Hi everyone, I’m new here and trying to wrap my head around a big decision my team is facing. We’re a 500-person engineering team, mostly remote, and we need to replace our current VPN solution. Palo Alto’s GlobalProtect keeps coming up, but so does Twingate. The technical comparisons are out there, but I’m really stuck on the cost piece.
From what I’ve gathered, GlobalProtect often requires hardware appliances, plus licensing and support, which sounds like a big upfront capex hit. Twingate seems to be a cloud-native, subscription model. For those who have priced out both, is that the main difference? I’m trying to build a realistic 3-year TCO model.
My specific questions:
1. For 500 mobile users, are we looking at a per-user, per-month cost for Twingate that’s pretty straightforward? Does the price scale predictably?
2. With GlobalProtect, besides the obvious hardware, what are the hidden operational costs? More dedicated network staff? Significant bandwidth charges?
3. We’re heavy on AWS and GitHub. I’ve read Twingate can integrate directly with these, which might reduce some access management overhead. Does that translate to tangible cost savings, or is it more of a convenience thing?
I’m cautious about just comparing list prices. I’d love to hear from teams our size who made this switch. What surprised you in the final bill? Were there any gotchas with deployment or scaling that changed the cost equation? Thanks in advance for any insights you can share.