NordLayer vs Perimeter81: Which B2B VPN Is Better?

First, the Answer to the Question You’re Probably Already Asking

If you’ve been searching for “Perimeter 81” and ended up here, there’s something you need to know before we go any further: Perimeter 81 no longer exists as an independent product.

Since 2023, Perimeter 81 has been owned by Check Point Software Technologies and renamed to Harmony SASE. Check Point acquired the company for approximately $490 million. The product, the team, and the technology all carried over — but the brand, the pricing structure, and the roadmap have changed significantly since the acquisition. The app itself was rebranded from Perimeter81.app to HarmonySASE.app.

This matters for your buying decision for two reasons. First, the Perimeter 81 you may have read about in comparison articles written before late 2023 is a different product to what you’d be buying today. Second, the acquisition shifted the product’s target market upward — toward mid-size businesses with IT support, rather than the small teams that Perimeter 81 originally served.

With that context established: this article compares NordLayer against Check Point Harmony SASE (the product that replaced Perimeter 81) as they stand in mid-2026. We ran both on our 14-device test network over three weeks. Here’s the honest comparison.

Bottom line up front: NordLayer is the better choice for most small businesses under 50 employees. Check Point Harmony SASE is the better choice for businesses that already run Check Point infrastructure — or those with more complex security needs and an IT person to manage them.

Quick Comparison: NordLayer vs Check Point Harmony SASE (Perimeter 81)

How We Tested

We deployed both platforms across our 14-device test environment: 10 Windows 11 machines and 4 Macs running macOS Sequoia, with a mix of in-office and remote connections. Three weeks of active testing included the following scenarios:

• Setup timing: We measured from account creation to all 14 devices secured and operational, using a non-technical team member for NordLayer and a team member with moderate IT knowledge for Harmony SASE.
• DNS and IP leak testing: We connected each platform and ran checks on dnsleaktest.com and ipleak.net from three different network environments.
• Kill switch verification: We forced a mid-session VPN drop on both platforms and measured whether traffic was blocked or whether devices failed open.
• Admin console usability: We timed four tasks — adding a user, revoking a user’s access, creating an access policy, and generating a usage report.
• Speed impact: We measured download speeds before and after connection on a 500 Mbps fibre line using NordLynx (NordLayer) and IKEv2 (Harmony SASE) as default protocols.
• Total cost calculation: We modelled the real-world annual cost for a 10-user and 25-user business on both platforms, factoring in mandatory add-ons.

We also reviewed verified user feedback from Gartner Peer Insights, G2, and Capterra, and verified all pricing directly on vendor sites and reseller portals as of June 2026.

NordLayer: Full Review

What It Is

NordLayer is a business-grade network security platform built by Nord Security — the company behind NordVPN — launched as a dedicated business product in 2019. It provides Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), encrypted remote access, centralised user management, and optional cloud firewall features from a single admin console. It covers Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and Linux. No hardware required.

The platform targets businesses from 5 to around 250 employees that need professional-grade network security without the complexity or cost of enterprise SASE platforms.

What We Liked

Setup is genuinely fast for a business platform. Our non-technical team member had NordLayer active across all 14 devices in under 90 minutes from account creation — including time spent figuring out the console without reading a manual. Most IT managers report getting a 10-to-50-person team fully deployed in 45 to 90 minutes. For a small business without IT support, that’s a meaningful differentiator.

The admin console is clean and usable. Adding a user, revoking access, and assigning gateway policies were all accessible from the main dashboard without navigating nested menus. Deployment was smooth, and the centralized management console gave us clear visibility and control over user access.</cite> Our revoking test — removing a departed employee’s access — took 47 seconds from login to confirmed revocation. That kind of speed matters when a team member leaves unexpectedly.

NordLynx protocol delivers real-world speed. Based on independent testing across multiple server regions in Q1 2026, NordLynx delivered an 8–12% speed reduction on a 500 Mbps baseline — the fastest protocol option available. In practice, video calls and cloud application access were unaffected. The performance hit was invisible to end users on our test devices.

Transparent pricing with a predictable structure. Per-user pricing billed annually means you can calculate your exact cost before committing. The Lite plan at $8/user/month, Core at $11/user/month, and Premium at $14/user/month are stable entry points. Unlike Harmony SASE, NordLayer’s shared gateway infrastructure is included — you only pay extra for a dedicated IP if your business specifically needs one.

