Hola Free VPN

Hola isn’t a traditional VPN that depends on a fixed network of managed servers. Instead, Hola is more of a “peer to peer” VPN wherein traffic is routed through users. This means some of your browser traffic may route through the devices of users who have also installed Hola. Similarly, some of their traffic may also pass through your browser.

The advantage of such a method is that there exists no destination server or a fixed route through which traffic is routed. This makes it incredibly difficult for websites to detect the use of a VPN. The cost of the service is also reduced since there’s no service or bandwidth bills to pay. Thus the basic Hola VPN service is offered for free.

On the other hand, Hola only protects browser traffic since it is a browser-only VPN. Even then, the encryption isn’t done in the way other VPNs do. This limits Hola to being a great unblocking service but nothing beyond that.

Most of these issues can be tackled by subscribing to Hola Premium which doesn’t share user bandwidth and allows users to use the network of Hola’s own servers. Hola extensions are available for Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Firefox and Opera.

Pros

• Free of charge
• Extensive network of Hola nodes
• Fast and reliable

Cons

• Free plan restricts Netflix usage to one hour a day
• Compatible with browsers only
• Consumes some of your bandwidth and CPU memory

Final Verdict

You can definitely try Hola for site unblocking, however, if you need more features and are concerned for privacy, Hola is far from an alternative for a commercial VPN.

Hola calls itself a free VPN but doesn’t perform any of the identity masking tasks such as protecting your traffic or giving you anonymity like a traditional VPN.