VPN Solutions For Small and Large Businesses

Last year, my company went fully remote. We had 12 people, no IT department, and a founder who thought a business VPN was something only banks and hospitals needed.

That changed when one of our developers logged into a client database from a coffee shop WiFi network. The network name was “Free_WiFi_Guest” and it did not even have a password. Our security-minded employee used his own judgment and did not access anything sensitive. But the incident made us realize something obvious. We were 12 people handling client data, proprietary code, and financial records, and we had zero control over how our team connected to the internet.

I spent the next three weeks researching, testing, and deploying a business VPN. I made mistakes. I overpaid for features we did not use. I underestimated how much my non-technical teammates would struggle with the setup. I also learned that most online guides are written by people who never actually onboarded a team. They test the software in a lab and write a review. They do not deal with the Slack messages at 9 PM from an employee who cannot access the shared drive because the VPN killed their connection.

This post is what I wish I had read before I started. It covers solutions for solo founders, small companies, and large enterprises. It tells you when to buy, when to skip it, and how to deploy it without creating a support ticket avalanche.

What a Business VPN Actually Does

A business VPN creates an encrypted tunnel between your employees’ devices and your company resources. That might mean your internal servers, your cloud infrastructure, or simply the public internet with a layer of protection on top.

For remote teams, the most common use case is simple. Your employee opens their laptop at home or in a cafe. The VPN client connects automatically. All their traffic is encrypted. If someone on the same network is sniffing packets, they see gibberish. If your employee needs to access an internal file server, the VPN routes them through your company network as if they were sitting in the office.

There are two main types. Remote access VPNs connect individual users to the company network. Site-to-site VPNs connect entire office locations to each other. Most small and medium businesses only need the first one. You only start thinking about site-to-site when you have multiple physical offices sharing internal resources.

Here is where it gets slightly technical, but it matters. Most business VPNs use one of three protocols. OpenVPN is the old standard. It is reliable, well-audited, and supported everywhere. WireGuard is newer, lighter, and generally faster. IKEv2 is common on mobile devices because it handles network switching well, like when your phone moves from WiFi to cellular data.

A good business VPN will let you choose which protocol to use, or at least default to the right one for your situation. Some providers, like Proton VPN, let you switch between them in the client settings. Others, like NordLayer, hide the choice entirely and optimize it for you. Neither approach is wrong, but if you have developers or security-conscious employees, they will appreciate having the option.

Split tunneling is another feature worth understanding. With split tunneling, you can route only company-related traffic through the VPN while letting personal traffic, like Netflix or Spotify, use the regular internet connection. This keeps speeds fast and reduces load on your VPN servers. Without split tunneling, everything goes through the VPN. That can slow down video calls, file uploads, and general browsing. Most modern business VPNs support split tunneling, but the quality of the implementation varies. Some let you define it by app. Others make you specify IP ranges, which is annoying if you are not technical.

Consumer VPN vs. Business VPN: Do Not Confuse Them

This is the mistake I almost made. I already had a personal NordVPN subscription. I thought I could just add my team to it or buy a family plan. That would have been a disaster.

Consumer VPNs are designed for one person to hide their browsing from their ISP, access geo-blocked content, or stay safe on public WiFi. They do not give you an admin dashboard. They do not let you enforce policies across a team. They do not provide audit logs. If an employee leaves your company, you cannot remotely revoke their access from a central console. You would have to change the shared password and hope they did not save it somewhere.

Business VPNs add centralized management, user provisioning, activity logs, and integration with identity providers like Google Workspace, Okta, or Azure AD. They also typically offer dedicated IP addresses, which means your company’s traffic always appears to come from the same range of IPs. This is important if you whitelist your office IP in services like AWS, GitHub, or your CRM. With a consumer VPN, your IP changes every time you connect, which breaks those whitelists.

The pricing models are also different. Consumer VPNs charge per account. Business VPNs charge per user or per seat, and they often have minimums. NordLayer, for example, requires at least five users on most plans. If you are a solo founder, a business VPN is overkill. If you have three or more people handling sensitive work, the business tier is worth the extra cost for the management features alone.

