Somebody needs the accounts file that lives on the office server, and they are at home. The options on the table are all bad: open a port on the router and hope, put the file in a personal Dropbox, or drive in on a Saturday. The traditional answer is a VPN, which means a VPN server, a fixed IP, firewall rules and a support call every time somebody's connection drops. Tailscale is the modern way round that, and for most small offices it is simpler than what you have now.
What Tailscale actually is
Tailscale builds a private network between your devices, wherever they are. The office server, the manager's laptop at home, the tablet on site — each one gets a permanent address that works from anywhere, and they talk to each other directly, encrypted. There is no VPN server to run, no port to open on your router, and no fixed IP address to pay for.
People sign in with the accounts you already use — Microsoft 365 or Google — so there is no separate password list to maintain. If somebody leaves and you disable their work account, their access to the network dies with it.
Where it earns its keep
Nothing is exposed to the internet. This is the real prize. A remote desktop port left open on a router is one of the commonest ways a small business gets ransomware. With Tailscale that port stays shut and the machine is reachable only by devices you have approved.
It survives bad connections. Hotel Wi-Fi, 4G on a train, a router at home that changes address weekly — the connection re-establishes itself without anybody phoning you about it.
You can give access to one thing, not everything. The bookkeeper can reach the accounts machine and nothing else. A contractor can reach one server for the length of the project. Traditional VPNs tend to be all-or-nothing, and in practice everybody ends up on the whole network.
It is free for small teams. Worth saying plainly: Tailscale's own plan covers a small business at no cost, and there are paid tiers only when you need company-wide policy controls. We charge for setting it up properly, not for the software.
The questions owners actually ask
Is it as secure as a proper VPN? It uses the same encryption as modern VPNs and removes the part people usually get wrong — the exposed server. The weak point is not the technology, it is who you approve and what you let them reach, which is exactly what setup is for.
Does it slow things down? Devices connect directly to each other where the network allows, so files move at the speed of your lines rather than bouncing through somebody's data centre.
What if Tailscale disappears tomorrow? A fair question for any supplier. The underlying protocol is WireGuard, an open standard, and the same job can be done with a self-hosted alternative. If that matters to you, say so before we start and we will build it that way.
When you should not bother
If everything you use is already in Microsoft 365 and nobody needs to reach a machine in the office, you do not need a private network at all — you need conditional access rules in the tenant you already pay for. If you have one person working remotely once a month, a remote support tool is cheaper and simpler. And if your office server is old and unpatched, making it reachable from anywhere is the wrong first step; fix the server first.
What it costs with us
Setting up a private network is £150 one-off. That covers connecting your office machines and staff devices, the access rules — who can reach what — sign-in tied to your Microsoft 365 or Google accounts, and a short written note for your team on how to connect. If you are on a support contract with us, changes afterwards are part of it.
Most businesses do not need a server for this at all. If you do want one — a machine that stays online so the office network is reachable even when the office PCs are off — that is a Managed VPS from £30 a month, with the operating system, monitoring and backups included.
Not sure whether the problem is remote access or something further upstream? The free IT health check looks at the whole picture and the written report is yours regardless of what you decide.
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When your own file server makes sense · Keeping folders identical without a cloud account