My main use case for Tailscale is remote access to devices across networks.

In my church context, I can give you a quick specific example of how I use Tailscale for remote access: we have a Reolink doorbell that I access over the local network via the Reolink client apps or MPV, and it also has a cloud solution that is slow and unreliable. I use Tailscale to remotely connect to the doorbell and its NVR, and it is quick, nice, smooth, and great. Another example is in my homelab, where I have many devices in a rack, and I use Tailscale to connect to any of them for fast, reliable access since they can all be in one Tailnet. In the church context, I can use subnet routing to fully expose the entire subnet that the doorbell is on and access various other server computers remotely.

In the church context, I have a number of server computers running virtual machines on a Proxmox device, and I generally SSH into the Proxmox host or the virtual machines through Tailscale when I am outside of the church network. Tailscale gives me a list of all devices on the Tailnet, making it easy to copy the IP addresses and access everything flawlessly.

I would say the best features Tailscale offers are ease of use and ease of remote access. Compared to Tailscale's competitors that I have tried, such as ZeroTier, Tailscale allows you to access a device from another place in significantly less time. Tailscale is very fast, and WireGuard as a protocol is a great choice for a VPN solution because it is so quick, making things such as game streaming over Tailscale easy and fast.

Tailscale's security is fabulous, especially the access control features and the ability to use existing OAuth accounts for access. The user interface is very sleek and not cluttered, which I appreciate when I am on a device with a graphical interface or a command line interface. There are a couple of quirks with the command line interface that I believe are intentional design choices for the best.

Tailscale has positively impacted my organization by making the previously unusable doorbell with the cloud solution fast and reliable for remote access. Previously, conversations through it would be stuttery and hard to understand, with periods of no video feed. Tailscale fully fixed that issue. Accessing servers is easier, allowing me to SSH into the hypervisor or virtual machine seamlessly whenever I need to improve a feature or fix downtime issues. Tailscale managing the security for these critical functions is a beneficial aspect.

I do believe there are a couple of features and changes I would like to see with Tailscale. I initially got introduced to Tailscale in high school when I needed access to services running on my server, but due to deep packet inspection being in place, I could not use Tailscale. Tailscale's free plan effectively introduces people to the service, but I would love to see an anti-censorship VPN protocol implemented. When accessing my homelab, I usually have to resort to using VLESS host through 3X-UI, which is complicated. I would like Tailscale to provide more censorship-resistant options, such as Shadowsocks or VLESS, as fallback protocols.

I would like more anti-censorship protocols, such as VLESS or Shadowsocks, so I can effectively use Tailscale in environments with censored internet access that block WireGuard through deep packet inspection.

More anti-censorship VPN protocols are the main improvement I wish for. If Tailscale implemented these, I would use it for all my VPN needs and would likely use Tailscale entirely.

I have been using Tailscale for five years.

The user interface, documentation, and support for Tailscale are fabulous, and I have no complaints about the user interface. I might prefer a TUI instead of a CLI because I am often not using graphical applications, but the CLI is satisfactory. Overall, the interfaces are great, and the documentation is straightforward for setting up Tailscale on server devices. I only need to reference documentation for specific features such as enabling subnet routing.

My advice to others looking into using Tailscale is to do it; it makes remote access much easier.

My main use case for Tailscale is accessing my home network when I'm outside. Essentially, it functions as a VPN.

I use Tailscale to access my home network by connecting to a main machine that runs Tailscale, which is separate from my home server. This allows me to connect to it even when my home server goes down, and it serves as a subnet router so I can access my home network through that single machine instead of connecting every single virtual machine to the same Tailscale network.

In my opinion, the best features Tailscale offers are its ease of use and quick setup. You essentially just need to run a command and you're connected to Tailscale network, and I love MagicDNS as well. Ease of use, MagicDNS, and the subnet router capabilities are very good.

I appreciate that MagicDNS helps me avoid memorizing IP addresses, and the subnet router allows me to use one device to connect to the entire network. For example, if I have a smart TV that cannot install Tailscale, I can access it through my subnet router machine. I set it up this way because I only have Tailscale installed on that entry point machine, which serves as the gateway to my network.

Tailscale has made managing and accessing my home network easier compared to using OpenVPN before. Previously, I had to manage everything myself, run the server, and keep it operational. If the server ever went down, I couldn't access my home network. With Tailscale, the situation is similar, but I don't have to expose any ports; I just connect a device to Tailscale servers. The main difference is that I don't have to run the VPN server since Tailscale does it for me, connecting my devices through their service. It's really great that I don't have to worry about all the setups.

