←back to thread

655 points louis-paul | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
Show context
briHass ◴[] No.43627559[source]
I'm a fan of TS and have been a paying customer for work infra for almost a year now. It really is well put together and easy to use, but I do run up against some issues/complaints when diving deep that I hope they can work out:

* The pricing tiers and included features by tier penalizes you in frustrating ways. The base plan is a reasonable $6/user/m, but if you want to use ACLs to control anything in a workable way, it jumps 3x to $18/u/m. Better solutions are available for that kind of money, and I shudder to imagine what the next tier ('call us') costs.

* Subnet routing broke on Ubuntu (maybe other distros) recently, and there were no alerts, communication from TS, or TS tools to pinpoint/figure out what was going on. I stumbled on a solution (install subnet router on a Windows box), and from there I searched and found others with that issue. Lost half a day in emergency mode over that!

* Better tooling to determine why it's falling back to DERP instead of direct for remote clients. DERP relays should be an absolute last resort to provide connectivity for Business-plan-level customers (very slow), and the way TS works just assumes any connectivity is fine.

Overall, the simplicity and abstraction of complex VPN networking is wonderful, but if you have issues or advanced needs, you are immediately thrust into the low-level UDP/NAT/STUN world you were trying to avoid. At that point, you're better off using a traditional VPN (WG, OpenVPN, or heaven forbid, IPSec), because it ends up being more straightforward (not easier) without the abstractions and easy-button stuff.

replies(10): >>43628638 #>>43628773 #>>43629221 #>>43629247 #>>43629638 #>>43630250 #>>43630297 #>>43630660 #>>43631345 #>>43674964 #
atomicnumber3 ◴[] No.43628773[source]
>$6/user/m, but if you want to use ACLs to control anything in a workable way, it jumps 3x to $18/u/m.

It's market segmentation, needing ACLs is a sign you're at least an SMB, and to a business of nearly any actual size, the difference between $6/user and $18/user is 0.

replies(5): >>43628801 #>>43629300 #>>43630261 #>>43632383 #>>43674980 #
1. dexterdog ◴[] No.43628801[source]
Um, it's 3x the cost to get one feature. By your logic they should be charging $100/user/mo for the feature since that must also be the same. This is typical "enterprise" nonsense pricing and it will absolutely drive some adopters to look elsewhere.
replies(2): >>43628947 #>>43632386 #
2. dewey ◴[] No.43628947[source]
It's a perfectly valid part of a pricing strategy to drive people away if they are not the customers you want.
replies(1): >>43632403 #
3. nativeit ◴[] No.43632386[source]
I have been using ZeroTier for a few years with great success. It’s not an Enterprise, but for my lil’ shop I get 100 endpoints for $0.10/ea/month, and that includes all features.
4. nativeit ◴[] No.43632403[source]
Namely, customers too stupid to know how to use something else, and/or customers you’ve managed to lock-in sufficiently to make them too scared to do so. I guess that’s a good strategy if you hate what you do and the people you do it for.