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I'm really interested in what you're comparing Tailscale to internally, because it does way more than just VPN. What are the cheaper options, and do they also h

I'm really interested in what you're comparing Tailscale to internally, because it does way more than just VPN. What are the cheaper options, and do they also have an SSH feature, oauth authentication to the network for automation services, the ability to stand up VPN node loadbalancers in kubernetes clusters, and ACME certificate request automation through LetsEncrypt? Just to list a few features that I use from Tailscale's free tier that I don't normally think of as the job of a VPN service. And they're constantly adding new features that make it a really interesting and competitive choice, in my opinion. Honestly I'm mostly interested in this take because I'm shocked by how much they offer in the cheaper tiers.

conception 3y ago
But if you’re comparing it to other VPNs and only need VPN the pricing is bonkers.
- starttoaster 3y ago
  That's fair. I guess if you just need a VPN, it doesn't really make sense to consider a product that packs all of these VPN-adjacent features. But part of my point was how much you're able to do on Tailscale for free, so in that regard, the pricing really doesn't seem as bonkers to me, to be honest. The $6/month tier is also incredibly reasonable for unlimited users, but it is annoying, I'll grant, that they actually drop some ACL features from Free tier to Starter. I suppose that's how they funnel a large number of enterprises from considering Starter in favor of Premium. But if you actually make use of the feature set of the platform, which if you have a decent DevOps team I'm pretty sure there's tools in there that they'll love, then $18/User/month actually doesn't seem too outrageous to me.
- newdee 3y ago
  Which other VPNs? And are you talking about trad VPN (concentrators/hub & spoke)? If so, you wouldn’t be considering Tailscale anyway.
snapplebobapple 3y ago
My problem is I don't care about any of the stuff you mentioned because I can't easily recreate my internal vlan segregation at the six dollar tier, I need to pay up for the 18 dollar a user tier, which is insane pricing for my shop of 70-100 users. Compare to the included fortissl vpn that is provided by my router. I can add users to groups in active directory that are then synced to azuread, which provides saml authentication to the vpn. Users login with their O365 credentials and I can configure it to mimic the already approved vlan segregation easily based on groups provided by O365. This basic stuff should just be there for a corporate solution and it appears to be but for 100 users the bill is 21.6k/year, which is literally 4 times higher than I can justify/ get approved. Yes it has a bunch of other features, but they are irrelevant because the basics aren't there at a price that is doable.
- starttoaster 3y ago
  > Yes it has a bunch of other features, but they are irrelevant because the basics aren't there at a price that is doable. The basics don't cost $18/user/month though. The whole package does. I hear what you're saying, and maybe you just accidentally worded it this way, but the obvious rebuttal to it is: How much would it cost you to set up a solution where only ACL'd users can SSH into your infrastructure/servers? You're looking at services that cost money like Userify for that. For many of the other features Tailscale offers, you're probably either paying another service to handle that responsibility, not doing it at all, or you're spending your time recreating it, and I bet your time isn't cheap to the company either. Anyway, that's somewhat of a hypothetical rebuttal. I actually assume you did the due diligence and weighed the cost with the portion of the feature set that you actually would make use of. I could see the price being more fair if they offered a lower cost tier that only provided the VPN and ACLs for unlimited users, but I'm not a savvy businessman so I'm not sure if it makes sense for a multi-tool company to sell a minority of users a screwdriver.
  - snapplebobapple 3y ago
    You're assuming that feature matters to me (it does but I have a lot of users relative to servers, so even the most basic tier of userify express or their cloud offering would handle my needs for dramatically less than premium tailscale). What you're missing is the foundation of being able to deploy something like this depends on easy acls that integrate with my current identity system (i.e. saml) because I need to be able to control access per business unit so that when the mesh of everything is brought online users still only have access to the subset of systems they should have access to. This matters whether it's Sheila in accounting who only ever uses it to remote desktop to her on prem workstation, or jackie in IT using it to manage on prem servers across multiple locations and cloud servers. So yes, maybe a small subset of my users are actually using enough of the premium bundle to justify that cost but I can't even mix and match because the basis of every use case (the ACLs) are only in the premium package in a functional way.

conception 3y ago

But if you’re comparing it to other VPNs and only need VPN the pricing is bonkers.

starttoaster 3y ago
That's fair. I guess if you just need a VPN, it doesn't really make sense to consider a product that packs all of these VPN-adjacent features. But part of my point was how much you're able to do on Tailscale for free, so in that regard, the pricing really doesn't seem as bonkers to me, to be honest. The $6/month tier is also incredibly reasonable for unlimited users, but it is annoying, I'll grant, that they actually drop some ACL features from Free tier to Starter. I suppose that's how they funnel a large number of enterprises from considering Starter in favor of Premium. But if you actually make use of the feature set of the platform, which if you have a decent DevOps team I'm pretty sure there's tools in there that they'll love, then $18/User/month actually doesn't seem too outrageous to me.
newdee 3y ago
Which other VPNs? And are you talking about trad VPN (concentrators/hub & spoke)? If so, you wouldn’t be considering Tailscale anyway.

snapplebobapple 3y ago

My problem is I don't care about any of the stuff you mentioned because I can't easily recreate my internal vlan segregation at the six dollar tier, I need to pay up for the 18 dollar a user tier, which is insane pricing for my shop of 70-100 users. Compare to the included fortissl vpn that is provided by my router. I can add users to groups in active directory that are then synced to azuread, which provides saml authentication to the vpn. Users login with their O365 credentials and I can configure it to mimic the already approved vlan segregation easily based on groups provided by O365. This basic stuff should just be there for a corporate solution and it appears to be but for 100 users the bill is 21.6k/year, which is literally 4 times higher than I can justify/ get approved. Yes it has a bunch of other features, but they are irrelevant because the basics aren't there at a price that is doable.

starttoaster 3y ago
> Yes it has a bunch of other features, but they are irrelevant because the basics aren't there at a price that is doable. The basics don't cost $18/user/month though. The whole package does. I hear what you're saying, and maybe you just accidentally worded it this way, but the obvious rebuttal to it is: How much would it cost you to set up a solution where only ACL'd users can SSH into your infrastructure/servers? You're looking at services that cost money like Userify for that. For many of the other features Tailscale offers, you're probably either paying another service to handle that responsibility, not doing it at all, or you're spending your time recreating it, and I bet your time isn't cheap to the company either. Anyway, that's somewhat of a hypothetical rebuttal. I actually assume you did the due diligence and weighed the cost with the portion of the feature set that you actually would make use of. I could see the price being more fair if they offered a lower cost tier that only provided the VPN and ACLs for unlimited users, but I'm not a savvy businessman so I'm not sure if it makes sense for a multi-tool company to sell a minority of users a screwdriver.
- snapplebobapple 3y ago
  You're assuming that feature matters to me (it does but I have a lot of users relative to servers, so even the most basic tier of userify express or their cloud offering would handle my needs for dramatically less than premium tailscale). What you're missing is the foundation of being able to deploy something like this depends on easy acls that integrate with my current identity system (i.e. saml) because I need to be able to control access per business unit so that when the mesh of everything is brought online users still only have access to the subset of systems they should have access to. This matters whether it's Sheila in accounting who only ever uses it to remote desktop to her on prem workstation, or jackie in IT using it to manage on prem servers across multiple locations and cloud servers. So yes, maybe a small subset of my users are actually using enough of the premium bundle to justify that cost but I can't even mix and match because the basis of every use case (the ACLs) are only in the premium package in a functional way.