Tailscale - Pay as You Go

My main use case for Tailscale  is connecting to company internal systems due to GDPR requirements. The company is located in Germany with private servers in Germany, and I stay in the UK, so I use it to connect a point-to-site VPN connection from my home laptop to the private servers in Germany. I use Tailscale  to create a secure connection.

Apart from connecting to the internal systems, my main use case also provides a very nice interface with the CI pipeline. I connect Tailscale with my CI on GitHub Actions  to allow me to do automatic deployments through the company's internal systems.

The best features Tailscale offers are really easy usability and a straightforward user experience. It is a one-click install where you select your servers that you want to connect to. The whole integration with GitHub Actions  for CI is pretty good, and I use it a lot, so I am very confident in that.

The GitHub Actions integration stands out for me because it is not every day you see a seamless tool that can allow you to perform CI builds on private networks. I and the company have tried other options, and it was difficult, but Tailscale provided their action script, documentation, and simple authentication mechanisms using OIDC on GitHub Actions. Everything was straightforward to set up.

Tailscale has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to speed up development without worrying about GDPR restrictions. One of the things about GDPR restrictions is that we cannot allow data to leave the EU region or Germany. It was very easy for us to integrate GitHub  with the whole CI pipeline, and it was a very positive impact. It allowed us to eliminate the stress for our CI and the stress of accessing internal systems from far away. So, it allowed us to focus on the development of the application part rather than struggling with how we are going to get this code deployed on certain servers while still following GDPR restrictions.

Tailscale could be improved in different ways. I have not really found any problem with it so far. It pretty much solved the problems of other VPN clients that we have been trying. If Tailscale provided a way to integrate with native cloud providers, such as AWS  or other cloud platforms, it could be a very nice thing. For example, I want to connect my EC2  instance from AWS  over my private Tailscale network. It could be a nice feature so I do not have to stress about the AWS VPC and all that. I could probably just port it over to my Tailscale network. I do not think they have a feature like that, but that would be fine.

I rate Tailscale an eight because I do not think it has any native cloud support with AWS tools such as EC2 , GCP , and Azure . If they can find a way to do that, then it would be fine. One of the things that would actually make more sense is if Tailscale could find a way for us to use serverless compute over private networks. Private server functions or serverless functions probably would not be executed on non-EU regions. That is something I am thinking about.

I have been working in my current field professionally for four or five years.

Tailscale's scalability is good. It is scalable in the sense that we could add as many servers as we want to the network without any downtime from Tailscale. It is pretty fast. Even though I am making a request to the network, the extra hops are pretty much invaluable for network speed. I still get the best speed as possible even though the amount of network hops is two or three. I have to first make a connection to the Tailscale network and then from the Tailscale network to the actual underlying server. Apart from all of that, it is still pretty good. I would say it is really scalable, and I do not think I have ever experienced any downtime with Tailscale.

I have not really had any issues with customer support. I have not really contacted them. If the application is as fine as this, then the customer support should also be good.

Before I joined the company, there were several solutions being employed. The company used Teleport  and there were a lot of VPN alternatives. There was Twingate  and Teleport . We used Teleport before. When I joined the company, we brainstormed together, and I think that was one of the first tasks we did. We found a suitable solution that could handle all this easily, and Tailscale was the one that we picked. We figured out that it was very good.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that pricing was relatively fine. It had a generous free tier, and the pricing was okay. It is good for the amount of servers that we have. Setup cost was not much; it basically was zero setup cost. We probably just did it ourselves. The software was straightforward. We only had to pay for the amount of servers that were going to be able to enter the network. The company handled the licensing, I am not entirely sure about all the details.

We evaluated other options before deciding on Tailscale. We tried Twingate , and I do not remember what all the others were that they were using before. There was this NordVPN client that we could use to connect our servers together, but it was not really developer-friendly. There was Zscaler; we tried to use Zscaler, but it did not really get into what we wanted. They were all good options, but it was not what we wanted. We wanted developer-friendly documentation, access to the CI pipeline build, point-to-site VPN connections, and one-click install. I just install Tailscale, connect the servers, and that is all. I do not want to always be starting up the VPN client and finding my servers and trying to make that connection to them. In my system, I am always automatically connected to that network. Tailscale just provided everything that we needed.

My advice to others looking into using Tailscale is to definitely try it out because it is going to really abstract away a lot of network problems, especially when it comes to private networks, private systems, or internal systems in general. It is really going to abstract away a lot of the complexities. I rate this product an eight overall.

Tailscale  provides us with the opportunity to have a work network. Since we are teleworking, we need to be able to have an internal data center without having to expose it externally to the Internet.

Tailscale 's simplicity stands out as a key advantage. Our department has several profiles including developers, system architects, and CTOs, which allows us all to work on our own machines. We have a wide variety of people who work with Windows and Linux operating systems, and we can connect to our private network from a terminal. These services are hosted on a data center server and are connected in Docker . Tailscale's wide variety allows us to deploy the services both in Kubernetes  clusters and directly on Linux server hosts, as well as in Docker  containers, which lets us have a shared resource network without having to create complicated network routing rules. It even allows us to have our own DNS to redirect addresses that we select.

