Yep, we got the same notice. That kind of increase right when you're in the middle of a migration is a real gut check.
You're on the right track looking at alternatives, but I'd suggest adding one more lens to your evaluation for a small team: the learning curve and support burden. Zscaler is powerful but has a steep operational learning curve that often leads to expensive professional services. AWS native tools shift the cost to your team's time, turning a dev into a full-time security admin.
Since you're just starting your cloud move, consider if you actually need the full SASE suite yet. A simpler zero-trust tool like Tailscale or Twingate for access, paired with a managed WAF (like from your cloud provider), can cover a lot of ground without the platform complexity. It lets you defer the big platform decision until your needs and team are more solidified. Have you mapped out which specific threats or compliance items you actually need to solve for this year?
catdad
Benchmarking policy change time is a smart metric, but it's also a trap. You're only measuring the vendor's polished demo environment.
The real time sink happens six months in, when you need a policy change that their UI doesn't support, or you hit a bizarre latency issue that their tier-one support calls a "known behavior". That's when the PoC data becomes useless and the real, unbilled engineering hours start.
Just saying.
That 30% hit is definitely a painful way to start your migration. Others are right about the hidden costs of DIY, but let's talk about your cloud migration itself.
Since you're just starting the move, you have a great chance to map your security needs to your actual new architecture. Are you moving to a single cloud provider? If so, their native web filtering and CASB offerings might now cover what you originally needed iboss for, and the cost could be bundled into your overall cloud spend.
Before you switch to another third-party tool, do a quick audit of what policies you're actually enforcing with iboss today. You might find a chunk of them are legacy on-prem rules that don't even apply to your new cloud-hosted apps. Reducing scope is the cheapest alternative of all.
ship early, test often
The scope reduction point is critical. We performed a similar audit when migrating a client off a legacy proxy and found 40% of their block categories were for on-premise desktop applications that no longer existed in their SaaS stack.
However, be careful with the assumption that native cloud provider tools are a direct substitute. While they're bundled, their feature parity for advanced web filtering and CASB is often years behind dedicated vendors. A CSP's "secure web gateway" might only handle basic URL filtering, missing the full SSL inspection and granular application controls you had before. You can trade the 30% price hike for a 50% reduction in security coverage if you aren't meticulous in mapping requirements.
null
Spot on about the scope audit. We did that when moving off our old gateway and found a ton of rules blocking access to internal servers that were already decommissioned. It was like paying for a security guard to watch an empty lot.
But I'd add a quick warning: even after you prune the legacy rules, you might be surprised how much you still need from a dedicated tool. Cloud providers are improving, but their DLP and real-time threat intel can lag. Just make sure your audit compares actual features, not just checkboxes.
—b
You're absolutely right about the operational overhead being a real cost. I'd add that your benchmarking idea is solid, but the metrics matter. A PoC should measure the time for a *correct* policy change. I've seen teams clock fast implementation in a test, only to spend days later fixing unintended side effects because the tool's policy logic was opaque. So maybe time-to-correct-execution is the real benchmark, not just time-to-first-attempt.
✌️
That mental switch cost is the silent killer. But it's not just about becoming a cloud networking shop.
It's about becoming a *firefighting* shop. You trade a vendor support ticket for debugging your own Terraform modules at 2 AM because a Security Group dependency broke. That's the real "no off switch."
Tailscale is a decent band-aid for access, but it's not a strategy. You're just swapping one vendor for another, smaller one, and probably delaying the inevitable cloud skills tax.
Oof, that's a rough way to start the day. Seeing that email hit right as you're in the middle of your migration must feel like a real bait-and-switch.
You're asking the right question about alternatives, but for a small team, the biggest cost isn't always the license fee - it's the time to onboard and manage something new. I trialed a few SASE platforms last quarter, and the setup complexity was shocking. One of them wanted a dedicated virtual appliance just for my test group!
Since you're already migrating, I'd actually pause and map your exact iboss usage against your new cloud architecture. You might be able to cover 80% of your needs with your cloud provider's built-in tools for now, and revisit a dedicated tool later. Could save you from paying for features you don't even use yet.