IPVanish is an excellent VPN with lots to offer, but understandably, people are often hesitant to pay for a service before they’ve tried it for themselves. While this VPN might not have a free trial, there is a fully legal workaround that effectively lets you use it free of charge for a month.
This service is a solid all-rounder, boasting high speeds, powerful security features, and the ability to unblock some of the most popular streaming services from abroad. What’s more, IPVanish offers access to over 2,000 servers in 60+ countries, meaning you’ll never struggle to get a speedy, low-latency connection.
Some VPNs offer free trials, allowing you to try them out without paying anything upfront. However, these are becoming far less common, and as we’ll explain later, there’s usually a catch. In contrast, IPVanish comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee on its annual plan, which gives you unrestricted access to the service while allowing you to cancel at any time for a full refund. Note that with our exclusive coupon, you can save 78% on a two-year plan, should you decide to keep using IPVanish after 30 days.
Below, we’ll explain how to sign up for IPVanish, install the app, and cancel before the guarantee expires. This will effectively let you use the service for free, without any restrictions. We’ll also be talking a little more about common issues people run into with money-back guarantees. This way, you’ll know what to look out for if IPVanish isn’t quite what you need.
How to hack IPVanish’s money-back guarantee
The method below will get you full access to IPVanish for almost a month. However, it’s vital you remember to cancel before 30 days have passed, or you won’t be eligible for a refund.
Sign up for an IPVanish account
The first step is to create an IPVanish account, just like you would normally.
- Start by heading over to the IPVanish website and clicking Subscribe Now.
- Next, choose the monthly plan (currently $12.99 USD plus tax). Longer-term plans may come with significant discounts, but you’ll have to pay the full amount upfront. If you decide to stick with IPVanish, you can always switch to a long-term subscription later.
- Enter your email address, desired password, and payment information further down the page. IPVanish accepts all major credit cards as well as PayPal, and you’ll be eligible for the money-back guarantee regardless of how you pay. Note that all subscriptions automatically renew, although you can ask customer support to stop this for you.
- Once you’ve paid, you’ll receive an email asking you to verify your email address. After you do this, you’ll be redirected to an account details page where you can download the various IPVanish apps.
- That’s it: you’re now free to try the service for 30 days. In other words, you can browse, stream, and torrent as much as you like or even connect every device you own; as long as you cancel before the end of your 30th day, you’ll be eligible for a full refund. IPVanish states that all refunds should be received within three days of cancellation.
Cancel for a full refund
If you’ve come to the decision that IPVanish isn’t the right VPN for you, you can quickly and easily get your money back.
- To get started, log into the IPVanish website and navigate to the Subscription tab on the My Account page. At the bottom, click on I wish to cancel my subscription.
- Get through the next couple of pages by clicking Cancel Now and I still want to cancel my account. Eventually, you’ll be asked to provide a reason for canceling, but don’t feel obligated to do so — you can just select Other reason and type whatever you like into the box.
- Hit I still want to cancel my account one last time, and your trial will officially come to an end. Refunds can take up to a week to process but we received ours the same day.
VPN guarantees: common pitfalls and problems
In theory, a money-back guarantee allows you to try a service out and gives the VPN provider a shot at converting you into a loyal customer: everyone wins. However, some unscrupulous providers try to weasel out of their end of the bargain. Below, you’ll find some of the tricks used to deny you a refund:
- Only providing a refund for specific payment methods. Usually, you can pay for a VPN subscription with a credit card or PayPal, but some services even accept cryptocurrencies, cash, or jars of honey (yes, really). Some providers like to claim (in the small print, of course) that it’s not possible to issue a refund if you paid anonymously when in reality, all they would have to do is ask where to send your money.
- Making it difficult to cancel. Sometimes, you’ll find that there’s no cancel button on the account page, or anywhere on the site. This is because shady services are happy to take your money but far less eager to let you stop paying. Usually, you’ll be told that in order to cancel your account, you’ll have to contact support. However, the help desk may only be active for a short time each day, might not respond to your emails, or may simply drag things out until your guarantee period has ended.
- Having lots of hidden rules. VPNs love to be able to say that they have a no-questions-asked money-back guarantee, but unfortunately, some move the goalposts at every opportunity. For instance, it’s not unheard of for bandwidth caps, device connection limits, or time limits to be buried deep in the small print. Because users aren’t aware of these restrictions upfront, they often don’t know that they’ve broken them until it’s too late.
As we’ve shown, IPVanish is more than happy to honor its guarantee. After all, when it comes to VPNs, reputation is everything. If you can’t trust your VPN provider to keep its promises, it’s easy to begin doubting things like its logging policy. With thousands of other quality VPN services waiting in the wings for your custom, it’s just good business sense to treat your users fairly.
IPVanish free trial FAQs
What is the difference between a VPN trial and a money-back guarantee?
The biggest difference between a trial and a guarantee is that trials usually don’t require you to provide payment information or spend money upfront. That said, you’ll often find that trial accounts don’t really provide a good overview of how a VPN actually performs. This is because they tend to limit your speeds and the servers you can access. Conversely, by taking advantage of a money-back guarantee, you get full access to the service and can make a more informed decision about whether to keep it or not.
Do I need a reason to get a refund for my VPN?
Most of the time, you don’t have to provide a reason for wanting to cancel. There may be a mandatory “why are you leaving” question box, but you can type whatever you want in there. If you’re canceling your account over live chat, don’t feel pressured to offer a reason: customer support staff deal with this exact issue regularly and are unlikely to press the issue if you just reiterate your desire to leave.
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