The great ease of being able to interconnect people who might not have a technical profile stands out as an advantage my team gets from using Tailscale for this type of integration and resource management. In the past, we used OpenVPN  or Fortinet services, and with just a small installer, it is very easy and simple for employees to use the connection.

The best features that Tailscale offers are ease of use, ease of connection, and a fairly generous connection plan. It allows us to apply ACL  policies, which is very beneficial. We do not need to add something extra to define access permissions per user, and that is vital at an organizational level. The console allows you to connect, and there is another interesting feature where you can invite users from other Tailscale networks, which is quite useful.

The ACL  is very easy to understand and not as complex as older WireGuard systems. We can create IP ranges or define what kind of people or users can access which resources, which gives us a great deal of peace of mind about our infrastructure.

The most positive impact Tailscale has had on my organization is significant. While working with different providers such as AWS , Azure , or even on-premise, we found that having a single solution to interconnect all those different types of architectures was a complete challenge. Each provider gives its own VPN option, but it is not a scalable, standard, or universal solution. We started using WireGuard to conduct studies of this type, but maintenance became costly, and we always depended on having at least one exposed node to handle the routing or network rules. With Tailscale, the picture changed completely because it allows us, in a simple and native way, to install this type of service, even bypassing complex configurations. We have had situations where we have connection points through CGNAT with 3G routers, and Tailscale provides a solution that is quick, simple, and with very effective speeds, which has pleasantly surprised us.

I am currently testing the ability to expose to the WAN certain services that we select, which is in beta. I imagine it is still in development, but from the tests we have done, the connection outward is quite slow, which is a point of curiosity, and I hope that aspect can be improved.

At a basic level, Tailscale could improve the interface to enhance the user experience. Another potential improvement would be to provide Internet exit nodes that are faster. I understand that Tailscale is not a CDN  as such, but they could try to achieve some technique that at least provides connections of ten megabytes per second, for example.

Tailscale uses certain flags, such as accepting routes or accepting DNS when logging in, which could be improved. For people who are technical, it is not a problem, but for those who are not as technical, providing this information or presenting it to the user in a simpler way so they understand what they are enabling or disabling could be beneficial.

I have been working with Tailscale for about four years personally for my personal platform, and then I have been using it professionally for around two years.

I consider Tailscale to be a stable solution. There are other services that I am curious to use because I do not know how they work, but for what we use it for—interconnection and networks—it is very stable.

My experience with Tailscale's scalability is optimal and very good. It is incredible that it can be connected on so many platforms, such as Docker, clouds, and operating systems.

Before Tailscale, we used OpenVPN , then WireGuard, and we also used Fortinet. Tailscale encompasses a very good balance for maintaining our own infrastructure.

I have been one of the people who, professionally when I worked at another company, proposed this solution. It seems too novel at first, and it appears that it may not be reliable. Fortunately, at the company I am currently at, they understand the essence of this product or service, which really allows us to save enormous amounts of time in onboarding users, configurations, and removing access quickly and safely. That is the main thing because when we looked at other solutions such as ZeroTier  or WireGuard itself, they did not guarantee automatic refresh. With Tailscale, we do see that even the admin panel is very simple, even for non-technical people. It has reduced the complexity of onboarding and implementation by approximately sixty to seventy percent in time, for certain.

I have noticed a return on investment from using Tailscale, particularly in time. It has been something around sixty to seventy percent much less time. As for costs, even though I do not handle them, I understand that this reduces costs first because of the time that is spent, and second, in terms of infrastructure requirements, which are minimal. Previously, networks with FortiGate were used, and that forced us to spend on hardware. With Tailscale, that type of investment is not necessary.

Before choosing Tailscale, I evaluated other options, and there are many Tailscale forks, but we went directly with this solution because it is the Enterprise version.

Tailscale offers a solution that is already mature, proven and tested, and secure, where you can save costs and maintain a small, medium, or even large infrastructure. I would really appreciate the possibility that Tailnets, instead of giving a random name, would allow us to choose a name and type it. I can rename a Tailnet that it offers directly, but it does not let us write our own, and it would be beneficial if at some point this could be done. I would rate this product and service highly.

I have been using Tailscale  for approximately one to one and a half years for one of my projects. My main use case for Tailscale  during that project was connecting different GCP GKE  clusters. I had different production, staging, and testing clusters, and we wanted a way to easily connect to any of the clusters. Tailscale allowed us to easily access any of the clusters we wanted from a local system.

I chose Tailscale for this setup because I was searching for different projects to connect different clusters, and I found Tailscale online. There were quite good reviews about Tailscale, which was one of the reasons I chose it to connect different clusters. Tailscale is quite easy to deploy and get started with.