I appreciate how their login system works. Tailscale services are fast, and since processing is done on the clients rather than the servers, they can focus on providing a good, reliable service. I don't think I've ever faced downtimes or connection issues from another country.

Tailscale does a great job for free-tier users, and the 100 device limit is very fair. However, I think improvements could be made in the support for UI clients, especially on Linux machines. In Windows and macOS, the UI support is good, but Linux is more customizable and has a unique setup, and I feel like I never have a good UI to interact with when using Linux desktops, which is unfortunate.

I've been working in my current field for about four years.

Tailscale is stable for me.

I feel Tailscale would handle adding more devices or users in the future easily, and I am confident of it. As a free-tier user, I have tested my limits, connecting the maximum amount of devices, and everything performed great. After that, I switched to subnet routing, allowing one device to forward traffic into my home network, which also circumvented device limits.

I never interacted with Tailscale's customer support because I never needed to. Tailscale is that reliable, and their documentation answers any questions I have.

I previously used OpenVPN before switching to Tailscale. I liked OpenVPN, but setting it up in a production environment was more of a learning experience rather than a complete permanent solution. You always find yourself wondering what improvements could be made. While OpenVPN is fine for production use, I'd say a managed service is more professional because it provides guarantees and reduces concerns. I switched to Tailscale out of curiosity, wanting to try WireGuard, and I was sold after just one to two minutes of setup.

Before choosing Tailscale, I evaluated other options, including OpenVPN. I was familiar with running my own VPN solution and considered using WireGuard directly on my home network or opting for Tailscale, which uses WireGuard in the background. I wanted something that worked correctly the first time, so I chose Tailscale while planning to tinker with WireGuard later.

My advice for others looking into using Tailscale is simple: just do it. Spin up a virtual machine, run the one-line command that Tailscale provides, and see how it works because it's so intuitive that nobody can mess it up.

I've seen a return on investment with Tailscale in terms of time saved and less maintenance required. I learned a lot from installing and maintaining OpenVPN, which sometimes required extensive hands-on configuration and problem-solving. With Tailscale, I set it up and forget it because it just works, allowing me to avoid worrying about the whole VPN aspect of my home network architecture. Every return on investment with Tailscale is time saved and reliability from the managed service.

I wouldn't say I have an experience with pricing, setup costs, or licensing because I use the free tier. My needs have never exceeded the free tier as I am the single maintainer of my home network and server, which is beneficial.

I think Tailscale is an awesome product; I use it every day and have it implemented in my home network. As long as the free tier stays the same, I don't see myself switching from it.

Honestly, my main use case for Tailscale is my home lab and being able to access my home network devices using a Zero Trust platform that's fully secure. It has been so useful, especially for sharing some of my self-hosted services with family and friends.

For example, I use Tailscale in my home lab by having it installed on all of my devices, like my personal laptop and PC, as well as on my servers. On my servers themselves, let's say I'm hosting a web page on port 3000. I could just use my Tailscale MagicDNS name and then the port, or I could just use the Tailscale IP and the port to access those web pages. So for example, I host things like VIQUINIA and some other things I can easily access. Another use case that I have for Tailscale in my home lab is I have it installed on my firewall, which is built with OPNsense. What I do is I have it set as an exit node and I also broadcast my entire subnet. So that way, it's as if I'm connecting to a regular VPN and have access to my full home network, not just the devices that have Tailscale installed on them. I can also funnel my traffic through my home network if I'm elsewhere. Since I have my own custom DNS set up, if I am using my network as an exit node, I get free ad-blocking wherever I go.

For my organization, we use Tailscale for our database as a secure way to access our VPC. It's really great. It's an easy way for everyone to connect and disconnect. Nothing clunky, nothing being left behind, very lightweight, very nice UI, and very useful. For my home lab, it has been great because there are services you want to host, but you don't want to expose them to the public network, and using Tailscale gives you a very nice way of actually accessing that without having to deal with exposing things to public ports. I also really appreciate Tailscale services, which I forgot to mention, which involves hosting a service on Tailscale itself.

Regarding metrics, I guess a lot of times it saves hours. Sometimes I forget something at home and if I use Tailscale, I can easily access my network and grab it, whereas usually I would have to drive back home. I feel that in itself is really huge.

The best features Tailscale offers are their free tier, which is amazing. Whatever it provides, I feel it's a very good amount for what it gives you. I would honestly even be open to paying if my needs expand from what I am currently using. I feel the Zero Trust networking thing is really great. I feel the ability to also integrate Mullvad VPN into your own Tailscale network and use that as an exit node is huge. It makes a very nice, seamless experience for VPN. Rather than having multiple clients, you just use Tailscale and that handles everything for you. I also appreciate the Tailscale drop feature. I feel that's very unique, kind of a global AirDrop with anything that has Tailscale. So it's a really simplified way of sharing files, not only over your local network, but over your Tailscale network, your virtual cloud.

