ClearVPN Review – Is It the Best VPN for Mac

For those, who love CleanMyMac X and other tools offered by MacPaw, here’s good news, MacPaw is now offering a VPN known as ClearVPN for Mac. This new entrée, in the VPN industry, was launched in late 2020, and it offers a safe browsing experience thereby, allowing unblocking geo-restricted sites.

The VPN focuses on offering security and anonymity what users look for but it sometimes lags. Here’s a detailed review of ClearVPN.

What is ClearVPN

Offered by MacPaw, ClearVPN is a VPN service that stresses letting users access restricted sites. The idea behind creating this VPN is to allow Mac users, access their favorite services and apps with a single click without any problem.

In simple words, ClearVPN aims to make Mac users’ life as easy as possible, and for this, it uses DynamicFlow technology.

A technique that automatically selects optimum servers based on location, purpose, and network condition. This saves users from the hassle of juggling multiple servers, thus establishing a fast and interruption-free connection.

What made us test ClearVPN?

MacPaw, being a renowned name in the market for  optimization tools, duplicate file cleaner, file encryption utility, and so on, when launched VPN, we were curious to find out if it’s worth some attention or not.

Hence, we decided to dig deep and know more about ClearVPN. Here are our findings in the form of an in-depth review.

ClearVPN Review – The Best Wi-Fi Spot Protection VPN for Mac

Overall 4/5

Price 3/5

This excellent VPN for Mac offers both free and premium versions.

Where the free version allows accessing limited shortcuts, streaming services, and personalization features, the premium version gives unrestricted access to all the features and you can connect to servers in specific countries. Moreover, the premium version allows connecting up to 6 devices.

Its monthly plan starts at $12.95 monthly that goes up to  $109.95 for 2 years, which when compared to other big sharks like PIA, ExpressVPN and others might seem pricey.

However, backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee, you get enough time to test and decide whether you want to use ClearVPN or not. Using credit/debit cards, PayPal and UnionPay, you can pay for CleanVPN, the best VPN with security-focused features.

Ease of Use 4/5

When it comes to user interfaces no one can beat MacPaw. The same is evident when you look at the CleanVPN interface. For a standard user, the app might look unfamiliar, but the simple design makes using the app easy. This means even a novice can use it to secure connections and access the web anonymously in a couple of clicks.

Speed 4/5

For a VPN that allows unblocking streaming sites and other restricted content, offering a lag-free speed is important. In this area, ClearVPN is a sure-shot winner as it offers great speed. Though the number of servers it offers is limited, yet if you are close to any of the locations provided by ClearVPN, you can enjoy connection speed without any drops.

In addition to this, ClearVPN’s DynamicFlow technology will save you from the hassle of picking the right server. This means you can stream Full HD content without any latency as the right server will be automatically selected for you.

This VPN for Mac is easy to use and the server switching is simple. The only thing you need to do is select the purpose for the VPN, select location, and click Activate. That’s it, now the best VPN for Mac will do things on its own.

Additional Information

Speed plays an important role when testing VPN. If it offers a speed similar to a regular internet connection, we consider it best. But trust us, to some extent this determinant is pointless. Wondering why?

Simple, as new servers pop up daily internet speed is affected. Moreover, the speed varies from location to location. Having said that, ClearVPN offers a decent speed when used for torrenting, streaming content, downloading and uploading content, and so on.

Security 4/5

The main purpose of using a VPN is to securely mask IP addresses, locations, browse geo-restricted data and minimize the risk of disclosing personal information. To achieve this and to offer complete security to the user, ClearVPN employs military-grade AES-256, encryption thus protecting data transmission from attackers.

In addition to this, ClearVPN also uses OpenVPN, IPsec IKEV2, and its protocol, for data transfer. However, there’s a drawback: the VPN doesn’t offer a kill switch. This means, if the VPN connection drops, the Internet will not be automatically disconnected.

Alongside providing great security, ClearVPN offers some extras like an ad blocker to stop unwanted ads from spoiling the online experience, malware blockers, and safe chats to safeguard the privacy of your emails.

Privacy 5/5

MacPaw values users’ privacy and hence ClearVPN works on the no-log policy. This means, even though MacPaw is headquartered in Ukraine it doesn’t store user’s data (Since, Ukraine is not a member of the 5, 9, and 14 Eyes Alliance, MacPaw, or for that matter ClearVPN is not bound by data retention laws.)

Location 2/5

Compared to other well-known VPNs, ClearVPN stands out with an unspecified number of servers in 16 countries. This can be a problem in the future if the best VPN fails to offer all the aforementioned services to a larger user base.

ClearVPN gives access to an undisclosed number of servers in Norway, Denmark, Canada, UK, US, Singapore, Greece, Germany, Ireland, Ukraine, The Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Sweden, Australia, France, Switzerland, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates.

Additional Information

Only paying attention to the number of servers or locations when deciding which is the best VPN for Mac, is wrong. One should always keep the ratio of servers to countries in mind. This means a VPN that has more servers with a fewer user base will give better speed than one with lots of servers and twice the number of users. This will overburden the VPN.

Customer Support 5/5

Unlike popular VPNs, this newcomer does great when it comes to the customer support department. It offers live-chat support that comes in handy when you are looking for quick solutions.

Streaming

ClearVPN allows unblocking restricted content offered by Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, etc.

Number of Devices

Using a single account of ClearVPN, you can simultaneously connect up to 6 devices. This might not attract you as some VPNs offer unlimited connections. But looking at others who don’t allow more than 2, six devices is a quite generous device limit.

ClearVPN – Alternatives

For Mac users, ClearVPN is a decent option, but if you are looking for something that has been in the market for a long, try using NordVPN, CyberGhost, ExpressVPN. These are some good alternatives for ClearVPN and they too offer security and geo-restriction unblocking.

We hope you will give it a try. Do share your feedback in the comments section.