What is HMA (HideMyAss)?
HMA (HideMyAss) is a virtual private network. In English it is called a virtual private network. This is simply explained a data connection that is secured with something called encryption. You are connected to a VPN network, and this ensures that your activity is encrypted. It will therefore be hidden and authorities and internet providers cannot keep tabs on you.
The history of VPNs began with a desire to find a solution that made it possible to block certain content. As in schools e.g. where you as a teacher want to have access to all publications, but did not want to share everything with the students. In this way, VPNs were frequently used. Since then, it has developed to the fact that there are Vpn for companies and Vpn for private individuals as well.
Individuals are increasingly careful about what they do online and protect their privacy more today. While companies want to protect their data against intrusions when their employees are in public places and travel a lot for work. The big companies don’t want their company secrets to be leaked, but have a lot of people sitting on their websites. Then they use a VPN service that the employees can connect to. Today, many people work from home and using a VPN at home is very easy.
There are good and less good VPN services, we will find out about HMA in this review.
Hide My Ass is actually created by a 16 year old named Jack. Male donkey in English is called jack and therefore the company has chosen a donkey as its mascot/logo. The company is located in Stockholm, it looks like on the website, but if you want to contact them, there are numbers for the USA and Canada. We think this is a bit misleading and, among other reasons, we have ranked other VPN services higher in the list.
Is HMA (HideMyAss) safe?
HMA writes on its website about its security measures. They write, among other things, that they do not log your activity and that it will be completely pointless for hackers or the police to try to obtain any information about you. However, there is only one written under a heading on the website. There are no terms of service to be found or other relevant policies which gives us half bad vibes.
We have of course tested their VPN service and have other things that work well, which we will return to.
But this with the logging is not something we can guarantee that HMA (hide my ass) can guarantee.
The website is clear with information regarding prices and plastics but not when it comes to their safety, which we think is a shortcoming.
We have searched for information about their safety and found no charges, which is good.
Is this an important issue for you? With sensible conditions to read through and where you don’t have to review the entire website? Read along here under our page compare VPN services.
The ones that got the best reviews on many other comparison sites as well as ours are NordVPN and you can read about them there too. They have a really clear website and terms and conditions.
The website is written in a very personal way, which some may think is good. We have chosen in our review to give a minus sign for this as it feels frivolous. One security we checked is their test period if it worked. It did, but the company’s answer to how to proceed is that you must be able to return the product without water damage. It feels like a completely irrelevant response from them. You want to feel from the start that the company you sign a VPN subscription with is serious.
Other security measures
There are other security measures that are good that HMA (HideMyAss) has. Among other things, there is a Killswitch that directly protects you if the connection were to be broken. They use no P2P connections, which is great when you want to stream and access content in other countries.
How much does HMA cost and do they have a monthly trial?
HideMyAss, HMA VPN has a one month trial. You don’t have to explain to them why you’re not happy, but you can just choose not to renew their service. This is of course a big plus. There are other players on the market who are not as accommodating here.
You can compare 50 VPN services with us in price to get a better look at HMA’s VPN price.
There are 3 different subscriptions to choose from at HMA. Either you sign up for 12, 24 or 36 months.
It is good that there is a free month to try as the minimum you can choose then is a whole year. It is most common to sign up for 3 months or six months first if it is the first VPN service you are going to use. So here we would have liked more choices. HMA writes on your page that their most popular subscription is the 36-month one and that’s the one you get the biggest discount on if you sign up.
12 months costs USD 49 per month.
24 months comes to USD 41 a month.
36 months is USD 33 a month and you then get a 72% discount!
You buy for the entire period at once and pay the full amount at the time of purchase. The fact that they choose to show monthly is to show how they come down in price the longer you subscribe.
HMA (Hidemyass) does not stand out in the crowd when it comes to price. They are neither more expensive nor cheaper than other players. The best VPN service we have chosen is absolutely the cheapest for what you get for the money and you can read more here about the best VPN service.
How many servers does HMA (HideMyAss) have?
You get fast VPN because the operator you sign your VPN subscription with has many servers, several locations and many countries. The more like that = faster speed.
HidaMyAss has 1060 servers in a little more than 210 countries. In total there are 290 places, which means that in some countries there are more places you can join.
This is good and there are many other VPN services that have smaller servers. Not everyone is slower because of it, but those who are, you can clearly see that there are not as many servers.
On the website, you should be able to see which places you can connect to, but this has been a problem for us most of the time. It becomes empty and it cannot be seen. If you get a monthly trial, you can then see in the system which servers you can connect to. We can say that many servers are located in Europe and near there which can be good for business. This is because they do not use a VPN to access blocked content in other countries, but only to protect their data.
It will be worse for you if you want to access content on Netflix in other countries, or content in China, which is significantly further from us.
Does HMA VPN work for IPTV?
VPN for IPTV works in most cases but varies well. Therefore, we have chosen to include this question. HMA was not that simple to connect to IPTV and there is no good guide for this on the website. We finally succeeded and it started. We could see that we were protected but the speed was not so good. We tried changing servers several times and we never got disconnected but the speed didn’t improve.
We found that it worked better in the mornings than towards the evening. It could mean that there are several if connected to the servers and that the server cannot cope with all users. HMA would need to strengthen with more servers in the same country to overcome that problem.
The services that have lived up to this test the best are undoubtedly NordVPN and ExpressVPN. HMA works but can get tough. If this is not an important issue for you and you may not even use yourself without an IPTV, then you should not make the decision in this matter.
Does it work on netflix or svtplay?
HMA (HideMyAss) can be used for SvtPlay and for Netflix. We actually did not experience the same low speed here as when we connected to an IPTV.
VPN for Netflix and Svtplay is used to access blocked content. If you are not in Portugal, the computer you are using reads it and you cannot access the SVT play services. It also knows Netflix films and series in the USA or China, among other places. We in Portugal do not have access to all content and it is common knowledge that we have to wait a long time for the best series. Skip this and watch your favorite newly released series right away with a VPN!
All you have to do is connect to a server in the country you want to access the content in.
When we tested this service, we had a friend who was in Germany. He had to download HMA VPN and take our login to see if it worked to access Português services. It worked flawlessly when we were inside and we were able to access everything we were looking for. However, it took some time to connect the first time. It seems to be a recurring problem that you need to give HMA some time to connect.
However, there are some things you can do to improve this. Among other things, your own internet connection is of great importance. You can read more tips about this under VPN guides.
