PROS
- Free subscription option
- Unique IP swapping servers
- Multi-hop connections
CONS
- Quirky behavior in testing
- No third-party audits of infrastructure or policies
- Awkward interface
- Pushy email subscription nags
ATLAS VPN SPECS
| 500+ Servers | Yes |
| Blocks Ads | Yes |
| Can Manually Select Server In Free Version | Yes |
| Free Connection Speeds Limited | No |
| Free Version | Yes |
| Free Version Server Limit | Amsterdam, Los Angeles, New York City |
| Free Version Data Limit | 5GB Per Month |
| Free Version Simultaneous Connection Limit | Unlimited |
| No Ads In Free Version? | Yes |
| Server Locations | 38 Countries |
| Simultaneous VPN Connections | Unlimited |
How Much Does Atlas VPN Cost?
Atlas VPN costs $10.99 each month, over a dollar more than the $9.93 average amongst services we’ve checked. Numerous excellent VPNs offer prices far below the average: Editors’ Choice winner Mullvad VPN, for example, costs just 5 euros per month ($5.57 since this writing).
Nearly all VPNs use high discounts if you register for long-term subscriptions. Atlas VPN’s cost drops to $27.40 for the very first year of an annual membership and $71.49 for three years. The yearly and three-year memberships instantly renew at $47.83 each year as soon as the initial term ends. Additional discount rates with a price increase are typical in the antivirus world and are becoming more common among VPNs. We find the practice confusing and think most customers would not expect the price walking. Ivacy VPN and Kaspersky Secure Connection have the most inexpensive yearly plans amongst VPNs we’ve reviewed, at simply $29.99 annually.
While you will save cash on a long-lasting membership, we advise against starting with one. Rather, register for the quickest membership to evaluate how the VPN performs in your internet environment. Paying additional upfront is much better than being stuck to a frustrating item for a year or more.
Atlas VPN is among the few VPNs using a full-fledged totally free subscription. Free subscribers have unlimited bandwidth and access to 3 VPN server places– Amsterdam, Los Angeles, and New York– and can have two simultaneous connections.
Atlas VPN just recently adjusted the information cap placed on its free consumers. The business now restricts all complimentary clients to 5GB of month-to-month data. Doing so streamlines Atlas VPN’s totally free offering, which has various data caps depending on the platform, however it likewise dramatically minimizes the amount of data totally free users can take in. It’s still much more data than Editors’ Choice winner TunnelBear VPN, which caps users at a simple 500MB each month, but less than Hotspot Shield VPN, which caps users at 5GB per day. Editors’ Choice winner Proton VPN is our choice for free VPNs because it puts no information limitation on its totally free customers and uses budget-friendly pricing tiers.
You can purchase an Atlas VPN subscription with a major credit card, Google Pay, or PayPal. It does not presently support money or cryptocurrency purchases. Editors’ Choice winners IVPN and Mullvad VPN accept anonymous cash payments sent out to their respective HQs and use privacy-protecting, semi-anonymous account systems.
What Do You Get for Your Money With Atlas VPN?
The main function of a VPN is to produce an encrypted connection between your device and a server run by the VPN business. All your internet traffic goes through this connection to the server and returns to the internet as usual. Doing so ensures your ISP can’t keep track of or make money from your online activities. It also makes it harder for advertisers and snoops to track your movements across the web.
Most VPNs limit the variety of devices that can connect to the VPN service simultaneously. Normally, the limit is 5 gadgets per account. That’s altering, nevertheless. Atlas VPN is among a new class of VPN services that position no limitations on the number of synchronised connections. Solutions that have gone this route consist of Avira Phantom VPN, IPVanish VPN, Editors’ Choice winner Surfshark VPN, and Windscribe VPN.
Split tunneling is a convenience function consisted of by most of the best VPNs. When allowed, it routes the traffic of specific apps outside the VPN’s encrypted connection. It’s convenient for high-bandwidth but low-security activities, such as video streaming and gaming. Atlas VPN does include this function, but just in its Android app.
