Claiming to be the world’s best in VPN technology, ExpressVPN comes absolutely loaded with basic and advanced features. This privacy-focused company dedicated anonymizing life for their users and has created a user-friendly VPN that works on nearly every device and operating system. Also impressive, ExpressVPN boasts some of the largest market share, by trend review, and users can look forward to a consistent product that will continue to meet their needs and expand over time.
Pros&Cons
Pros&Cons | Check Positive and Negative Sides
Features Table
Features Table Summary
| Headquarter | Road Town, Tortola, British Virgin Islands |
| No-log policy |  |
| Kill switch | |
| Included # devices with 1 license | 8 |
| Server locations | 105 countries |
| Number of servers | 3000 |
| Torrents support | |
| Netflix support | |
| Split tunneling | |
| Multi-hop (VPN chaining) |  |
| Encryption type | AES-256 |
| Customer support | 24/7 chat support, email |
| Trial version | |
| Money-back guarantee | 30 days |
| Website | www.expressvpn.com |
Personal Opinion
The Reasons “For” And “Against” Choosing ExpressVPN
ExpressVPN boasts some of the best services, and this is verifiable. With consistently high (most often the highest) ratings, ExpressVPN is high on the list of services I would personally recommend. Let’s look at some of the reasons I would not recommend ExpressVPN before covering their features and the reasons I would recommend them. ExpressVPN is a great VPN when it comes to streaming and torrenting and I found that nearly all streaming services worked flawlessly but some services, like Amazon prime, work off your billing zip code and won’t let you login to another billing zip code. If you wanted to view Amazon prime from the UK, that is not going to happen unless you have an address in the UK.
Second, the drama behind a company with the Kape Technologies conglomerate may make it difficult for some users to trust ExpressVPN. Kape Technologies was formerly known as Crossrider, coming with a host of negative reputation issues. Even with this known, I wouldn’t dismiss Kape Technologies outright. They’ve shown through their other companies similarly they can be trusted now. It is not all bad in the ExpressVPN world as they boast their created TrustedServer technology. TrustedServer technology is where the operating system and apps never write to hard drives, meaning all data is wiped every time it is powered off and back on (with volatile memory). Another bonus of this volatile memory technology is that the servers are ALWAYS up-to-date, resulting in minimized risk for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
Some more positives are that ExpressVPN is now open-source, which creates influence on the VPN industry as developers can actually use ExpressVPN as a secure benchmark. ExpressVPN is ioXT certified, a co-founder and chair for the VPN Trust Initiative (VTI), and have external audits to verify their features and policies.
Features Overview
In-Depth Features Overview
Location and no-log policy
The headquarters of ExpressVPN is Road Town, Tortola, British Virgin Islands.
Their official mailing address is: Not found online
ExpressVPN maintains a service with no public leadership, a move that can be disputed in some forums as a positive and in others a negative, based on how you would like a business of this nature to maintain transparency. My take is that I want someone to be held responsible for any negative actions and thereby would advocate for a public leadership to be on display. My belief is public leadership promotes accountability.
ExpressVPN has a no-log policy which they state is solved by their TrustedServer technology, claimed as “Solved by running on RAM only”
“With TrustedServer, ExpressVPN prevents the operating system and apps from ever writing to the hard drive. Instead, the server is run entirely on volatile memory, or RAM. Since RAM requires power to store data, all information on a server is wiped every time it is powered off and on again—stopping both data and potential intruders from persisting on the machine.”
ExpressVPN
Unlimited bandwidth
As someone with a bandwidth cap on my monthly service, I find this feature especially cool. ExpressVPN removes caps set by my ISP with a 256-bit encrypted SSL-secured tunnel between my device and the internet. The ISP can’t see what services I’m using, so they can’t limit my speeds or bandwidth. You also reap the rewards of this feature regarding speed, which is covered below.
Split-tunneling
This feature enables users with the ability to distinguish what application or device you want to use your ISP and what you want encrypted with ExpressVPN. What I particularly like about ExpressVPN is that you can setup ExpressVPN for your router, enabling you with the ability to establish up to five groups. They advertise using grouping to distinguish between geolocating yourself 1) home, 2) disconnected from VPN, 3) overseas content location, and 4) a second overseas content location. ExpressVPN even allows app specific split-tunneling. It brings you the speed and performance of an unencrypted link alongside the data security when and where needed.
