As 2024 comes to a close, let's look at what’s changed—for Tailscale and in the broader landscape of secure networking. This year, the shift towards distributed work, increasingly complex regulatory requirements, and the growing awareness of Zero Trust principles all intersected with one universal truth: most people just want things to work.
At Tailscale, we believe that complexity is the enemy of security. Complexity breeds mistakes. Mistakes create vulnerabilities. The best networking solution isn’t the one with the longest list of acronyms; it’s the one that quietly does its job and gets out of your way. With that in mind, we’ve worked hard this year to deliver features and tools that make secure networking simpler, smarter, and more accessible, while navigating the challenges of this ever-changing world.
Here’s a look back at what we accomplished this year and how we fit into the bigger picture.
Simplifying security, one release at a time
This year, we delivered a steady stream of updates, each rooted in our commitment to simplicity. You can see the full list in our changelog, but beyond the features, we’re proud of the philosophies behind them. Simplicity was our north star. Why? Because simplicity doesn’t just reduce headaches—it reduces vulnerabilities. It’s a way to minimize mistakes, limit attack surfaces, and let teams focus on what matters.
Highlights include:
- Tailscale SSH became generally available in March, bringing seamless SSH authentication and authorization directly to your tailnet.
- We reached 5,000 paying teams in March, from hobbyist setups to massive industrial networks. And a lot more since then.
- We brought back a Personal Plus plan, making Tailscale even more accessible to small groups, families, and people who just want to pay us.
- System policies and device posture management moved to general availability, enabling better management of clients and devices across organizations.
- We added more log streaming destinations, including S3-compatible buckets, to make it easier to manage logs at scale.
- Auto-updates became generally available, a quality-of-life improvement if you're managing fleets of Tailscale clients.
- We added Google Workspace user and group sync and Microsoft Entra ID access streamlining identity management for organizations using these popular platforms.
- We expanded our device posture management integrations to include 1Password (Kolide) device trust, Crowdstrike Falcon and SentinelOne among others to give organizations more options to enforce secure access policies.
- And, yes, we earned the AWS Networking Competency and were recognized in Deloitte’s Fast 50 as one of Canada’s fastest-growing companies. Awards are cool and all, but they’re just the cherry on top of the trust we’ve earned from our users.
These aren’t just updates or recognition. They’re proof that secure, reliable connectivity doesn’t need to be complicated to be effective. When networking is simple, it fades into the background—and that’s when it’s truly working.
A year of change and growth
2024 was a year of adaptation and focus. As the tech industry navigated economic shifts, many companies had to reconsider their priorities. At Tailscale, we saw this as an opportunity to double down on what matters most: delivering simple, reliable, and secure networking solutions for teams and companies of every size. This year we landed our biggest customers ever, onboarded the most new midmarket customers ever… and doubled the number of people on our generous free plan.
Every feature we shipped reflected careful prioritization—whether it was enhancing enterprise capabilities with tools like log streaming or making Tailscale even more accessible for families and hobbyists.
One thing stood out this year: simplicity scales. From startups to global enterprises and homelab enthusiasts, the demand for secure, seamless connectivity is universal. Staying true to our mission of reducing complexity, we’re continuing to build solutions that work for everyone, everywhere.
A big thank you
Reflecting on 2024, none of this progress would have been possible without the trust of our users, the creativity of our partners, and the dedication of the Tailscale team. Your feedback, both good and bad, has shaped what we built this year. Thank you for being part of the journey, whether you’ve contributed code, reported a bug, shared Tailscale with your friends, or simply used our product to make your life a little easier.
Looking forward
As we head into 2025, we’re not slowing down. The world of networking is evolving rapidly, with growing interest in automation, edge computing, kubernetes, service mesh, and privacy-first design. We’re excited to explore how Tailscale can lead in these areas.
We’re already working on new features, deeper integrations, and ways to make secure networking even simpler. More on that soon!
But for now, let’s pause and celebrate what we’ve built together. Here’s to another year of simplifying secure networking, one connection at a time. See you in 2025!
Avery Pennarun
