G2

Gavin P.

Systems Engineer

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

10/27/2026

"Flexible, Enterprise-Ready VPN with a Strong UI and Solid Performance"

4/5

What do you like best about OpenVPN Access Server?

OpenVPN Access Server has been a good fit for us because it sits in a nice middle ground between an overly simplified VPN product and a completely DIY OpenVPN deployment.

The UI is good for the day-to-day work, and most routine configuration can be handled without dropping to the command line. Once you get into more complicated configurations, however, you quickly find yourself working in Linux and troubleshooting services, certificates, packages, and configuration directly. I don't necessarily consider that a negative, but administrators should know that the friendly web UI doesn't eliminate the need to understand what's happening underneath it.

Integration and flexibility are probably the biggest strengths. It works well in an existing enterprise environment and gives an administrator quite a bit of control over how authentication, networking, certificates, and client access are handled.

Performance has been solid, and once the environment is configured correctly it mostly stays out of the way. High availability and failover are valuable features, but this is also where the complexity increases substantially. I would like to see the product give administrators better visibility into node health, replication/state, failover problems, and configuration inconsistencies.

From a pricing and ROI perspective, I think Access Server makes sense when you want a purpose-built remote-access VPN without buying an entire firewall/security platform just for VPN connectivity. The ability to run it on standard infrastructure is also valuable.

Support and onboarding are decent, particularly for a basic deployment. Documentation covers most common tasks, but troubleshooting unusual problems can send you down some fairly deep rabbit holes. Better diagnostic tooling would go a long way.

As for AI, it isn't something I currently associate strongly with the product, and that's fine. I would much rather see OpenVPN invest in useful operational intelligence than bolt on a generic chatbot. Give me automated log analysis, certificate-expiration warnings, configuration drift detection, authentication failure correlation, and actionable HA/failover diagnostics. Those are AI capabilities that would actually make an administrator's life easier.

Overall, I would recommend OpenVPN AS to organizations that want flexibility and don't mind having some Linux expertise available. It is easy to use when things are working, powerful when you need to customize it, but could be much better at telling you what is wrong when something isn't working. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about OpenVPN Access Server?

My biggest complaint is the gap between how simple the product looks in the web interface and how complicated it can become when something goes wrong. Troubleshooting failover, certificates, upgrades, or package compatibility can require digging through Linux services and logs, and the error messages don't always make the root cause obvious. Better built-in diagnostics and health reporting would make administration significantly easier. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is OpenVPN Access Server solving and how is that benefiting you?

OpenVPN Access Server solves our need for secure remote access to internal resources while giving us direct control over the infrastructure. We can centrally manage authentication, VPN configuration, certificates, routing, and client connectivity instead of depending on individual devices or a more expensive all-in-one security platform.

For us, the main benefit is that it is flexible and largely stays out of the way once configured. We can host it ourselves, integrate it with our existing environment, and design for failover so VPN access isn't dependent on a single server. That gives us a good balance between security, availability, administrative control, and cost. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.