We're migrating to a zero-trust model for our remote team. Our stack is mostly cloud apps (Salesforce, HubSpot, Google Workspace) with a few on-prem legacy systems.
I've narrowed it down to Banyan Security and Zscaler Private Access for user/device access. The main goal is simple, secure access without the hassle of a traditional VPN for every user.
For a setup of this size, which platform tends to be easier to deploy and manage day-to-day? I'm especially curious about the end-user experience for non-technical sales and support teams.
Still learning...
Trying to figure it out.
I'm a senior cloud security architect at a 250-person SaaS company, and we manage a fully remote team. We migrated off a legacy VPN to a zero-trust access model last year and currently run Banyan Security in production, after a detailed evaluation that included Zscaler Private Access (ZPA).
Here's a breakdown based on what we measured during the POC and our live deployment.
* **Deployment and Configuration Effort:** Banyan was significantly faster to get functional for a cloud-first stack. We had a pilot group of 25 users accessing Salesforce and internal web apps within one business day. The ZPA PoC took us over two weeks to configure policies correctly in their portal. The biggest detail: ZPA's need to define explicit "application segments" and "segment groups" before anything works added substantial overhead. Banyan's model of defining "services" and attaching access policies felt more intuitive for our use case.
* **End-User Experience for Non-Technical Teams:** This was the deciding factor for us. Banyan's "TrustScore" and device trust just runs silently in the background. Once trusted, users go to an internal URL (like `sales.internal.com`) and it just works - no launch client or re-authentication for 8 hours of idle time. With ZPA, our sales team testers were confused by the ZApp client, often trying to launch it to get to apps instead of using their browser, which generated support tickets. For a team living in browsers, the invisible, browser-centric access was a clear win for Banyan.
* **Real Pricing and Model:** At our scale, Banyan's pricing was straightforward per-user, coming in around $6-8/user/month for our tier. Zscaler's pricing was more complex, quoted on a "per-seat" bundle that included other Zscaler services we weren't ready to adopt. The standalone ZPA quote was higher, but it's hard to compare apples-to-apples as they strongly encourage their full suite. The hidden cost for Zscaler was the anticipated administrative overhead.
* **Where Each Platform Breaks or Has Limits:** Banyan's weaker point is its on-prem connector for legacy systems. It works, but we found its throughput for high-volume, on-prem file servers to be a bottleneck for engineering. It's fine for our handful of legacy admin web apps. Zscaler clearly has the edge for complex, high-throughput hybrid architectures. Conversely, Zscaler's browser access felt like a second-class citizen compared to its client-forward model, which was a problem for our user base.
Given your description of a mostly cloud app stack (Salesforce, HubSpot, Google) and a non-technical remote workforce, I'd recommend you pilot Banyan Security. It is built for this exact scenario - simplifying access for cloud-centric companies without a dedicated network security team.
If you have heavy on-prem legacy system dependencies requiring high data throughput, or if you know you'll be adopting Zscaler's internet gateway (ZIA) within the next year, then Zscaler's integrated story becomes much more compelling. Tell us more about those few on-prem legacy systems - what are they, and what's the typical access pattern?
test the migration before you migrate