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Menlo Secure vs OpenVPN Access Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Menlo Secure
Ranking in ZTNA
26th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (25th), Firewalls (52nd), Cloud Security Remediation (9th)
OpenVPN Access Server
Ranking in ZTNA
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the ZTNA category, the mindshare of Menlo Secure is 2.0%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenVPN Access Server is 3.5%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
ZTNA Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
OpenVPN Access Server3.5%
Menlo Secure2.0%
Other94.5%
ZTNA
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2701794 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Bluechip Enterprise at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Provides strong protection and multiple use cases but struggles with market recognition
There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto. Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco. What can be improved is market awareness and adoption of the technology. When selling it in the channel, regardless of how good the technology might be, success depends more on market adoption and awareness.
AS
Network operation center engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Secure remote access has protected critical data and now simplifies role-based user management
An area for improvement is the pricing model. The concurrent user licenses get expensive pretty quickly as your organization grows, so more flexible pricing options would be a huge plus. Another area is configurational disconnect. While the admin web UI handles about 90% of what you need, the moment you have to do deep, advanced routing customization, you still have to drop back to the command line interface to make those changes. It would be great to see those deeper configurations completely integrated into the web portal. Lastly, it would be awesome to see native support for newer, lighter protocols through WireGuard built straight into the platform alongside standard OpenVPN for better performance efficiency.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Accessing the internet with a proxy from anywhere is the most valuable feature. It ensures that users are only able to browse legitimate websites. If they happen to go to a legitimate website with a malicious payload, the isolation feature will take care of that."
"We have definitely seen ROI, as we save a ton of money and time because the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools prior to implementing them had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged."
"For us, the primary goal is protection on the web, and that's extremely important. We're not using any of the other services at this time. The web part is key to the success of the organization. It gives us the ability to protect. It can isolate. It opens the session in an isolated format so that the code isn't running locally. It is running over in the Menlo environment, not in ours. It is not running on the local computer, whereas if you were to go to a normal website, it would run Java or something else on the local machine and potentially execute the malicious code locally. So, it does give us that level of protection."
"The solution is invisible to our end users, so it doesn't have any impact on their work or performance."
"It has reduced security events to follow up on. While it is not 100%, there has been probably a 90% or more reduction. We were getting hit left, right, and center constantly from people browsing the Internet and hitting bad websites. It was not just bad websites that were stood up to be malicious, but good sites that were compromised."
"Either you have access to something or don't have access to it, and if you do, we can ensure, 100 percent of the time, that there is nothing malicious that is going to impact our system in any way."
"We are not aware of a single compromise from the web since implementing the solution."
"This security technology addresses risk and enables people to conduct business without that risk, which is where the ROI is realized."
"The most valuable feature is stability."
"We have seen a return on investment with OpenVPN Access Server, as the overall cost of management has decreased; one engineer can now handle what previously required more personnel, equating to a 66% reduction in engineering hours."
"OpenVPN Access Server has positively impacted my organization mainly through improved security for myself."
"OpenVPN Access Server is a simple and easy-to-use solution that I can use myself without anybody's help."
"What I appreciate the most about OpenVPN Access Server is that it's very easy to set up."
"OpenVPN Access Server has positively impacted our organization by providing a high, reliable, stable environment, especially for remote work."
"The price point is fantastic since it is free."
"Provided the easiest UX for our end-users and had the greatest interoperability with all the operating systems we used, including but not limited to: iOS, Android, OS X, Windows, and Linux."
 

Cons

"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists. I have numerous entries, but are they all still needed? A report that would show me my list of who is allowed and whether we're actually using it would be useful because I can then go clean up my list. It would be easier to manage. We would eliminate the vulnerability of unused services."
"In the best of all worlds, we wouldn't have to make any exceptions. However, that is a big ask because a lot of that depends on how websites are constructed. For example, there are some very complex, application-oriented sites that we end up making exceptions for. It is really not that big an issue for us to make the exceptions. We feel like we are doing that without a huge impact on our security posture, but we do have to make some exceptions for complex sites, e.g., mostly SaaS-type sites and applications."
"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists."
"The user monitoring could still be improved."
"Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco."
"We are now transitioning to another solution. The main reason for that is that managing all of the exceptions and troubleshooting all of the issues our users have had connecting to the internet has become too significant in terms of workload, compared to what we hope we will have with another solution."
"I have not seen a return on investment in terms of fewer employees needed, money saved, or time saved."
"I'd like to have more control over the users when they are accessing the network."
"My impression of the connection speed using OpenVPN Access Server is that, compared to other VPN solutions, OpenVPN Access Server is a little bit slow, but it is very safe and always connects."
"There could be an easier way to set up the solution."
"It is not scalable."
"The interface could be a little bit better in future iterations."
"The high availability deployment is not very straightforward. They can make it simpler. OpenVPN does not support some of the additional protocols that Pulse Secure and Cisco AnyConnect support. They can include support for these additional protocols."
"OpenVPN Access Server could be improved in several areas. The encryption strength is inevitably lower compared with the latest technologies, and when I try to add features like two-factor authentication, the needed plugins and so on often are not really available or do not fit well."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is appropriately priced for what they're doing for us. Considering the protection provided, I feel their pricing is spot-on."
"We save a ton of money and time. Previously, the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools, prior to implementing them, had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged. It was just a ton of effort to do all that. That is where the savings from time and money come in."
"The solution is expensive. It's more expensive than the solution I previously used. Compared with the other cloud-based solutions, it's very competitive."
"OpenVPN Access Server was free for students. I don't know if you have to pay for an advanced version."
"I would say the product's pricing is a good value. I would recommend to other companies to implement it. I've seen other software, in tandem with the service, to be very expensive."
"OpenVPN Access Server is free and open source."
"The solution was free of charge."
"Open VPN Access Server is open-source and free of charge."
"It is an open-source solution, so we don't pay for anything."
"Begin with the community version and upgrade to paid one if the need arises."
"At one point I had to purchase addition connection licenses. I was very pleased with the pricing and licensing; so much easier than navigating the confusing jungle of Microsoft and Cisco licensing and pricing. That alone made the product a delight to manage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Construction Company
12%
Retailer
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise25
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto. Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which mak...
What is your primary use case for Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
People are mainly using it for zero trust web access. Menlo Secure is built from the ground up to provide zero basic access, and by doing it that way, it has multiple use cases. For example, it man...
What advice do you have for others considering Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
Secure file sharing and data protection is not exactly what Menlo Secure is designed to do. While it can handle some of these functions, people typically choose another technology for those specifi...
How does Fortinet FortiClient compare with Open VPN Access Server?
Fortinet FortiClient is a feature-rich solution that is easy to use and deploy without sacrificing safety and security. It has a very fast connection rate and has a built-in VPN. With this solution...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenVPN Access Server?
In terms of specific outcomes or metrics with OpenVPN Access Server, we have saved time because otherwise, we need to purchase other software and their software takes a great deal of time in terms ...
What needs improvement with OpenVPN Access Server?
OpenVPN Access Server can be improved by addressing the issue we faced with a single VPN server since it does not allow the creation of replicas without a load balancer, which we found to be an ava...
 

Also Known As

Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security
OpenVPN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Verizon, Amazon, Disney, HP, Microsoft, IBM, Samsung
Find out what your peers are saying about Menlo Secure vs. OpenVPN Access Server and other solutions. Updated: July 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.