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

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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kurcatovium@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
There’s also Netbird, worth checking out.

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- irmadlad@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Netbird and Pangolin too.
  
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non_burglar@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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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avidamoeba@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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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