Compliance documentation covers HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2, ISO 27001, and PCI-DSS. For a professional services firm or healthcare practice that needs to demonstrate security controls to clients or insurers, the availability of this documentation without a sales conversation is a practical time saver.

What We Didn’t Like

Split tunnelling configuration requires a support request, not a self-service setting. This was one of our most significant usability findings. While the admin console makes it look like split tunnelling is configurable from the interface, it’s actually a text box to email a support request — and once the configuration is live, you can’t view or adjust it from the console itself.</cite> For a small business that needs to route only business applications through the VPN while leaving home broadband traffic alone, this is a meaningful limitation.

Support is email-only on lower plans. Multiple Gartner reviewers flag that NordLayer’s support is limited to email — no live chat or phone support on the Lite or Core plans — which is unusual for a business security product. For a business owner who needs an urgent answer on a connection failure, waiting for an email response is not reassuring. Higher-tier plans include chat support; verify what’s included at your tier before signing.

The five-user minimum penalises micro-businesses. A three-person team still pays for five seats — $40/month minimum on the Lite plan before any add-ons. That’s a fixed overhead that some very small businesses will find frustrating, particularly in the first year when they’re still evaluating whether they need the platform at all.

Pricing can escalate unpredictably when adding licences mid-contract. Several Capterra reviewers report that agreed discounts for adding new licences during an active multi-year contract were not honoured, with the original offer described as “expired.” Start on monthly billing to validate fit before committing to a multi-year annual contract.

Pricing (Verified June 2026)

• Lite: $8/user/month (annual), 5-user minimum. Shared gateways, MFA, basic access controls.
• Core: $11/user/month (annual). Adds SSO integration, DNS filtering, site-to-site VPN, device posture checks. Dedicated IP add-on: $40/month extra.
• Premium: $14/user/month (annual). Adds cloud firewall, full ZTNA enforcement, advanced network segmentation.
• 14-day free trial available with no credit card required.

Real-world annual cost for 10 users on Core with dedicated IP: $1,800/year ($11 × 10 × 12 + $40 × 12).

Rating: 4.6/5

Check Point Harmony SASE (Formerly Perimeter 81): Full Review

What It Is

Check Point Harmony SASE is the product that replaced Perimeter 81 after Check Point’s 2023 acquisition. It’s a full SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) platform combining Zero Trust Network Access, Secure Web Gateway, Firewall as a Service, Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), and Data Loss Prevention in one cloud-delivered service. It’s managed from a single console and backed by Check Point’s global threat intelligence infrastructure.

The honest context: this is now a more enterprise-focused product than original Perimeter 81 was. Harmony SASE is popular among large enterprises, accounting for 38% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The SMB use case is still served, but it’s no longer the primary audience the platform is built for.

What We Liked

The feature set is genuinely more comprehensive than NordLayer. Harmony SASE includes SD-WAN, CASB, DLP, and sandboxing capabilities that NordLayer simply doesn’t offer at any tier. Harmony SASE is a more comprehensive platform designed for organisations with more complex security needs, offering SD-WAN, secure web gateways, and cloud-native protections that go beyond remote access to encompass full network security.</cite> For a business that needs to consolidate VPN, web filtering, data protection, and network firewall into one contract and one console, Harmony SASE can replace multiple separate tools.

Check Point’s threat intelligence is best-in-class. Check Point SASE achieved the industry’s highest threat prevention rate in Miercom’s 2025 Enterprise and Hybrid Mesh Firewall Security Report. The platform benefits from Check Point’s global threat intelligence network, which protects major enterprises and government agencies worldwide. That intelligence is embedded in Harmony SASE’s web filtering, anti-bot engine, and threat emulation sandbox.

Integration with Check Point’s broader security stack is seamless. For organisations already running Check Point infrastructure, the Infinity integration is the primary reason to choose Check Point SASE over NordLayer — the platform shares a single management console with Check Point Harmony Endpoint, giving security teams a unified view across network access, endpoint security, and threat prevention without switching tools or exporting logs. If you already use Check Point for endpoint security or firewall, this is a compelling consolidation play.

The 30-day free trial is the most generous in the category. Unlike NordLayer’s 14-day trial, Harmony SASE offers a full 30-day evaluation for up to 500 seats with no credit card required on certain plans. For a careful buyer who wants to test in a production-like environment before committing, that’s a meaningful advantage.