VPN Solutions for Small Companies (1 to 20 Employees)

If you are running a small company, you do not need Cisco. You do not need Fortinet. You do not need a three-day installation seminar.

What you need is something your team can install in under five minutes, manage from a web dashboard, and afford without eating your entire software budget.

NordLayer is the most common recommendation I saw during my research, and it is the one we eventually chose. It is built by the same company behind NordVPN, but it is designed for teams. You get a centralized admin panel, single sign-on, and the ability to assign different access levels to different team members. Pricing starts around $8 per user per month on annual billing, with a 5-user minimum. That put us at $40 per month total, which was reasonable.

The setup was straightforward. I created an organization, invited my team by email, and assigned them to groups. Our developers got access to the development server gateway. Our operations team got access to the internal wiki and file server. Our contractor, who only needed access to one project, got a restricted profile that could only reach a single IP address. That level of granular control is what separates a business VPN from a consumer one.

The downside is that NordLayer’s desktop apps are essentially rebranded NordVPN clients with extra business logic layered on top. They work fine, but they occasionally feel like consumer apps wearing a suit. The macOS version sometimes disconnects when my laptop sleeps, and I have to manually reconnect. It is a minor annoyance, but it happens often enough that I mention it.

Surfshark is the budget alternative. Their business plan includes unlimited device connections per user, which is generous if your team uses multiple laptops and phones. The admin panel is simpler than NordLayer, which is good if you do not have an IT person. The downside is that their business pricing is not fully transparent online. You have to fill out a form and wait for a quote, which I found annoying. For a small team that just wants to get protected quickly, the extra friction is a real drawback.

That said, Surfshark’s consumer product is excellent value, and the business tier inherits the same fast WireGuard implementation. If your primary concern is speed and cost, and you do not need advanced policy enforcement, Surfshark is worth the quote request.

Proton VPN for Business is what I would choose if privacy were my absolute top concern. Proton is based in Switzerland, runs audited no-logs infrastructure, and offers dedicated servers and IP addresses as add-ons. The control panel is clean. The pricing is higher than Surfshark, but you are paying for transparency and jurisdiction, not just features. Proton also bundles nicely with Proton Mail and Proton Drive if you want an all-in-one privacy ecosystem.

I tested Proton’s business tier for a week. The speeds were excellent. The interface was less flashy than NordLayer but more trustworthy-feeling. The only reason I did not choose it was the price. At our size, it would have cost nearly double what we paid for NordLayer, and I could not justify the premium for our specific threat model.

Tailscale is the option almost nobody talks about in traditional VPN roundups, but it is brilliant for small technical teams. Instead of routing all your traffic through a VPN server, Tailscale creates a peer-to-peer mesh network between your devices using WireGuard. It is incredibly fast because traffic does not need to bounce through a central server. It is also free for personal use and very cheap for small teams. The catch is that it is not a traditional VPN. It does not change your public IP or help you bypass geo-blocks. It simply connects your devices to each other securely. If your team only needs to access internal servers and does not care about encrypting general internet traffic, Tailscale is the best-kept secret in this space.

Perimeter 81 is another solid choice in the small-to-medium business range. It is a cloud-based VPN and zero-trust platform that includes features like malware protection, web filtering, and device posture checks. The interface is modern and the onboarding is smooth. Pricing starts around $8 per user per month with a 10-user minimum, so it is slightly more expensive than NordLayer for very small teams. I would look at Perimeter 81 if you want a VPN that can grow into a full security platform as you scale.

VPN Solutions for Large Business (20 to 500+ Employees)

Once you cross 50 employees, consumer VPNs with admin panels start to creak. You need centralized policy enforcement, device posture checks, and integration with your existing identity provider.

Cisco Secure Client (formerly AnyConnect) is the standard in enterprise environments for a reason. It does system health checks before allowing a connection. It can verify that a device has antivirus installed, is running a patched operating system, and belongs to your corporate domain. It is overkill for a 20-person team. For a 500-person organization with compliance requirements, it makes sense. The catch is that pricing is quote-only and implementation requires Cisco expertise. You are not setting this up yourself. You are hiring a consultant or dedicating an internal IT resource to it.

