Is Zscaler worth the price for a 50-person startup? 6-month review

Hey everyone 👋 We're a ~50 person SaaS startup, and I’ve been managing our move to Zscaler for the past six months. I wanted to share a real-world take from a smaller team perspective, since so much of the talk is about huge enterprises.

For us, the security uplift has been solid—no complaints there. Our remote team feels safer, and the admin controls are powerful. But the price tag is *significant* for our size. We're paying a lot for features we barely touch, and the initial setup was a real project management lift. I sometimes wonder if a simpler, cheaper stack could have gotten us 80% of the way here. Curious if other smaller companies have found the ROI worth it, or if you looked at alternatives?