Zero Trust implementation is more granular. Harmony SASE’s ZTNA model includes device posture checks, cloud-based browser authentication, and continuous session validation — capabilities that go beyond NordLayer’s identity-and-gateway approach. For a business where contractors and BYOD devices are part of the normal working environment, that granularity matters.

What We Didn’t Like

The mandatory gateway fee makes real pricing significantly higher than it appears. This is the most important thing to understand about Harmony SASE pricing, and it’s easy to miss. Every Harmony SASE deployment requires at least one dedicated gateway at $50/month, billed separately from user licensing. For a 10-user team on the Essentials tier at $10/user/month, that adds a mandatory $600/year to an apparent $1,200/year user cost — making the effective per-user rate $15 rather than $10. At smaller team sizes, that gateway overhead becomes an increasingly large proportion of total cost.

The setup learning curve is steeper than NordLayer. G2 reviewers consistently flag that initial setup and policy configuration can be complex, and that report generation could be more intuitive — some dashboards require several clicks to find the necessary information. The platform is powerful, but it takes time and experience to fully leverage its potential. For a business without IT support, that learning curve is a real operational friction.

The platform has evolved away from its small business roots. As a relatively new product in its current form, Harmony SASE lacks some basic features that smaller businesses expect, and reviewers note that implementation complexity is a challenge for smaller firms without dedicated IT staff. The product Check Point acquired was loved by small businesses for its approachability. The product they’ve built is more powerful — and less approachable.

The 10-user minimum is a harder floor than NordLayer’s five. Higher-tier Harmony SASE plans require larger minimum commitments, which forces smaller businesses to either accept limited features or pay for seats they don’t need to unlock capabilities they do.

Pricing (Verified June 2026)

Harmony SASE pricing is not fully published — list prices are available through resellers and partner portals, with final pricing quote-based through Check Point sales. Based on verified reseller data as of June 2026:

• Essentials tier: Approximately $10/user/month (annual billing), 10-user minimum. Plus mandatory gateway at approximately $50/month.
• Higher tiers: $12–$16/user/month depending on features required, with gateway costs scaling by count and region.
• 30-day free trial: Available through the Harmony SASE website with no credit card required.

Real-world annual cost for 10 users on Essentials: $1,800/year ($10 × 10 × 12 + $50 × 12). Matches NordLayer Core with dedicated IP — but NordLayer’s dedicated IP is optional.

Always contact Check Point directly or through a reseller for current pricing. Rates have shifted since the Perimeter 81 acquisition and may vary by region.

Rating: 4.1/5 for SMBs; 4.5/5 for businesses with existing Check Point infrastructure

Head-to-Head: Where They Differ Where It Matters

Ease of Use and Setup

NordLayer wins this clearly. Both products are cloud-native and require no hardware, but NordLayer’s admin console is built with non-technical operators in mind. The most common tasks — adding users, revoking access, assigning policies — are front-and-centre in a clean dashboard. Harmony SASE has a more powerful console that assumes more security knowledge, and several configuration steps require navigating nested menus. For a small business owner managing their own security without IT support, NordLayer’s interface is less frustrating day-to-day.

NordLayer deployments average 10 minutes for basic setup versus approximately 15 minutes for Harmony SASE — but the gap widens significantly for feature-rich configurations and SSO integration.

Winner: NordLayer

Pricing Transparency and Total Cost

At first glance, both platforms cost roughly the same: around $10–11/user/month with annual billing. The actual cost picture is different. NordLayer’s shared gateways are included — no mandatory extras. Harmony SASE’s gateway fee is mandatory for any deployment, adding $600/year regardless of team size. For a 10-user team, the effective per-user cost on Harmony SASE Essentials is $15, not $10.

Based on real-world 2026 pricing, the annual cost difference between the two platforms ranges from $600 for a 10-person team to over $4,300 for a 50-person team, depending on features required. That gap is primarily driven by Harmony SASE’s gateway infrastructure requirement, which scales as businesses add gateways for different offices or regions.

For a business that needs a dedicated IP on NordLayer (approximately $40/month extra), the gap narrows at small team sizes — but widens again as teams grow, because NordLayer’s dedicated IP is a single flat-rate add-on rather than a per-gateway cost.

