Hotspot Shield Review
Community-sourced VPN review based on real Reddit & Twitter discussions
Hotspot Shield comes up a lot as a quick, easy VPN that can help on sketchy public Wi‑Fi and get around basic blocks at school or on restricted networks. People like that there’s a free option and tha...
What the Community Says
Hotspot Shield comes up a lot as a quick, easy VPN that can help on sketchy public Wi‑Fi and get around basic blocks at school or on restricted networks. People like that there’s a free option and that it can feel fast when it’s working well, especially for simple stuff like starting a stream or browsing. It’s also commonly recommended on iPhone and Windows as a “just install it and go” kind of pick.
The biggest complaints are about reliability and trust: some run into connection problems and random issues on the free tier, and a few say it can be too slow for everyday use. On Apple devices, it can clash with Apple’s iCloud Private Relay/Cloud Relay, meaning you may have to turn that off to connect. There’s also chatter about the company ownership and jurisdiction, which makes some people hesitant if privacy is your top priority.
Strengths
- Easy to use
- Good for public Wi‑Fi
- Free tier available
- Often feels fast when it connects well
- Works on iPhone and Windows
Weaknesses
- Free tier can be unreliable
- Can be slow at times
- Connection issues and disconnects
- May conflict with Apple iCloud Private Relay/Cloud Relay
- Privacy and ownership concerns
Summary generated 1 week ago from 19 community mentions
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What People Are Saying
8 reviews"Aight. That's good for regular windows 11. My personal list of stuff: - Opera (why opera? Because it looks good, and it's better than GX, which is honestly just gamer slop) - MSI afterburner (for monitoring temps) - Steam (optional, I game on my laptop) - Lenovo service bridge (DONT SKIP THIS ONE!) - VPN (free or paid. For free I recommend Hotspot shield, or Proton VPN.) That's pretty much all of the non-special stuff I use on my laptop"
"Well - dang it. Hotspot was working great for 5 or 6 days. As of yesterday, 1) I can't get connected to anything unless I disable Apple's Cloud Relay on my iphone and ipad. And on my PC for work, I can't get connected to anything at all. The only IoT device I have is a Chamberlain garage door opener, and the myQ app says it's gone offline too. When I \*do\* disable Apple cloud relay - thus exposing my IP address to some exploits - I get connected but speed test says I'm only getting about 40mbps down. Compared to a few days ago it was consistently 150-200. I have an email to u/Compute..."
" I use a VPN mostly on public Wi-Fi. X-VPN free has been stable enough for that not fast, but no random disconnects. Hotspot Shield free gave me more issues."
"any actually good free vpn for daily use? kinda confused what to try so ive been trying different free vpns like proton free, windscribe free, tunnelbear, hotspot shield free and honestly most of them kinda suck for daily use… either too slow or too limited. right now im testing X-VPN just to see if its any better. they give access to 10+ countries even on free plan which i didn’t really expect, and their privacy policy looks way more transparent than the usual free vpns. speed seems fine for normal browsing but idk if it’s stable long term. anyone here used x-vpn for a while? is it..."
"Best free VPN for everyday privacy use right now? i've been testing a bunch of free VPNs lately (Proton free, Windscribe free, TunnelBear, Hotspot Shield free) and most of them feel too limited for daily use. Either the speeds drop hard on free servers, data caps hit quickly, or you're forced into a single crowded location. I installed X-VPN recently just to compare. What stood out is that the free tier doesn't require creating an account, and you're not locked to just one server location. I could switch between several countries and speeds were fine for basic things like browsing, messaging,..."
"Hotspot already covers this for a lot of users, but built-in VPN is still a nice QoL option. but i mean if ur using xbpirate, maybe then? i dunno"
"From google Key holding companies and their owned VPNs include: * [**Kape Technologies**](https://www.google.com/search?q=Kape+Technologies&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS900US901&oq=who+are+the+holding+companies+that+own+VPN+companies&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigAdIBCjI3NjUyajBqMTWoAgiwAgHxBQWSnPotzANk8QUFkpz6LcwDZA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&mstk=AUtExfAwDY6Oo-IhN1DEG9cLR8UZO0Rx5CK3E4Pb83nk2RyUzgJpqF8VQbRlIML_4XyMw9Q2EW4VqsaptAgwZ5Y0KqYXtMF4PDnniNM2i7jxUu49gB3VBsi7Wn4TYuV5LSeJzMD402Lnm3CzsiaGwgzpzq1gFD1DKDigAFr__GUDYb0u1vY&csui=3&..."
"Mullvad it is. An alternative would be Proton VPN. If you are fine with VPNs that may comply with government requests for data and identification then more paid options such as ExpressVPN, Surfshark, NordVPN etc. can be good. On the lowest side you have Pango Group that owns many VPNs like Betternet, Hotspot Shield, Ultra AV etc. They've been alleged to sell data to advertisers or log data on some occasions. If all you care about is encrypting your data between one point to another to avoid Public Hotspot spies or avoiding ISP tracking these VPNs might do the trick."