield bundles with Premium subscriptions. If you’re happy with its service, there’s no reason not to buy the Premium individual plan bundle and save yourself some money, while upping your digital security along the way. And if you want to provide safer and more private browsing for the entire family, the $19.99 a month Premium Family plan is a practical choice.