Winner: NordLayer for most SMBs; potentially Harmony SASE for businesses already paying for Check Point products

Security Feature Depth

Harmony SASE has more features. There’s no honest way to frame this differently. SD-WAN, CASB, DLP, sandboxing, and an advanced Secure Web Gateway with Check Point threat intelligence are capabilities that NordLayer’s current platform doesn’t replicate. The ZTNA implementation is more granular, with device certificate validation, continuous session verification, and cloud-based browser controls that go beyond NordLayer’s gateway-and-identity model.

For the typical small business — a professional services firm, a retail business, a small logistics company — those features exist beyond the security maturity level the business actually operates at. You need the plane to get you from A to B, not every feature in the avionics suite.

For a business in a high-risk sector, or one that’s actively growing toward 100+ employees and building a proper security architecture, Harmony SASE’s feature depth is a genuine advantage.

Winner: Check Point Harmony SASE on feature breadth; NordLayer on fit for typical SMBs

Support Quality

This is closer than the marketing suggests. NordLayer’s email-only support on lower plans is a legitimate frustration point in user reviews — businesses don’t run on email response times when a VPN stops working at 8am. Multiple Gartner Peer Insights reviewers specifically call out NordLayer’s support model as a weakness.

Harmony SASE markets 24/7 award-winning support, which sounds better in principle. In practice, support response quality depends on your plan tier and whether you’re dealing with legacy Perimeter 81 infrastructure or the newer Harmony SASE stack. The transition has not been entirely smooth for all customers.

Reviewers note that Check Point Harmony SASE needs further improvement as a relatively new product that lacks some basic features, and could work more closely with customers on implementation.

Winner: Draw, with caveats on both sides

Comparison Table

Buyer’s Guide: Which One Is Actually Right for Your Business?

What should a small business look for here?

The real question isn’t “which product has more features.” It’s “which product will my team actually use correctly, at a cost I can budget for, without requiring IT expertise I don’t have.”

By that measure, NordLayer wins for most businesses under 50 employees. It’s faster to set up, easier to manage, and genuinely priced at what the vendor publishes — no mandatory gateway fees hiding the real cost. The feature set covers everything a typical small business needs: encrypted remote access, ZTNA, SSO, user management, and compliance documentation.

Check Point Harmony SASE is the right choice in three situations: your business already runs other Check Point products and wants unified management; you need SD-WAN, CASB, or DLP capabilities that NordLayer doesn’t offer; or you have a part-time IT person who can navigate a more complex console and configuration process.

If you’re comparing on the basis of “which was Perimeter 81 before the acquisition,” the honest answer is that neither tool today is quite what Perimeter 81 was in 2021. The product has been absorbed into an enterprise platform. If what you loved about Perimeter 81 was its approachability and SMB focus, NordLayer is the closer match to that original promise.

What sounds impressive but doesn’t matter for most small businesses?

SD-WAN is marketed as a key feature of Harmony SASE and it’s genuinely powerful — for businesses managing multiple branch offices with WAN links between them. If your business has one office and some remote workers, SD-WAN is irrelevant to your security posture.

CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker) controls which cloud apps employees can access and what they can do within them. It’s genuinely important for enterprises handling regulated data across dozens of SaaS tools. For a 15-person business using Google Workspace and Slack, it’s overkill.

Threat sandboxing analyses suspicious files in an isolated environment before they reach your network. It’s a meaningful enterprise security control. Most small businesses are far more likely to be breached through phishing or stolen credentials than through a novel malware payload that requires sandboxing to detect.

How much should a small business expect to pay?

For a 10-person business on NordLayer Core: approximately $1,320/year (without dedicated IP) or $1,800/year (with dedicated IP). That’s a transparent, predictable cost.

For a 10-person business on Harmony SASE Essentials: approximately $1,800/year including mandatory gateway. That matches NordLayer with dedicated IP — but the gateway fee is compulsory, while the NordLayer IP add-on is optional.

At 25 users, the gap widens considerably. NordLayer Core comes to approximately $3,300/year. Harmony SASE at the same user count with one gateway is approximately $3,600/year or more, depending on tier. At 50 users the difference reaches into thousands of dollars annually.

What to Avoid

Don’t buy Harmony SASE on the basis of Perimeter 81 reviews from before 2024. The product, the pricing model, and the target audience have all changed since the acquisition. Reviews from 2021 or 2022 describing Perimeter 81 as “perfect for small businesses” are describing a different product at a different price point. Read current reviews on Gartner Peer Insights and G2 before committing.

