Dashlane isn’t a young company. It’s been around for a while, making people’s life easier with a reliable password manager. This company isn’t known for its password manager alone. In fact, it offers even a digital wallet, which you can use on iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS. Regardless, the topic of today’s article is the Dashlane VPN review for 2024.
Keep in mind that Dashlane recently partnered with Hotspot Shield, so this review will be different from our other reviews. Why? Well, because, instead of the “old” Dashlane VPN, we get the “new” Hotspot Shield VPN addition to the password manager.
This changes things quite a bit and steers this review in a different direction. Before we start, we want to invite you to check our Hotspot Shield VPN test. Since Dashlane offers this VPN, you will want to know everything about it before deciding on getting a subscription.
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6300 servers
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10 simultaneous connections
9.8 /10
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9.2 /10
How to Set Up Dashlane VPN
To start this review, let’s talk about the setup process. The first thing is to go to its website and get a subscription. We’ll talk more about its prices later, but once you subscribe, you’ll need to add Dashlane to your browser as an extension.
You don’t get an app or anything, which is quite a shame. Instead, the provider comes in the form of an extension that focuses primarily on password management. Basically, when you subscribe, you create an account and by following the steps, you also add something called Master Password.
This password is used for logging in. From here, you can access the app in the form of an extension where you can add passwords and take advantage of certain features. However, we recommend clicking on “Open the App” where Dashlane will open in the new tab.
On the left, you’ll see plenty of options, one of which is the VPN (or Virtual Private Network).
Once you click on the VPN option, simply activate the Hotspot Shield account with the email you used in your Dashlane VPN account. You can use the same email or a different one, actually, which is quite convenient.
After clicking on “Activate Account”, Dashlane VPN will activate it for you and you can download Hotspot Shield directly from the extension window. As said, you’ll now be using Hotspot Shield, and since we already have a review of that provider, it’s pointless talking about everything again.
Just to remind you, make sure you check out our review about that provider, which is basically the Dashlane VPN review for 2024 you want.
Dashlane VPN Privacy Review
When it comes to privacy, in this Dashlane VPN review, we can’t say we’re impressed. It is a US-based company, so it’s subject to stern data-retention laws in the country. If we take a look at the privacy policy, we’ll see that it stores quite a lot of information.
Since this is a password manager primarily, it’ll store specific information, such as identifiers. These include your email address, mailing address, payment info, and stuff like that. Biometric, commercial, and other similar information isn’t stored, however.
Interestingly, the company stores your IP address and geolocation data, which brings us to the actual Dashlane VPN, or better said, Hotspot Shield. Hotspot Shield is a company known for privacy issues. It’s also based in the US and it’s one of our least favorite providers.
In short, Hotspot Shield is notorious for storing logs, which also translates to its free, ad-supported version. This means you won’t enjoy a high level of privacy either way. Plus, Hotspot Shield also sells your private information to third parties to earn money when providing its free plan.
Paid plans offer “less” logging but still, it’s really not a zero-log VPN service. Therefore, in this Dashlane VPN review, it’s clear as day that privacy is just an afterthought for both companies. Although, even a password manager like this still has a more privacy-friendly approach to logging.
Features: What else will you get?
Aside from getting a full suite of features from Hotspot Shield, Dashlane will bring some of its functionalities that we won’t go deeper into. After all, the topic is the review of Dashlane VPN and we want to see how well it works – obviously, not very well.
However, you do get a feature called Dark Web Monitoring. If you check our NordVPN review, you can see that it offers the same feature! NordVPN has many useful features and actually offers NordPass – a password manager that’s far better than this one.
Regardless, Dark Web Monitoring will monitor up to 5 email addresses, passwords, and other bits of information and see if they’re involved in a breach. If they are, you’ll get instant alerts as well as advice on what to do to mitigate damage.
The app also offers a feature called Password Health. It’ll help change your at-risk passwords, ensuring they’re safe and secure. This, in conjunction with Dashlane VPN (Hotspot Shield), gives you plenty of features on paper.
It’s a shame that Hotspot Shield isn’t a trustworthy VPN, to begin with, so all the security features are in vain. If you want a better provider, you can use ExpressVPN instead. It offers a 49% discount and 3 free months for the annual plan, making it pretty affordable at the moment.
