this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025
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Corporate VPN startup Tailscale secures $230 million CAD Series C on back of “surprising” growth

Pennarun confirmed the company had been approached by potential acquirers, but told BetaKit that the company intends to grow as a private company and work towards an initial public offering (IPO).

“Tailscale intends to remain independent and we are on a likely IPO track, although any IPO is several years out,” Pennarun said. “Meanwhile, we have an extremely efficient business model, rapid revenue acceleration, and a long runway that allows us to become profitable when needed, which means we can weather all kinds of economic storms.”

Keep that in mind as you ponder whether and when to switch to self-hosting Headscale.

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[–] PumaStoleMyBluff@lemmy.world 4 points 7 hours ago

become profitable when needed

By what, laying off all QA and support staff and half your developers the moment a single quarterly earnings report isn't spotlessly gilded?

[–] bonsai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 13 hours ago (3 children)

I never really understood the point of using Tailscale over plain ol' WireGuard. I mean I guess if youve got a dozen+ nodes but I feel like most laymens topologies won't be complex beyond a regular old wireguard config

[–] Jason2357@lemmy.ca 3 points 7 hours ago

NAT punching and proxying when a p2p connection between any 2 nodes cannot be achieved. It’s a world of difference with mobile devices when they always see each other, all the time. However, headscale does all that.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 8 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Wireguard doesn't do NAT/Firewall traversal nor does it have SSO

Tailscale manages the underlying Wireguard for you. I would be great if Wireguard had native NAT traversal but that isn't the case.

[–] jbk@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 12 hours ago (1 children)
[–] bonsai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 12 hours ago

I mean sure, but I don't think it's simpler than setting up a wireguard config IMO. For tailscale you gotta make an account, register devices, connect them. Feel like wireguard is about the same except you don't have to make an account.

[–] rarbg@lemmy.zip 16 points 19 hours ago

Nerds stop recommending corporate crap: challenge: impossible

[–] tills13@lemmy.world 4 points 14 hours ago
[–] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 8 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

And here I am, still using OpenVPN in 2025 lol

[–] phx@lemmy.ca 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Used to run OpenVPN. Tried Wireguard and the performance was much better, although lacking some of the features some might need/want fit credential-based logins etc

[–] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, OpenVPN definitely doesn't have light spec requirements 😅 thankfully hardware is unfathomably powerful these days.

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 2 points 7 hours ago

Sure but wireguards connection is just faster.

[–] Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 17 points 1 day ago (8 children)

Crap, I really need to switch of Tailscale but currently it is an easy way for me to access my stuff outside of home as a temporary solution while I am on a 5G modem.

[–] koka@lemmy.world 6 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

I can recommend to take a look at netbird.io

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 11 hours ago

Much more user friendly

Json is awful for config

[–] unit327@lemmy.zip 8 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I can't. I tried it first and installed it on my phone from f-droid. After opening it up, it connected to an already existing network with other people's old machines from years ago on it. I was horrified.

So then I tried to delete my whole account and couldn't due to an error. I sent them an email about it and they took like two weeks to respond.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

Netbird isn't on F-droid

Are we talking about the same thing?

[–] unit327@lemmy.zip 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)
[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 9 hours ago

It has never been on F-droid. I've been following the service since it started. It didn't even have a mobile app not that long ago.

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[–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 33 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think I'll just keep using tailscale until they start enshittifying, and then set up a Headscale instance on a VPS - no need to take this step ahead of time, right?

I mean, all the people saying they can avoid any issues by doing the above - what's to stop Tailscale dropping support for Headscale in future if they're serious about enshitification? Their Linux & Android clients are open source, but not IOS or Windows so they could easily block access for them.

My point being - I'll worry when there is something substantial to worry about, til then they can know I'm using like 3 devices and a github account to authenticate. MagicDNS and the reliability of the clients is just too good for me to switch over mild funding concerns.

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[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 50 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

Join our Discord server for a chat and community support.

Sigh...

And even worse:

Everything in Tailscale is Open Source, except the GUI clients for proprietary OS (Windows and macOS/iOS), and the control server.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 46 points 1 day ago

everything is open source except half of all things.

Lol

[–] heals@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 1 day ago (4 children)

To be fair, anything the GUI clients do can be done with the CLI which is still open source and on all desktop platforms and headscale is literally their open source control server.

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[–] Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub 28 points 1 day ago (5 children)

I just replaced my entire setup with base wireguard as a challenge, easier than I expected it to be, and not hard to mimic tailscale.

[–] unit327@lemmy.zip 5 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

If you just have to talk from many devices to the one server sure, but Tailscale sure makes it easy for many to many. Also if a direct connection is impossible (e.g. firewall of china, CGNAT etc) tailscale puts a relay server in the middle for you.

[–] Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub 3 points 18 hours ago

My entire setup might not be your entire setup, I have the basic functionality of connecting multiple systems into one mesh network. That's all I needed so it's all I did.

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[–] httperror418@lemmy.world 75 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I'm unsure if it has been mentioned, but a similar tool which is open source (you can run the backend unlike tailscale), netbird

https://netbird.io/

[–] sonosonic@lemy.lol 1 points 1 hour ago

Is there an issue with Netbird's servers at the moment? In my testing devices are connected and reach eachother, but the web admin is missing a lot of functionality compared to what's in the docs. The peer devices section is there, but everything else, user settings, rules etc, isn't showing/says I don't have admin permission (of my own account.. Lol?)

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 3 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

We've implemented netbird at my company, we're pretty happy with it overall.

The main drawback is that it has no way of handling multiple different accounts on the same machine, and they don't seem to have any plans for ever really solving that. As long as you can live with that, it's a good solution.

Support is a mixed bag. Mostly just a slack server, kind of lacking in what I'd call enterprise level support. But development seems to be moving at a rapid pace, and they're definitely in that "Small but eager" stage where everything happens quickly. I've reported bugs and had them fixed the same day.

Everything is open source. Backend, clients, the whole bag. So if they ever try to enshittify, you can just take your ball and leave.

Also, the security tools are really cool. Instead of writing out firewall rules by hand like Tailscale, they have a really nice, really simple GUI for setting up all your ACLs. I found it very intuitive.

[–] httperror418@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago

Thank you for your insight, I'm assuming the only public part is the UI and coturn (the bit that enables two clients between firewalls to hole-punch)?

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