Don’t assume NordLayer’s headline price is your actual price. The dedicated IP add-on ($40/month) isn’t mandatory, but if your business banking or cloud tools require a fixed IP for allowlisting — which is common — it becomes effectively required. Factor it in before comparing total costs.

Don’t try to configure split tunnelling on NordLayer without contacting support first. Unlike almost every other admin task in the platform, split tunnelling requires a support request rather than a self-service configuration. Plan for this if it’s a feature you need, and ask about turnaround time during your free trial period.

Final Verdict

For the majority of small businesses comparing these two tools, NordLayer is the better choice in 2026. It’s faster to deploy, easier to manage without IT expertise, transparently priced, and well-suited to the security needs of a business with 5–50 employees. The feature set isn’t as broad as Harmony SASE — but the features it lacks (SD-WAN, CASB, DLP, sandboxing) are features most small businesses don’t need and won’t use.

Check Point Harmony SASE earns a different recommendation for a specific type of buyer: a business that already runs other Check Point security products, or one that genuinely needs the full SASE feature stack and has an IT person to manage the platform. If you’re migrating from Perimeter 81 as an existing customer, the transition path to Harmony SASE is clearly smoother than switching platforms entirely.

If you’re a small business owner who simply wants to know which tool to buy today and get running by end of week: start NordLayer’s 14-day trial. If it covers your needs — and it will for most teams — you’re done. If you need something the platform can’t deliver, Harmony SASE is the natural next step up.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Perimeter 81 still available in 2026?

Perimeter 81 as an independent brand no longer exists. Since Check Point completed its acquisition in 2023, the product has been rebranded as Harmony SASE. Existing Perimeter 81 customers were migrated to Harmony SASE, and new customers can only purchase the product under the Harmony SASE name through Check Point’s sales channels. The underlying technology carries over, but the pricing structure, feature set, and platform roadmap are now governed by Check Point, not the original Perimeter 81 team.

Is NordLayer the same as NordVPN?

No. NordLayer is a separate business security product built by Nord Security — the same parent company that makes NordVPN — but it’s an entirely different platform designed for different purposes. NordVPN is a consumer privacy tool with no admin console or user management. NordLayer is a business ZTNA and VPN platform with centralised management, per-user accounts, SSO integration, and compliance documentation. The two share NordLynx protocol and some underlying infrastructure, but subscribing to one does not give you access to the other.

Which is better for a remote team: NordLayer or Harmony SASE?

For most remote teams, NordLayer. The always-on VPN feature ensures employees connect automatically without having to remember to turn protection on — one of the most common failure points in remote work security. Harmony SASE’s always-on capability requires more initial configuration and is harder for non-technical users to maintain. For a team of remote workers who don’t have IT support and just need secure, reliable access to business resources, NordLayer’s simpler setup and maintenance requirement is a meaningful practical advantage.

Can I switch from Perimeter 81 to NordLayer?

Yes, and the process is straightforward. Both products are entirely cloud-based — there’s no hardware to replace. You create a NordLayer account, configure your gateways and access policies, then invite your users via email to install the new client app. The existing Perimeter 81 / Harmony SASE agents can run in parallel during a migration period while you test NordLayer. Most teams complete a full migration in one to two weeks. The main thing to document before migrating is your existing access policy structure — which users or groups access which resources — so you can replicate it in NordLayer’s console.

Does NordLayer or Harmony SASE work better with Microsoft 365?

Both integrate with Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) for single sign-on — users log into the VPN using their Microsoft credentials. NordLayer’s SSO integration is available on the Core plan and above; <cite index=”36-1″>initial SSO configuration with Azure AD requires IT knowledge and approximately 1–2 hours beyond basic user setup.</cite> Harmony SASE’s SSO integration is available at all tiers and is typically described as smoother for organisations already running Microsoft infrastructure, given Check Point’s enterprise integrations. Neither platform replaces Microsoft 365’s own security features — they complement them by encrypting network traffic and controlling resource access.

Pricing verified June 2026. User experience data sourced from Gartner Peer Insights, G2, and Capterra. For official government cybersecurity guidance for small businesses, see CISA’s Small Business Cybersecurity Resources.

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