Hey folks, I've been tasked with setting up a secure, zero-trust network for our small dev team to access our private AWS resources (RDS, ElastiCache, internal APIs). We're fully cloud-based, no on-prem. The shortlist has come down to Twingate and Netmaker.
I've spun up test instances for both over the last two weeks. My gut is leaning one way, but I'd love to hear from others who've made this choice, especially at a similar scale.
Here's my quick breakdown:
**Netmaker** feels incredibly powerful and performant, being a WireGuard wrapper. The fact it creates a true mesh network is cool. I got it running on an ECS Fargate task, and the throughput was fantastic. However, the configuration felt... heavier. Managing the core server, UI, and making sure all the peers (and their WireGuard configs) are in sync required more attention. For a 10-person team, I'm worried it might be overkill and add operational overhead we didn't plan for.
**Twingate**, in contrast, was dead simple to deploy. Their Docker Compose setup for the Connector (which sits in our VPC) and the Relay was straightforward. The admin UI is clean, and onboarding a new team member takes minutes—they just install the client app and authenticate. The access model (defining who can reach which resources) is very intuitive. It's not a true mesh, but for our use-case of accessing backend services, that's fine.
My main hesitation is vendor lock-in and long-term cost vs. the open-source model of Netmaker. But for a small team where dev time is precious, the simplicity is a huge sell.
Has anyone else gone through this evaluation? Did you hit any specific pitfalls with either tool in an AWS-only environment? I'm particularly curious about:
- Reliability of the Twingate Connector over time.
- Any gotchas with Netmaker's Kubernetes or ECS deployment for a small stack.
Here's a snippet of how simple the Twingate Terraform for a resource was, which I loved:
```hcl
resource "twingate_remote_network" "aws_network" {
name = "aws-main-vpc"
}
resource "twingate_connector" "aws_connector" {
remote_network_id = twingate_remote_network.aws_network.id
}
resource "twingate_resource" "prod_rds" {
name = "prod-postgres"
address = "prod-db.cluster-xxxx.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com"
remote_network_id = twingate_remote_network.aws_network.id
access {
group_id = twingate_group.devs.id
}
}
```
~d
The simplicity you're praising with Twingate comes with its own long term tax. You're trading initial setup ease for a managed service vendor lock-in, which is exactly the kind of pricing trap AWS loves. Their Docker Compose setup is a Trojan horse for a SaaS billing model.
> For a 10-person team, I'm worried it might be overkill.
Netmaker's operational overhead is a known quantity - it's a predictable EC2 or Fargate cost. Twingate's overhead is a black box of future per-user fees and feature-gated upgrades. You're just shifting the complexity from your team's time to your CFO's spreadsheet later.
Run the numbers on what a "simple" Twingate deployment will cost in three years versus the compute for a self-hosted Netmaker core. The answer usually isn't pretty.
-- cost first
I get where you're coming from with the simplicity of Twingate's setup - felt the same rush of relief during my initial deployment. But that "dead simple" feeling is the exact playbook every modern SaaS uses to get you in the door. You're handing them the keys to your network perimeter.
I made a similar choice for a 15-person team using HubSpot's native tools for ease, only to hit a hard wall when our custom object count grew. The migration out was a multi-month nightmare of API limits and data reconciliation. You're not just managing a VPN, you're creating a critical path for your entire dev team's access. That operational overhead you're worried about with Netmaker? It's transparent and under your control. The complexity with Twingate is abstracted away until your renewal quote arrives, and you realize you're funding their next feature tier you don't even need.
Stick with the heavier config you can see. The 10-person scale is precisely where you can absorb the learning curve once and own it forever.
Okay, so you got Netmaker running on Fargate? That's really cool. I'm looking at a similar setup, but I'm still a bit intimidated by the infrastructure side.
The Twingate onboarding speed you mentioned is a huge plus for me. We're small and team members sometimes come and go on short contracts. That "minutes to onboard" thing is tempting.
But, like, how much are you actually *managing* with Netmaker now that it's deployed? Is it mostly set-and-forget, or are you constantly tweaking configs?
You're exactly right to highlight that operational overhead, but I think you're misdiagnosing the symptom. The configuration feels heavier because it *is* heavier, by design. You're holding the entire blueprint, not just renting a finished room.
That "minutes to onboard" allure with Twingate is precisely the trap. You're trading a known, finite setup cost (your team's time configuring Netmaker once) for an infinite, variable, and perpetually escalating operational cost (their per-user SaaS fee). The complexity isn't gone, it's just been monetized and handed to a vendor. Your future self will be managing budget approvals and price increase negotiations, not a few straightforward config files.
What happens when you need to peer with a new cloud account, or integrate with an obscure IdP? With Netmaker, you have the raw WireGuard control to make it work, perhaps messily. With Twingate, you file a feature request and wait, or discover it's an "enterprise tier" add-on. The initial speed bump you're hitting now is an investment in never needing permission to solve your own problems.
Price ≠ value.