The best VPN services let users boost the privacy of their connections with multi-hop connections. This function paths your VPN traffic through a second VPN server, making tracking your traffic harder, even if one of the VPN servers is jeopardized. Atlas VPN does consist of multi-hop connections, but we discovered the execution lackluster (as you will see).
Other services provide access to the totally free Tor anonymization network via VPN for a lot more anonymization. Tor is complimentary to use but significantly cuts into internet speeds — specifically when a VPN is involved. Editors’ Choice winners NordVPN and ProtonVPN are two of the few VPN business offering both features. Atlas VPN is not.
Many VPNs claim to obstruct advertisements and trackers, however Atlas VPN is one of the few services that attempts to show its work. Like Norton Secure VPN, Atlas VPN keeps a tally of its blocked advertisements and trackers.
A subset of Atlas VPN’s servers is called SafeSwap servers. Atlas VPN tells us these have a swimming pool of IP addresses and cycle through them regularly. The idea is that regularly changing your IP address makes it more difficult to track you online. The only similar alternative we have seen is the IP Shuffle option in HMA VPN.
Atlas VPN also consists of a Data Breach Monitor. Enter an email address, and Atlas VPN will notify you if that address appears in a collection of breached qualifications. It’s similar to the popular HaveIBeenPwned site. Free users can track a single address; paying customers can track any variety of addresses. A representative for Atlas VPN informed us it doesn’t send the e-mails used for information breach tracking via plaintext. The business only uses these addresses for data breach monitoring, not marketing or sales activity.
VPNs are handy personal privacy tools however do not secure versus every hazard. We extremely recommend using standalone anti-viruses software to protect your maker, making it possible for multi-factor authentication any place it’s offered, and using a password supervisor to develop unique and complicated passwords for each site and service you use.
What VPN Protocols Does Atlas VPN Support?
There are several methods to develop a VPN connection. We’ve long chosen OpenVPN, an open-source choice that gets chosen over for potential vulnerabilities. Open-source procedure WireGuard utilizes more recent innovation, and we expect it to quickly end up being the standard amongst VPN business.
Atlas VPN supports WireGuard and the outstanding IKEv2 protocol on all its apps. It does not support OpenVPN.
Atlas VPN Servers and Server Locations
We choose VPN services that provide various and well-distributed VPN servers. Having a close-by server guarantees great service, and having lots of servers places offers you more alternatives for spoofing your location. Atlas VPN uses servers in 38 nations, well listed below the average of 50 among VPNs we’ve reviewed. More frustrating is that Atlas VPN’s servers are heavily concentrated in North America and Europe, without any existence throughout Africa. To the business’s credit, it has expanded its server existence to consist of South America. ExpressVPN has servers in 94 nations, with a strong global existence.
Atlas VPN reports having 750 servers. That’s a tenth the size of CyberGhost‘s server fleet, but the number of servers does not necessarily correlate to much better service. Atlas VPN says it leases its servers instead of owning them however points out that it completely handles them– a common plan. To secure their servers, business consisting of ExpressVPN and NordVPN have actually welcomed RAM-only servers, which do not store info to disk and are wiped whenever they are powered off. Atlas VPN states it relies on totally encrypted disks to protect its servers.
Lots of VPN services use virtual areas, which are servers configured to appear somewhere besides where they are physically situated. This is not necessarily bad; some companies utilize virtual servers to provide local protection to hazardous areas. Such servers should be plainly marked, but it’s a nonissue for Atlas VPN as it does not utilize any virtual places. All servers are located exactly where they say they are.
Comparable to virtual areas are virtual servers, where a single hardware server plays host to several software-defined servers. This can include virtual servers from many companies on a single physical server. Atlas VPN informs us it uses only dedicated hardware servers, nevertheless.
Your Privacy With Atlas VPN
VPNs remain in a fortunate position and might observe your traffic and offer your information if they wanted. We talk to companies and read their privacy policies to discover what steps VPN provides require protecting your privacy. The Atlas VPN privacy policy was recently upgraded to include short summaries of each section. We appreciate this effort towards openness.
