Hotspot Shield 2020 review: New owners, fantastic speeds, slightly better privacy

P2P allowed: Yes
Business location: United States
Number of servers: 3,200+*
Number of country locations: 82
Cost: $95.88 per year
VPN protocol: Standard TLS1.2 / DTLS1.2 tunnel using OpenSSL 1.1 library
Data encryption: AES-GCM (128 and 256 bit) and ChaCha-poly1305 supported
Data authentication: All supported ciphersuites perform authenticated encryption using an AEAD model.
Handshake: Standard TLS1.2/DTLS1.2

What a difference nearly two years makes. We last looked at Hotspot Shield in early 2018, and now at the end of 2019 there are some serious changes. Hotspot Shield is now owned by a new parent company called Pango, which offers a subscription security bundle that includes Hotspot Shield, 1Password, Identity Guard, and Robo Shield for $13 per month. You can still get a standalone Hotspot Shield subscription, however.

Along with the managerial changes the Hotspot Shield privacy policy has been tweaked, the desktop app had an overhaul, and the overall product has more servers, more country options, and new pricing.

Note: This review is part of our best VPNs roundup. Go there for details about competing products and how we tested them.

Features and services

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When you start Hotspot Shield it shows the now-familiar dark blue background with a giant power button in the center of the window. The app window is smaller now, and the default screen includes two tiles below the power button. One is for choosing your location, and the other displays your cumulative data usage.

The big button used to be the only thing on the default start page. Adding the Hotspot Shield country list is a nice change, allowing you to pick from all 82 countries.

That country count is quite a step from the measly 25 that Hotspot Shield had last time around; however, Pango says some of its country locations use virtual servers, where the physical server isn’t actually in the country it claims to be. Currently HSS uses physical servers in 22 countries: the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and Ukraine.

Hotspot Shield’s total server count is now more than 3,200, way up from 2,000 the last time we looked at it.

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The new Hotspot Shield has a dedicated page showing your currently selected country, a quick-access section, and then a listing of all countries.

On the left side of the app are a number of menu items in a very slim left rail. Click the “hamburger” menu icon to reveal the names of each menu item.

The menu hasn’t changed too much. The primary options users will need on a regular basis include the default Home section, as well as Settings. The Help section also has quick links to real-time chat support, and trouble ticketing for premium users.

The settings area has a few new items. There’s…