Fortinet FortiClient is what I would look at if I wanted VPN access bundled with endpoint security. It combines remote access with vulnerability scanning, web filtering, and malware protection. The management console is powerful but complex. This is not a “sign up and go” product. You will need an IT team to configure it properly. The pricing is also quote-only, but industry estimates put it in the $10 to $20 per user per month range for mid-market deployments, plus hardware costs if you run your own FortiGate appliance.

Palo Alto Prisma Access is the premium option for companies that want cloud-delivered security. It is part of Palo Alto’s larger SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) portfolio. Prisma Access replaces traditional VPN with a cloud-native architecture that scales automatically. It includes advanced threat prevention, data loss prevention, and cloud access security broker features. This is not a VPN in the traditional sense. It is a full network security platform delivered from the cloud. Pricing is enterprise-level and requires a multi-year commitment. If you are a CTO at a 1,000-person company evaluating your security stack, this belongs on your shortlist. If you are a founder with 15 employees, look away.

ZScaler Private Access is not technically a VPN. It is a zero-trust network access solution. Instead of connecting users to your entire network, it connects them to specific applications based on identity and device context. This reduces the attack surface dramatically. If I were building a security program from scratch at a large company today, I would seriously consider skipping traditional VPN entirely and going straight to zero trust. It is more expensive and harder to implement, but it is where the industry is heading. Gartner predicts that by 2027, 60% of enterprises will have phased out traditional VPN in favor of zero trust. That does not mean you need to do it today, but it is worth knowing where the trend is moving.

Compliance and Regulatory Considerations

If your business handles health data, financial records, or operates in the European Union, your VPN choice might be dictated by compliance requirements rather than features.

HIPAA does not explicitly require a VPN, but it does require safeguards for electronic protected health information. A VPN that encrypts data in transit is a common way to satisfy that requirement. If you are a healthcare startup or a vendor handling medical data, make sure your VPN provider is willing to sign a Business Associate Agreement. Most consumer VPNs will not. Business-focused providers like NordLayer and Perimeter 81 will.

GDPR and the broader EU data protection framework emphasize data sovereignty. If your team includes EU-based employees, you need to know where your VPN provider processes logs and metadata. Proton VPN, based in Switzerland, has a strong advantage here. Swiss privacy law is among the strictest in the world. US-based providers may be subject to the CLOUD Act, which allows US law enforcement to request data stored on American companies’ servers regardless of where those servers are physically located. For some European companies, this is a dealbreaker.

SOC 2 Type II certification is another thing to look for if you serve enterprise clients. It is not a guarantee of security, but it signals that the provider has been audited by a third party on its controls. NordLayer and Perimeter 81 both hold SOC 2 certifications. Most consumer VPNs do not.

The Honest Truth: When You Do Not Need a Business VPN

I am going to say something that most VPN review sites will not say. A lot of small businesses buy business VPNs because they think it is a checkbox on a security audit, then never configure them properly and waste money.

If your entire team works in a single office on a secured network, and nobody works remotely, you probably do not need a VPN. If your company uses cloud-based tools (Google Workspace, Slack, Notion, GitHub) and everything is already encrypted in transit via HTTPS, a VPN adds minimal practical protection for daily work. The connection between your browser and Gmail is already encrypted. The connection between your Slack app and Slack’s servers is already encrypted. A VPN adds another layer, but the base layer is already secure against most casual threats.

Where a VPN matters is when employees access internal resources, handle sensitive client data on public networks, or need to appear as if they are browsing from a specific country for compliance reasons. It also matters if you have an internal server, a development environment, or a database that is not exposed to the public internet. In those cases, the VPN is the door that lets your remote team walk into your digital office.

Another scenario where you might skip the VPN is if you are already using a zero-trust platform like Cloudflare Access or Google BeyondCorp. These tools authenticate users at the application level rather than the network level. They are more secure than VPNs in many ways because they do not grant broad network access. If you have already invested in one of these, a traditional VPN is redundant.

If none of those apply to you, spend your money on a password manager and security training first. Those will protect you more than a VPN you do not actually need.