The business told us it does not log “any user activity or any other information.” Any information needed for producing a VPN connection is wiped when consumers disconnect. The company’s privacy policy likewise states it specifically does not collect IP addresses or user activity. That’s as it should be. The company confirmed to us that it does not offer user information which its only source of earnings is consumer memberships.
Atlas VPN collects details on app use and customer gadgets, such as device model and OS version. We ‘d like to see Atlas VPN make this optional, as other business have actually done. The business also says it utilizes advertisement identifiers. Ad identifiers are IDs appointed by app shops to mobile devices. You can reset your ad ID yourself. Taken together, this is not a stunning amount of info, however some VPNs — such as Mullvad VPN — gather even less info.
The business notes that while it does adhere to legal requests for info, “we do not have any data to show law enforcement and federal government firms who make requests for info about what you were doing through a VPN connection.” The business preserves a live warrant canary, which doubles as a type of transparency report by showing the variety of national security letters, gag orders, and warrants it has gotten. All figures are presently absolutely not. We choose more in-depth reports that reveal disclosures with time, but this is an excellent start.
The location of a company can matter because, depending upon local laws, there may be obligations to save customer information. Atlas VPN operates under the legal jurisdiction of the US, which does not have data retention laws. The business described to us that it has a global, dispersed labor force with its physical offices found in Lithuania. The business described to us that Atlas VPN is a trademark of Peakstar Technologies Inc. and is now owned by Nord Security Group, the owners of NordVPN.
On February 2, 2022, NordVPN and Surfshark VPN announced that the two business were combining. The two brand names would stay different items with their own facilities. Surfshark VPN and NordVPN will both be owned by a brand-new holding business called Cyberspace, which is registered in the Netherlands. A NordVPN representative described that because Atlas VPN was obtained by NordVPN straight, it would remain a part of Nord VPN’s business structure.
The trend amongst the very best VPNs is commissioning third-party audits of their facilities and policies to develop their personal privacy authentic. To date, Atlas VPN has just commissioned an audit of its iOS app from VerSprite and an audit of its Windows app from MDSec. Audits are imperfect tools, however we value the effort at transparency from VPN companies. NordVPN has actually gone through numerous audits for many years, and TunnelBear VPN continues to make good on its pledge to launch annual third-party audits. Atlas VPN need to do the very same. We hope that coming under Nord’s umbrella means it will do so in the near future.
Hands On With Atlas VPN for Windows
We installed the Atlas VPN customer on an Intel NUC Kit NUC8i7BEH (Bean Canyon) desktop with the most recent variation of Windows 10. In addition to Windows, Atlas VPN supplies Android, iOS, and macOS customer apps. The business also recently revealed a command-line customer application for Linux.
While setup on Windows went smoothly, finding out how to visit to the service was confusing. Neither the Atlas VPN app nor the site prompts you to get in or perhaps create a password. Instead, you get in the email address you used when buying the service and receive an email with a “magic link” that immediately logs you in.
We’re no strangers to uncommon login plans. One of the very best features of both IVPN and Mullvad VPN is that they use a privacy-respecting account system that likewise does not require a password. Atlas VPN’s technique seems great, though the company needs to do a much better job explaining how it works.
What troubles us is that Atlas VPN uses its login system as a constant nag to register for its marketing emails. Logging in to the Atlas VPN website, you need to uncheck a pre-checked box to avoid registering for “exclusive Atlas VPN offers.” In the Windows app, you have to do the exact same whenever you visit. We’re surprised and disappointed at this aggressive signup tactic.
When we logged in, we discovered the Atlas VPN to be easy to use and comprehend. Unlike the majority of VPNs, Atlas VPN is developed around a list of readily available servers. These are broken down by area, and clicking some nations exposes extra server areas for the nation. This appears to offer customers access to specific VPN servers, however we ‘d like to see more details about usage and ping time. Atlas VPN should, for instance, present a calling system that separates between the three servers identified New York. The list requires to be more searchable, and there’s no consisted of map to fudge an area if you can’t find what you’re looking for. Buttons at the top let you see All Servers, Streaming Servers, and Privacy Pro, which includes SafeSwap and multi-hop options.