A unique thing that I did, which at the time was an experimental feature, but now I believe it's fully out and available, is using Tailscale files. Essentially, I had a bunch of space on my server and I made a Tailscale share. So now if I ever go on any of my devices, I have a whole file section which I can actually just drag and drop to that location and it's kind of a shared Google Drive. Any of the old storage I had lying around, I was able to convert it into my own free cloud storage.

I would say I rely on just the regular Tailscale Zero Trust network the most in my daily workflow. I feel I have that on all the time and I'm accessing things when I'm not at home. Usually, when I'm traveling, it's when it's the most useful, but if I'm staying at home and working from home, it's not as useful because I'm connected to my same network. But for example, if I'm at my in-laws' house or if I'm outside at a library or coffee shop, it's very useful to have.

I feel the speed of the control servers are a bit too slow. I feel that's the main bottleneck right now for Tailscale. For example, at my apartment, I can do 2-gig networking, but when I connect via the exit node, and I'm wired in somewhere else, and that place also has 2-gig networking, I'm at max getting half of my speed. The main bottleneck here is really the control servers and the throughput of data.

I feel Linux needs its own UI client. I had to use a custom third-party one. That is a big thing as well.

To make it a 10, I mean, have better support for Linux. That's probably the main thing, honestly. Fix the DNS things too. There's some issues where I should be able to use my own custom DNS easily and then when you move MagicDNS starts causing problems, I should be able to just have my own custom DNS that links directly into Tailscale and assign each thing its own specific hostname. I feel that doesn't work as well as expected, or maybe you do provide that, but then it's kind of obfuscated through weird documentation.

I have been using Tailscale for about two years or a year and a half.

Tailscale is stable.

Tailscale's scalability is good.

It has been a really great product. Ever since I started using it, I got my family members to get on it and so many other people, and I very openly recommend it.

I looked at Netbird or something before choosing Tailscale.

I advise others looking into using Tailscale to start faster or look at the documentation.

We have been using Tailscale for about four or five months, and we have been using it from the beginning.

For our main use case, we use Tailscale because it creates a peer-to-peer VPN mesh where we host our AWS infrastructure behind it, so the general web cannot directly access it. It is only accessible from authorized systems, such as the one that I have.

A specific example of how we use Tailscale for this peer-to-peer VPN mesh in my daily work is that the entirety of our AWS infrastructure and systems that we use to build at Flyra are behind a private VPN that is accessible using Tailscale. The general web cannot access it, so we ensure that there is nothing unauthorized accessing our servers. Authorized and recognized systems are only able to access the infrastructure and the resources that we want restricted, and that is where Tailscale comes in.

About my main use case, I am fully aware that it is end-to-end encrypted. We maintain access using ACLs, which allows us to fine-tune the fine-grained rules for who can connect and to what.

The best features Tailscale offers are highlighted by the fact that setting up Tailscale was straightforward, at least once you are following the documentation and the guides. The security is valuable, as there are many providers available, but Tailscale fulfills the requirements that we had, allowing us to access and expose internal apps without exposing them to the general internet. The complex site-to-site connections are replaced using VPNs, and we can SSH into our remote desktops or SSH into our EC2 machines in our AWS regions in a secure way.

About the features that make Tailscale stand out for me, with access control lists, we can fine-grain what can be accessed and by whom. It solved our base use case, which is keeping our secured infrastructure behind a private VPN, and that is why we started using it in the first place.

Tailscale has had more positive impacts on my organization regarding security.

Regarding how Tailscale can be improved, I think for free users, there are some limited options. However, we have a paid policy, so we pay Tailscale every month. At some point, we may want to host our own coordination servers, which Tailscale does not have right now. However, it is just a general consideration, and I doubt that we will have that problem soon.

Regarding the needed improvements for paid users, I think things are acceptable. The limits could be higher for free users, and that is all.

I have been a software developer for about two years, and that represents full-time experience.

My advice to others looking into using Tailscale is that if there is a use case where you want to secure your private EC2 instances, the workflows, your Git repositories, and sensitive data, Docker images, Maven builds, Gradle builds, and so forth, behind and away from the general internet and onto your private cloud, Tailscale can act as that link, allowing you access to that private information from authorized systems while also fine-graining that control. I would rate this product a nine out of ten.