HMA VPN Review

HMA VPN Pros and Cons

This is a pretty solid list in our experience, and the pros definitely outweigh the cons here. But this begs the next all-important question — how much is all of this going to cost?

HMA Cost Breakdown

I go into this more in our guide to HMA’s pricing and plans, but as you can see, HMA offers two tiers of service — up to five simultaneous connections and up to 10 simultaneous connections. From there, HMA’s subscriptions are split up by duration. The longer your subscription, the less you’re going to pay per month. The longest duration gives you the best deal.

Pretty standard stuff here, and really reasonable prices for what you’re getting. They aren’t the cheapest service out there, and they aren’t the most expensive, either. For context, HMA sits comfortably on the more affordable end of the “reasonable” spectrum. No month-to-month option, though. That’s a little disappointing.

But overall, we’ve got a great list of features for an affordable price — let’s get into our full experience with HMA!

Purchasing Our HMA VPN Plan

We decided to go with the five connection, seven-day free trial to get our hands around HMA’s functionalities and service. There weren’t any real surprises while we were securing our plan and setting up our account — everything was fairly straightforward.

We started by entering our credit card information, but we want to point something out here: unlike many VPN companies, HMA does not keep records of your credit card information. All the payment stuff is handled by 2Checkout, a payment card industry data security standard-compliant third party that facilitates transactions.2 This is just a fancy-pants way of saying HMA has your security and privacy in mind right off the bat.

Also, something else to keep in mind if you’re trying out HMA using the seven-day free trial period: you need to cancel the account before your time is up. If you don’t, you’ll automatically be charged $83.88 — the full price of a 12-month, five-connection subscription.

Once we’d entered our payment information, we were asked to create and verify our account. Again, no big surprises here. They do keep track of your email address, but account data cannot be paired with activity usage. Good news for folks primarily concerned with privacy.

HMA Create an Account

Once that was done, we clicked over to the installation files page and downloaded the software onto our computer. Again — no big hoops to jump through here. It was all smooth sailing.

HMA Installation Files

The installation process only took a minute or two, and once it was done, we were prompted to enter our account information. This was simple; it was just our email address and the password we just created.

And when we were done with that, we were off to the races! Let’s take a look now at how HMA functions on a day-to-day basis.

Day-to-Day Experience With HMA VPN

The first thing we noticed when we fired up HMA for the first time was that we were given a quick tutorial. We always love to see this, and HMA’s introductory walk-through is a great way to help folks who may have never used a VPN in their lives get their feet wet. It’s not super in-depth, but it does show you how to connect and where all the critical features are. Bonus points for HMA here.

HMA Tutorial

So out of the box, HMA VPN is configured to connect you to the fastest server available based on your location — they call this Lightning Connect. We flipped the switch and we were connected to the internet using the VPN, masking our IP address, keeping us safe and protected.

But there are a few other features available that we found pretty handy in our day-to-day operations. For one, you can shuffle the IP address you’re connecting through if you’re having trouble getting things to load. This is helpful since you get to avoid disconnecting from the VPN and manually selecting another server.

HMA “On” Switch

We also really loved how their server list was organized. It’s broken down by continent, and further refined by country. This is really helpful if you’re trying to access something unique to a specific country.

HMA Server List

You can also “favorite” servers for faster connection. See the little heart in the image above? Clicking that automatically moves that server to your favorite list. Finally, at the bottom of the list, we found servers optimized for streaming and P2P file sharing — this is really helpful functionality for folks who are using a VPN for these specific purposes.

HMA Servers for P2P file sharing

We were also really happy to find that our performance hardly suffered while using the HMA VPN. In an anecdotal sense, we noticed no significant slowdowns in our day-to-day browsing and streaming, and when we tested our standard and VPN connections side by side, the differences weren’t super noticeable. Here’s a peek at what we found …

Speed Test without HMA VPN

Speed Test with HMA VPN

Something to note though: sometimes when we used the “Lightning Connect” feature, we were actually able to achieve faster speeds by manually selecting a server in closer proximity to us. Keep in mind, however, these were all point-in-time tests performed on free-to-use online tools. It’s not a super exact science. That said — overall — we were really happy with HMA’s day-to-day performance.

To really get a sense of what it’s like using HMA VPN, check out this short video we made…

If you want to really be sure you’re on the fastest connection, you can use HMA’s speed test function. This allows you to compare servers based on your physical proximity to them to see which would have the best connection speeds. If you’re looking to make sure your performance is really dialed in, this is how you can do exactly that.

