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Comment on Tailscale Services GA: App-aware connectivity with more control

Ownership, size and profit growth strategy. My ISP is a massively profitable regulated oligopoly. They aren’t providing a free service today that they’ll have to monetize down the line to compensate for the time operating on VC funding. Tailscale, awesome as it is today, is in my view guaranteed to enshittify over time as they start getting pressed to grow profit. That’s not too much of a problem for me since the clients I use are open source and there’s an alternative open source server. If I used features unavailable in Headscale or were in over my head and unable to self-host Headscale, I might be in a bad time some time down the line.

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irmadlad@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Would it make you feel better if you paid Tailscale for one of their plans? It’s not like they are just giving away their whole enterprise. It’s fairly trivial for them to give free services, kind of like Cloudflare, Oracle, et al. Reading a bit reveals:

Tailscale’s estimated annual revenue is currently $45.2M per year.

Tailscale’s estimated revenue per employee is $230,489

Tailscale’s total funding is $277M.

Tailscale’s current valuation is $1.5B. (April 2025)

Tailscale has 196 Employees.

Tailscale grew their employee count by 23% last year.

That seems pretty profitable. Enshitification happens. It’s been going on since I was born. If it’s free on the internet, and later it becomes a paid service, then I just find something else that fits. Or pony up the cheapest plan they have, which currently is their Personal Plus @ $5 USD per month. I don’t mind paying for a good service and $5 USD is burger from McDonalds. Extremely well under what most people put into a hobby. Will prices increase? Maybe…everything goes up. Rarely do services and utilities go down in price. When the price points are no longer justifiable, again, I look for something else that fits.
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- non_burglar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  
  Enshitification happens.
  
  I don’t think that’s a given necessarily, I think it’s a common pattern under the vc funding -> IPO model.
  
  But companies like Steam and Patagonia show that companies don’t all have to follow the same predictable enshittification arc.
  
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- kurcatovium@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  There’s also Netbird, worth checking out.
  
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  - irmadlad@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I’ve heard great things about Netbird. There are all manner of choices. Their team plan @ $5 USD looks rather generous for homelab operation.
    
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  - Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Netbird and Pangolin too.
    
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- avidamoeba@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  That’s one way to look at it. I used to look at paid VC-funded services like that. I no longer do as I’ve observed services I pad good money for get more expensive much faster than inflation and decrease in quality and features at the same time. It’s one reason I self-host many services I used to pay third parties for. I now look to alternatives from the get go and derisk existing dependencies. To be clear - profitability isn’t merely the only problem. The ownership and its profit growth strategy (and expecrations) are. Those are not the same in a decades old ISP and a VC-funded startup.
  
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