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Menlo Secure vs Tailscale 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)
Tailscale
Ranking in ZTNA
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (2nd)
 

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 Tailscale is 6.6%, down from 18.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
ZTNA Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Tailscale6.6%
Menlo Secure2.0%
Other91.4%
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.
Adeniyi Stephen - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at CloudKite.io
Secure access has simplified hybrid connectivity and has unified multi-cluster workflows
I would say that in terms of Tailscale, if I have so many tailnets I need to connect to, there are some issues in the login process that need a little bit of attention from the Tailscale team. Sometimes, you would probably need to restart your entire system for it to connect. As a DevOps as a Service engineer, I have so many clients that are using Tailscale, and I would need to connect to maybe five different tailnets because they are different clients. Client A might have a Tailscale, Client B, Client C, and so on. When changing between tailnets, sometimes it hangs. Sometimes you might need to restart your entire system. This is a bit of a headache in that aspect. However, I believe if you are just using a particular tailnet, just one, then it is quite easy and there won't be any headache. For me, I think it can be improved in the aspect of having multiple tailnets to connect to. A good refresh on the Tailscale side and the backend side to refresh the connection anytime there is a new connection to be made would be helpful. Instead of needing to restart the system, it should be able to refresh itself. The connection side and connecting to multiple Tailscale instances can be problematic, and sometimes you have to restart your system when switching between them. The ACL sometimes is like another language on its own entirely. It is fine, but they need to make it in a YAML format instead of the current format because it is quite new and something you have to go and study. If they can make it like a YAML format, that would be better. Aside from the switching which I mentioned and the fact that you have to relearn their ACL, if the ACL could be in a YAML format instead of JSON format, that would be beneficial. I don't think there is much they can do about the switching of tailnets, but if they can have a YAML format of the ACL, that would be good. Every other thing is a ten out of ten. The connection-wise is easy to set up and easy to install. It is good to have things connected all together from on-premises, from so many environments, and even exit nodes as well. It is good overall. The pricing, I think Tailscale can be a little bit on the higher side. It is not for teams with just small users. If you want to set it up for small users and a small startup, I don't think you can afford it and might need to go to other open-source alternatives. It is good for teams that have maybe fifty plus users or one hundred users. In terms of pricing, I would say it is on the higher side, but it is worth it. The price is worth the functionality. As a user, I would say it is more on the higher side, but based on its functionality, it is worth the price.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is invisible to our end users, so it doesn't have any impact on their work or performance."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"We are not aware of a single compromise from the web since implementing the solution."
"The fact that it is a cloud proxy solution is another feature we like. For example, if you acquire a new company, you can use it to protect that new company without the need to install anything physically on their networks."
"This security technology addresses risk and enables people to conduct business without that risk, which is where the ROI is realized."
"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."
"Tailscale is incredibly easy to use, and I will always sing its praises."
"Tailscale is a very solid framework and is very useful for smaller companies if they want to start out or even bigger companies who want to have a robust network of devices that they want to manage."
"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."
"Tailscale's best features include the ability to seamlessly integrate and add devices, exit nodes, a very simple UI that is easy to set up, and importantly, access to a CLI so that my agents can set up Tailscale for me."
"Tailscale has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to speed up development without worrying about GDPR restrictions."
"Tailscale definitely saves me a lot of time securing our server because I can just install Tailscale, close many ports, and then share them with my teammates while benefiting from its very generous free tier."
"The most positive impact Tailscale has had on my organization is significant."
"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."
 

Cons

"The user monitoring could still be improved."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Currently, if Tailscale goes down, our services are not operable."
"I think Tailscale can be improved by enhancing the free side of things."
"Sometimes you might need to restart your entire system for it to connect."
"Another issue is that when I use Tailscale with other alternatives such as Radmin and ZeroTier, it takes high priority and takes all the incoming connections, even if the other alternative has a different IP scope."
"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."
"I choose a seven because it sells what it does honestly, but I believe some more flexibility might be needed."
"However, I think improvements could be made in the support for UI clients, especially on Linux machines."
"Regarding how Tailscale can be improved, I think for free users, there are some limited options."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It is appropriately priced for what they're doing for us. Considering the protection provided, I feel their pricing is spot-on."
"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."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Construction Company
12%
Retailer
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise4
 

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...
What needs improvement with Tailscale?
I have a pretty basic use of Tailscale. I do not deploy it for a big organization, so I am generally happy with the product itself and have no special requests for a different feature that I would ...
What is your primary use case for Tailscale?
My main use case for Tailscale is to access my home network remotely. In my home network, I have deployed a wide range of microservices. For example, I use Tailscale to back up my pictures, and I n...
What advice do you have for others considering Tailscale?
I rate Tailscale overall a ten out of ten. I chose ten out of ten because the ease of installation, access to documentation, friendly UI, ease of tracking and debugging, and the facility I have to ...
 

Also Known As

Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Bamboo Health, Duolingo, Shiguredo, Instacart, Corelight, Machinify, Bolt, Mercari, Cobalt, Yugabyte, Jasper, VersaBank, Zego, Gini and Finter
Find out what your peers are saying about Menlo Secure vs. Tailscale and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.