Hey everyone, new here! I’m a junior DevOps engineer, and my small startup (around 20 people) is looking at cloud security and web gateway solutions. We've been evaluating iboss, and honestly, it feels a bit overwhelming for our scale and my current skill level. The feature set is massive, which is great, but the configuration seems complex.
I'm curious if there are simpler, more developer-friendly alternatives that still handle core security needs like secure web gateway, DNS filtering, and maybe some basic zero-trust network access. We're already using GitHub Actions for CI/CD and Docker, so something that integrates smoothly or has a straightforward API would be a huge plus.
What are you all using in similar-sized tech teams? I'd love to hear about:
- Tools that are easier to get started with
- Any gotchas you ran into during setup
- Rough pricing for a small team (if you're comfortable sharing)
For example, I'm comfortable with config-as-code, so a tool that lets me define policies in a YAML file would be amazing. Something like this snippet from our GitHub Actions workflow is the level of complexity I can handle reliably:
```yaml
- name: Deploy
uses: some-action@v2
with:
config-file: ./security-policies.yaml
```
Thanks in advance for any pointers! Still learning the ropes of the infrastructure security side of things.
Learning by breaking
I'm a platform lead at a 25-person SaaS shop. We do 100% cloud, mostly EKS and Fargate. We run Perimeter 81 for our core secure web gateway and zero-trust network access.
**Core Comparison**
* **Deployment & API**: Perimeter 81's admin API is a simple REST interface. I manage 90% of our config (users, groups, policies) via Terraform. iboss has an API, but it's a beast and the docs are enterprise-focused. You *can* define gateway rules in a YAML-like structure in P81.
* **Pricing**: iboss is built for enterprises with big budgets. P81 for a team of 20, with SWG and basic ZTNA, will run you about $8-10/user/month on an annual contract. No hidden per-gateway fees at this scale.
* **Learning Curve**: A junior devops engineer can get P81's core features (web filtering, DNS) stood up in an afternoon. The UI is straightforward. iboss took me 2 days just to orient myself in a past role; it's an acquired taste.
* **Where It Breaks**: P81's internal reporting is basic. It'll tell you what's blocked, but building custom compliance reports is a manual export-and-spreadsheet job. If you need deep, automated compliance reporting out of the box, it's not the one.
**Your Pick**
I'd recommend you look at Perimeter 81. It fits the "simpler, developer-friendly" need for core SWG and ZTNA. If you're *only* doing DNS filtering and don't need the full proxy, then Cloudflare Gateway ($7/user/mo for Zero Trust) is a contender, but tell us if you need on-prem device support or just cloud apps.
slow pipelines make me cranky
Great point on Perimeter 81's API and Terraform support. That's a huge win for a small team.
I'd just add a caveat on their agent stability for Linux workstations. We tried them a while back, and the Linux agent felt like a second-class citizen compared to the Windows/Mac ones - occasional connection drops that required a restart. Might be fine if your team is mostly on Macs, but worth testing if you have engineers on Ubuntu or other distros.
Your pricing estimate tracks with what I've seen. The cost leap from that to something like Zscaler or iboss is pretty staggering for a 20-person shop.
Cloud cost nerd. No, I don't use Reserved Instances.
The Linux agent issue is a dealbreaker if you have more than a couple Linux workstations.
We switched to Tailscale for that exact reason. It's a different model, agentless browser isolation vs a full SWG, but the reliability was night and day. Their admin controls and pricing are in the same ballpark.
The tradeoff is less granular web filtering. You'd need to pair it with a DNS filter like Cloudflare Gateway (free tier covers 50 users).
Numbers don't lie.
Yeah, the Linux agent thing is a real headache. We had similar instability with another vendor's client on our dev's Fedora machines.
I think the combo of Tailscale for ZTNA and a separate DNS filter is a clever workaround. For the web filtering piece, you could also run your own policy inside the cluster. Something like a DNS filter deployed as a DaemonSet or via CoreDNS, paired with a network policy engine like Cilium, could give you that control without a third-party agent. It's more DIY, but it's completely under your k8s umbrella.
Have you looked at how Cloudflare Gateway's DNS policies play with Tailscale subnet routes? I'm curious if you run into any weird hairpinning when traffic routes through both.
YAML is not a programming language, but I treat it like one.