The setup process and documentation for Tailscale stood out to me because the documentation is quite good and the setup is quite easy. You just need to install a single binary on your system and you are ready to go. You can easily connect to any of the systems that you want.

The best features Tailscale offers for me are how easily we can connect to different clusters and different systems. If I have a system somewhere around the globe and I want to connect directly from my local system, it is quite easy. I just need to have Tailscale binary on my system, and I can connect to that specific system.

I did not face any issues with latency or connection reliability while using Tailscale; it was quite seamless for me. Connecting was quite easy.

I discovered some ACL  features while exploring Tailscale later on, and I think they are quite good. We can configure some IPs through which we can connect, and I think that is one of the good features Tailscale has.

I think Tailscale is quite good for me as I am not a power user. I have mostly used it for basic use cases, and I feel that nothing is missing for me. If there were any power users who have used Tailscale extensively, they might give some feedback on what can be improved upon, but for me, it was good and suitable. I cannot think of anything that needs to be improved upon.

I have been working in my current field for more than four years.

Tailscale is stable.

Regarding Tailscale's scalability, we did not use it at a large scale since our team is small, but I think it is good.

Tailscale customer support is good.

I did not previously use a different solution because we directly went with Tailscale. We did not have any other solution before that.

My main use case for Tailscale during that project was mostly about connecting different GCP GKE  clusters. I had different production, staging, and testing clusters, and we wanted a way through which we could easily connect to any of the clusters. Tailscale allowed us to easily access any of the clusters we wanted from a local system.

The time saved by using Tailscale is significant because earlier, when we wanted to connect different clusters, we used to run GCP commands to connect them. With Tailscale, it was quite easy. We were still running the command, but we did not need the specific command anymore because it was just Tailscale binary, and it was quite easy to connect to any of the clusters we wanted. We have seen a return on investment from Tailscale since it was a time-saving tool for us. We did not need different GCP commands to connect to different clusters; it was just a single Tailscale binary through which we were connecting, making it a time-saving solution.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Tailscale is that since our team is quite small, about ten people, we did not take any license and the cost was zero for us because we were using Tailscale's open-source version.

Before choosing Tailscale, I thought about evaluating other options, but there was another tool called WireGuard, which Tailscale is based upon. I did not look for any other tool further because I felt that Tailscale was good and would do my job.

I advise others looking into using Tailscale to go for the documentation and just read over the things, as it is quite easy to set up. I think anyone can set up Tailscale. Tailscale is a good tool to use, and it is quite friendly without hassle to set it up. My rating for this review is nine out of ten.

My main use case for Tailscale  is access to internal resources and supporting clients, having replaced two different VPN products I was using previously.

I have a number of applications that are running within my network. I have used the split DNS for accessing internal resources or supporting clients.

Using split DNS with Tailscale  has helped me manage access and support my clients by being able to use my internal DNS servers easily within the network without needing to have full tunnel connections. It has worked great for exposing particular applications to clients who are shared to particular nodes on my tailnet.

The best feature Tailscale offers is the ease of use for managing WireGuard and the fact that the key management is completely transparent, both for the WireGuard tunnel connection and for the SSH functionality.

The transparent key management and SSH functionality have benefited me by completely eliminating a manual, tedious step of needing to manage keys, which felt like a significant security risk that something could go wrong in the key management process. With Tailscale, it just happens and works.

Tailscale has positively impacted my organization and consulting work by making remote connections easy, significantly reducing the friction and making this very reliable, even behind difficult networks with CGNAT or other situations that make establishing connections difficult using other means.

I think if there was a streamlined mechanism to self-host the control plane, that would be a significant help in certain regulatory environments where customers feel unsure about having an external party control authentication onto the tailnet. Even with Tailnet Lock, there is still a concern that there are parts of the control plane that are opaque.

I have been using Tailscale since September of last year.

Tailscale is stable.

I have not hit the limits of Tailscale's scalability, which works well under automation and infrastructure as code. It is scalable from the perspective I am able to see.

I have not had much of a need to interact with customer support, but the only thing that I have used it for is to establish a custom OIDC identity provider, and the response felt quick and professional.

I previously used self-hosted WireGuard and OpenVPN  connections because they had difficulty getting through in particular CGNAT connections, and that was the initial impetus for looking at Tailscale.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was straightforward and seemed fair for the value that the product provides.

My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

I do not have any metrics to share. Qualitatively, it definitely feels as though time troubleshooting connectivity has decreased.

Support issues related to connectivity have dropped by about half, and while I do not have an exact measure, the amount of time spent working on connectivity issues has decreased significantly.

I did not purchase Tailscale through the AWS Marketplace .

I also evaluated Twingate  and ZeroTier  before choosing Tailscale.

My advice to others looking into using Tailscale is to give it a try and make sure that it suits your needs, but overall, it feels like a stable product that greatly simplifies VPN and remote connectivity needs. I would rate this product a nine out of ten.