Everyone's raving about SASE and zero-trust, and now my firm is being pushed to "modernize" our VPN. We're a 20-person design agency with a mix of local and remote creatives. The shortlist, from our "forward-thinking" MSP, is down to Absolute Secure Access and Perimeter 81.
I'm inherently skeptical of any product with "Absolute" in the name, and Perimeter 81's marketing feels equally slick. Before we get sold a bill of goods, I want the unvarnished take from people who actually have to live with these tools.
My primary concerns for our use case:
* **Performance for large file transfers:** Designers are constantly moving multi-gigabyte Adobe Creative Suite files and video assets. A latency-heavy tunnel is a productivity killer. Does either solution have a noticeable overhead?
* **True clientless access for contractors:** We bring in freelance talent for short projects. Needing to install a full agent on their personal machines is a non-starter. Which platform handles this better without creating a security black hole?
* **The hidden cost of "features":** Both seem to bundle in a million things we don't need (cloud firewall, SWG). Does pricing get punitive if you just want a solid zero-trust network access (ZTNA) layer without the full suite?
* **Practical onboarding/offboarding:** With project-based hires, we're constantly adding and removing users. Which admin panel actually makes this quick and foolproof?
I've read the datasheets. I want to know about the gotchas. Tell me about the weird disconnects, the support ticket nightmares, or the billing surprises after the first year. Specifically for a small, non-technical team where the "security team" is also the office manager.
Question everything