Automatic kill-switch
This feature certainly works as advertised. With my speedtest.net application up, my traffic will visibly stop. As soon as my VPN connection stops when trying to switch cities, my speedtest.net application will display the message,
ExpressVPN calls it their “Network Lock.” The Network Lock gets activated:
- You switch between Wi-Fi networks or your signal flickers
- You close your laptop or put your computer to sleep
- You toggle your internet connection on or off
- Your ISP has a momentary outage
VPN Router
ExpressVPN allows you to use this automatic kill-switch with not just your app, but your router. You can setup split-tunneling to exclude certain devices from the VPN, and those devices will not automatically turn on the kill-switch. You can also look at it as if you want to allow unlimited connections by allowing the router to act as 1 of the 5 devices simultaneously on a single subscription. The router can also serve as a complete network lock. This Network Lock kill-switch ensures that your entire networked is temporarily walled.
VPN Encryption
ExpressVPN is the same as everyone else here, which also makes them one of the standards by which to emulate. ExpressVPN uses the 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard, more often easily said aloud as AES256. I say standard because it is adopted by the United States’ government alongside nearly all security experts. Even more, ExpressVPN offers the Lightway protocol, which offers a dynamic, more reliable, smaller codebase, with their words being, “The new protocol is insanely quick yet also very stable.” Therefore, the standard encryption is maintained with less connection drops across a moving device.
Servers’ Speed Summary
ExpressVPN Server Speed Tests Summary
| Location | Distance (km) | Download (Mbps) | Upload (Mbps) | Ping (ms) |
| USA San Diego (No VPN Connected) | 0 | 255 | 36 | 7 |
| USA Los Angeles – 1 | 193 | 175 | 34 | 13 |
| USA New York | 2761 | 155 | 34 | 75 |
| UK London | 8822 | 144 | 36 | 144 |
| Ukraine Kyiv | 10236 | 56 | 14 | 183 |
| Hong Kong – 1 | 11820 | 148 | 34 | 174 |
| Austrailia Sydney | 12090 | 118 | 35 | 172 |
Speed & Bandwidth
Check Server Speed Tests & Bandwidth
I agree with the experts that the standard loss of speed is around 30%. ExpressVPN is no different regarding this estimated standard. I conducted the speed test by downloading the speedtest.net application on my Windows 11 Desktop device. The screenshots below, starting with no VPN connection, carry on from a wide variety of locations across the globe.
I found ExpressVPN connected quickly, easily, and no issues on the first time. I would use them as a better standard than their comrade company Private Internet Access VPN, which boasts many more servers, but I have to attempt 2-3 times per area to get a good server. With ExpressVPN, it just works. As a daily driver of ExpressVPN, I could have no problem and would recommend them. Please see the below table to demonstrate the actual numbers from a short test series.
DNS Leak Tests
DNS Leak Tests at ipleak.net and expressvpn.com
I performed some DNS leak tests to confirm whether my DNS information or the ExpressVPN information was exposed. See the screenshots indicating there was no DNS leak.
ExpressVPN vs Competitors
ExpressVPN Compared to the Competition
ExpressVPN is almost the golden standard. Most competition doesn’t compete with the quality, reliability, and security that ExpressVPN offers. It is no doubt simple, effective, and fits a host of household and commercial use-cases. With all this quality there does come a cost. ExpressVPN is not cheap, and they do not offer as many features as are available on the market currently.
ExpressVPN Trends
What Are People Saying? What Are The Trends?
The people have spoken, and they are fans of ExpressVPN. Well, for a few years now there has been great praise for the company. There is peaked interest from the Chinese region as numerous blogs circulate ExpressVPN seems to work well in China. Many forums, blogs, and social media pages demonstrate and show a great word-of-mouth presence for ExpressVPN. I personally hear ExpressVPN on many varieties of podcasts as well. Their marketing team has a solid reach. There is also great favor among the community. People enjoy the great customer service they receive and hold the company in high praise for what seems to be one big reason—it works. This concept of one-button transparency is really just a one-button VPN that works as advertised. With the google trends shown, we see that expressVPN is really outshined by one other, NordVPN.
Conclusion
Should You Consider ExpressVPN?
ExpressVPN is one of the best because they focus on what matters most to them, privacy. After covering features, pros / cons, speeds, trends, and FAQs, I am confident in stating that ExpressVPN is now and will continue to be a big name in the VPN industry. Their commitment to the community through a willingness to be open, from a software perspective, offers insight their level of security, alongside a host of evidence in the form of third-party audits. Those looking to solve a privacy problem with a quality, consistent VPN will find solace in ExpressVPN for years to come.