How to Set Up a Business VPN: A Step-by-Step Guide

This is the part every roundup article skips. They tell you which VPN is best. They do not tell you how to deploy it without creating a support ticket avalanche.

Common Mistakes Businesses Make with VPNs

After talking to other founders and reading hundreds of forum threads, I noticed the same mistakes come up repeatedly.

Buying too much too soon. A 10-person company does not need Palo Alto. Start simple and upgrade when you outgrow the tool. Switching VPN providers is annoying but not catastrophic. Overpaying for enterprise features you never use is just wasted money.

Treating the VPN as a complete security solution. A VPN encrypts traffic. It does not stop phishing. It does not stop malware. It does not stop an employee from writing their password on a sticky note. You still need endpoint protection, email filtering, and security awareness training. Think of the VPN as one brick in a wall, not the entire wall.

Ignoring the mobile experience. Your team will check email and Slack on their phones. If your VPN’s mobile app is clunky or drains battery, people will turn it off. Test the iOS and Android apps before you commit. A beautiful desktop client means nothing if the mobile experience is unusable.

Forgetting offboarding. When an employee leaves, you need to revoke their VPN access immediately. This sounds obvious, but I have heard multiple stories of former contractors retaining access for weeks because nobody remembered to remove them from the VPN console. Build offboarding into your exit checklist.

Not testing speed impact. Every VPN slows down your connection slightly. Some slow it down a lot. Test your most common workflows under VPN load before you deploy. If your team uploads large files to a server daily, a 50% speed drop is a productivity killer.

The Pros and Cons of Business VPNs in General

Budget Reality Check: What You Will Actually Pay

Here is what I learned about pricing after talking to four sales teams and reading the fine print on six websites.

For 1 to 10 employees: Expect $5 to $10 per user per month. NordLayer, Perimeter 81, and similar team-focused solutions fall in this range. Some consumer VPNs like Surfshark offer business plans that might beat this if your needs are basic. Tailscale is free for personal use and around $5 per user per month for small teams, making it the cheapest option if it fits your use case.

For 10 to 50 employees: The per-user cost often drops slightly with volume, but you are still looking at $4 to $8 per user per month. You might also start paying extra for dedicated IPs or advanced reporting. At this size, you should also factor in the time cost of management. Someone on your team, even if it is just you, will spend a few hours per month handling access requests, troubleshooting connections, and reviewing logs.

For 50 to 500 employees: Welcome to quote-only territory. Cisco, Fortinet, and Palo Alto will not show you a price until you talk to sales. Budget at least $10 to $20 per user per month, plus implementation costs. A mid-market deployment can easily run $10,000 to $30,000 in year one when you factor in setup, training, and support. You might also need to buy hardware appliances or pay for cloud hosting, which adds to the total.

For 500+ employees: You are not reading this article to decide. You have a procurement team and a security architect. But for context, enterprise VPN contracts at this scale often include professional services fees that equal or exceed the software cost. Multi-year agreements are standard, and negotiation is expected.

Hidden costs to watch for: Dedicated IP addresses often cost extra, sometimes $20 to $50 per month per IP. Priority support tiers can add 20% to your bill. If you need custom integrations or API access, that might require an enterprise plan. Always ask for a full breakdown before signing.

My Honest Verdict

After three weeks of research, two failed trials, and one successful deployment, our team now uses NordLayer. It is not perfect. The macOS app occasionally disconnects when my laptop sleeps. The admin dashboard could be faster. But our entire team can connect without calling me for help, and that was my real success metric.

Whatever you choose, test it first. Do not let a sales demo convince you. Install it, break it, and see if your team can live with it. A VPN that sits unused because it is too slow or too complicated is worse than no VPN at all. A tool your team actually uses, even if it has fewer features, is always better than a perfect tool that nobody touches.

Security is about habits, not products. The best VPN in the world will not protect you if your team writes passwords on sticky notes. But a decent VPN, paired with good training and solid basics, will put you ahead of most small businesses on the internet today. That is the standard you should aim for. Not perfection. Just better than the easy targets.