Of course, being a password manager, Dashlane offers features like 2FA, password syncing, password generator, and other features. As said, we won’t go too deep into them since that’s not the point of this review. However, as a password manager, this isn’t a bad app by any means.
Customer Support: Is it good?
Customer support of Dashlane VPN is also one of its better sides. The Help Center is riddled with many useful articles, how-to guides, and setup guides, so you’ll get the required help easily. In many cases, you can help yourself by reading a particular guide and you don’t need to contact support.
If you face a more complex issue, however, you can always contact support by clicking on the live chat widget in the bottom-right corner. From here, a chatbot will reply but you can request it to get in touch and you’ll be transferred to the live chat session with the agent.
You can also choose to leave a message if you want, in which case, you’ll send an email and wait for a response. All in all, its support team is stellar and we had no issues talking to it about different questions, doubts, and features of Dashlane VPN.
If you encounter VPN-related issues, Dashlane can help too, although you’ll sometimes want to contact Hotspot Shield directly. Thankfully, it also offers a live chat option, so everything will go smoothly.
Dashlane VPN Pricing
In this Dashlane VPN test, we need to talk about its pricing.
And here, we come to one absurd thing that sounds a bit silly when you think about it. If you take a look at its prices, and we’re talking about Personal use, you’ll see several subscription plans.
There’s a free plan with one device, unlimited passwords, and secure sharing. You don’t get a free VPN here, though. The only way to get Dashlane VPN (Hotspot Shield) is to buy the Premium plan. The Premium plan will cost you $3.33 a month and or around $40 a year.
The plan gives you the ability to use Dashlane on unlimited devices, Dark Web Monitoring, plus the aforementioned VPN functionality. Now, this plan at just $3.33 a month gives you Hotspot Shield in its premium version, which is actually quite affordable given that you get a password manager too.
The absurd is that Hotspot Shield is WAY more expensive than that! If you go to its site, you’ll see that it costs at least $7.99 a month. To put it into perspective, if you want to buy Hotspot Shield, it’s better to get Dashlane, as you’ll pay less and get more features.
Either way, despite its cheap price, we don’t recommend getting Dashlane VPN (Hotspot Shield) due to all the issues it has. And if we put aside privacy issues, the VPN simply isn’t very reliable for streaming, torrenting, and other typical purposes.
Dashlane VPN Review: The Conclusion
With everything we said in today’s Dashlane VPN test for 2024, it’s pretty easy to give our two cents. After all, we’re talking about a bog-standard password manager with the addition of Hotspot Shield, all at a price that’s cheaper than Hotspot Shield’s standard subscription.
At first, it seems like you can’t go wrong with this combo. But since we’re talking about an unsafe VPN, it’s hard for us to recommend Dashlane VPN which is actually Hotspot Shield. It stores plenty of logs and is known for not caring too much – or at ALL – for your privacy.
Not to mention that the provider isn’t reliable in terms of streaming, torrenting, or going on the dark web anonymously. This means that, despite paying for it, you still won’t get the level of performance of similarly-priced VPN providers.
Dashlane VPN Alternatives
While we’re at it, we think we should give you some alternatives in the form of safe and secure VPNs.
Our #1 alternative is ExpressVPN. This provider has a no-logs policy, offers 10 Gbps speeds, and represents the best possible option. Its annual plan is discounted by 49% and it gives you 3 free months along with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Next, we will recommend CyberGhost. CyberGhost offers a 2-year plan for under $2.5 a month, which is much cheaper than Dashlane VPN. Yet, it’s significantly faster, offers more features, comes with dedicated streaming/torrenting servers, and gives you a 45-day refund policy!
Lastly, we already mentioned NordVPN. Its 2-year plan costs similarly to Dashlane’s annual plan and allows for a 30-day money-back guarantee. Plus, NordVPN offers password-managing features, Dark Web Monitor, Threat Protection, and many other useful functionalities.
All three services are extremely reliable and secure and they represent much better solutions than this one. If you’re interested, you can actually read our Hotspot Shield vs NordVPN comparison. This one will show you why NordVPN is so much better, let alone ExpressVPN and CyberGhost, our favorite VPNs in 2024.
Dashlane VPN