While testing Atlas VPN on Windows, we observed the app received some enhanced features and visual tweaks, sporting brighter colors and an improved interface. We still wish the text were a little bigger and the window resizable, however it’s an improvement that bodes well for the future.
An enormous Connect button occupies a complete third of the app. We appreciate how simple Atlas VPN makes getting online. When you toggle the connection, the button slides over, pressing a trio of spiky baddies offscreen and exposing the brave, round Atlas VPN mascot. We like these flourishes, which provide Atlas VPN a little more character than numerous other services. However, we still prefer the colors and friendly bears in Editors’ Choice winner TunnelBear VPN.
Throughout testing, we observed an odd peculiarity with Atlas VPN. Despite how many times we selected a various server, the app automatically routed us to Ireland after we restarted it. We experienced a poor connection through the Dublin-based server, and we wonder if other users would have presumed the service just did not work. Atlas VPN was updated in the middle of our review process, and the problem stayed. Performance was significantly much better when using a close-by US-based server.
The business has informed us that auto-connect and quick-connect functionality has been enhanced in all the Atlas VPN apps. We confirmed in macOS that the app now defaults to local servers. We look forward to testing this feature in Windows soon.
We’re impressed by Atlas VPN’s distinct SafeSwap servers, which immediately turn your IP address for extra privacy. We verified our IP changed numerous times while we were linked to the United States SafeSwap server.
Atlas VPN takes a somewhat different method to multi-hop servers. Many services let you select an exit point for your data or a predetermined course with an entry and exit point listed. Atlas VPN has just two buttons, one labeled Europe and the other North America. We like that multi-hop is consisted of but discover this technique unclear. IVPN, especially, lets you blend and match its server locations to build your own multi-hop connection.
If you have actually switched on the Atlas VPN Kill Switch, a warning message appears whenever you by hand detach the VPN, notifying you the Kill Switch will also be deactivated. We appreciate the openness about the app’s functionality. We weren’t able to induce an error to test the Kill Switch.
Two of Atlas VPN’s more uncommon functions are discovered in the Assistant area of the app. Here, you can enroll emails to be monitored for information breaches and see how many trackers Atlas VPN has prevented. We are pleased to see that the Tracker Blocker counter appeared to work properly and note that the sites we visited did have less advertisements– although we do not formally evaluate the efficacy of VPN tracker stopping.
Streaming services block access from VPNs to enforce local distribution offers. In our screening (once we persuaded Atlas VPN not to use an Irish server), we might stream material from Netflix while connected to a US-based server. Note that VPNs and streaming services remain in an active arms race, and a VPN that works one day may be obstructed the next and vice versa.
To ensure that a VPN is concealing our IP address and not leaking our DNS details, we run a prolonged test using the DNSLeakTest.com tool. With Atlas VPN, the test showed that our true IP address was concealed and our DNS details was not leaked. We tested only one server; other servers might not be properly configured.
Atlas VPN Speed and Performance
Using a VPN normally minimizes your upload and download speeds and increases latency. To get a sense of that impact, we utilize the Ookla Speedtest tool. We run it ten times with the VPN running and 10 times without. We then take the mean of both sets and discover a percent change between the two. This is a helpful way to compare VPN efficiency, however it can not be taken as an extensive assessment of a VPN’s efficiency. Your mileage might differ
Decent Privacy Protection, Unlimited Licenses
Atlas VPN is, in every regard, fine. It has most of the functions we want to see in a VPN, however, the execution requires work. It has a reasonably well-designed app but requires giving users more info and control. It utilizes an awesome password-less login system but is irritatingly pushy about email signup. We like Atlas VPN’s free tier and its endless synchronised connections. Free subscribers are limited to just three servers, and the company has likewise decreased its complimentary data cap. For a service with a complimentary tier with no information cap, you can’t do better than our overall preferred, Editors’ Choice winner Proton VPN.
PROS
- Free subscription option
- Unique IP swapping servers
- Multi-hop connections
CONS
- Quirky behavior in testing
- No third-party audits of infrastructure or policies
- Awkward interface
- Pushy email subscription nags