HMA Speed Test Function

One final thought on the day-to-day of HMA — we loved the user-friendly UI. Similar to what I saw when we reviewed Cyberghost, it’s very easy to navigate. Neither service assumes you’ve got a computer science Ph.D., and they don’t take themselves too seriously, either. For example: when you connect, their ever-present donkey mascot named Jack (get it?) puts on a new disguise. We think our favorite was man-bunned and bearded hipster Jack, but that’s just us.

You just know this guy wants to talk to you about craft beer.

So that’s about all there is to say on HMA’s day-to-day functionality. So let’s dig a little deeper and see what we can do with some of these advanced functions.

HMA VPN Advanced Functionality

So the first place you’re going to want to look if you’re wanting to poke around a little further is by clicking the “more” tab in the dashboard. This gives you access to some of the cooler features and tools. You’re going to find that speed test functionality we mentioned earlier, and you’re also going to find a really important item we always recommend to anyone looking for a VPN — the kill switch.

HMA Kill Switch

Your kill switch is going to automatically terminate your internet connection if your VPN service is interrupted for whatever reason. This is pretty important if you’re planning on torrenting, or if you want to make sure your IP address is never inadvertently exposed for any reason. Super helpful privacy tool here, and we recommend always keeping it on.

If you want to go deeper still, we’re with ya. Click on the settings tab at the top to pull up even more knobs and buttons to fiddle with. Under the “general” category you can make sure HMA will open and engage upon startup, and you can also toggle notifications on and off.

Under privacy, we get a little more complicated. Here you can turn on the IP shuffle function, which will randomize your address periodically to make it harder to pin down your location. You can set your shuffle to occur from every half-hour to every day, but make sure the kill switch is turned on, or you run the risk of becoming exposed while you’re switching over!

HMA IP Shuffle

Under connection, you can add certain networks to your white list, and under help and support you can get some — you know — help and support. You also have account preferences available to review as well as the privacy policy and terms of service.

And that’s about it! Wait … that’s about it?

We were a little surprised that we couldn’t change which protocols we were using, and we didn’t find any location-based protections. Some services really let you dig deep here. For example, when we reviewed NordVPN, there were quite a few bells and whistles like Dedicated IP addresses and server obfuscation that can help prevent location-based IP protocol detection. That said – you kind of get what you pay for in this industry. Check out my guide to NordVPN’s pricing and features to see what we mean.

All that’s really left to point out with HMA is their split tunneling functionality, which allows some traffic to route through the VPN while other traffic connects traditionally. However, this function is only supported on Android.

So before we get to the final verdict on HMA, we did want to point out one last thing — the VPN works exceptionally well on mobile devices.

HMA VPN Around Town

The HMA mobile app is almost a one-to-one copy of the desktop version. That means the benefits of the simple, user-friendly UI translate well, but you’re also not going to have a whole lot of access to the VPN’s inner workings. Not a super big deal for most people sitting around at the coffee shop, but if you want levers to pull and buttons to push, you might be left wanting.

HMA Mobile App

We do really like the interface, though, and the access to the same number of servers on your phone as you have on your desktop is pretty impressive. It’s pretty amazing to think that our silly Facebook comments are bouncing off satellites and beaming through servers halfway around the world before making our friends laugh. Ah, the future.

HMA Mobile Server Locations List

So that’s that! That’s pretty much all there is to say about HMA. So what’s our conclusion here?

HMA VPN — the Final Word

HMA VPN is a great entry-level VPN. It’s got a pretty solid features list and the price is reasonable. Its day-to-day functionality is pretty bullet- (and idiot-) proof, and it’s hard to criticize their performance. We also love that they prioritize streaming and P2P file sharing. For most folks, you’re going to do just fine with HMA.

That said, if you’re someone who travels often to places with rigorous internet censorship, you might look elsewhere. HMA doesn’t offer the location-specific protections that we found when we analyzed Surfshark, which can mask VPN protocol traffic from oppressive governments. It also doesn’t have the customizability we found when we reviewed IPVanish, which really let us tinker around under the hood. If you’re interested, you can check out our guide to IPVanish’s pricing and plans, or you can review our breakdown of Surfshark’s packages.

At the end of the day, HMA is a smart option for everyday folks looking to start working with a VPN; however, if you’re looking for super advanced functionality or specific features, it might not be right for you. With that in mind, though, we absolutely recommend HMA VPN as a great all-around service and one that makes using a VPN a little more fun.

HMA VPN FAQs