Today we’re opening early user testing for Defguard 2.0 Alpha. This release is not feature-focused in the traditional sense. Instead, it represents a deep architectural redesign aimed at making Defguard more resilient, observable, and scalable as enterprise adoption grows.

While Defguard 1.x remains stable and widely deployed, increased usage exposed structural constraints that could not be solved through incremental updates. Rather than accumulate long-term technical debt, we paused feature work and rebuilt core foundations to prepare us better for the future.

Key Highlights

🏗 Reversed core ↔ gateway communication model

🖥 Fully redesigned control plane UI

🔐 Built-in internal certificate authority (mTLS)

📊 Full system state visibility in the UI

⚙️ Guided deployment & component provisioning

🔁 Active-active gateway high availability

⏱ Explicit WireGuard session management

To better understand our reasoning you’re welcome to read the blog post explaining our thinking and detailed list of changes.

Alpha notice

This is an early alpha intended only for sandbox testing.

• No migration path from 1.x yet

• Docker Compose deployment only

• Not production ready

• Documentation still in progress

The purpose of this phase is architectural validation and early user feedback.

Final thoughts

Some frequently requested features are still ahead of us, but this release focuses on long-term foundations rather than surface functionality.

The architectural changes in 2.0 significantly improve:

• Security guarantees

• Observability

• Deployment consistency

• Operational control

• Future development velocity

If you’re interested in shaping the platform’s direction, we encourage you to test the alpha and share feedback through GitHub discussions or issue submissions.

Check out Defguard 2.0 Alpha yourself

Defguard 2.0 Release on GitHub →

Read the blog post with detailed list of changes →

Step-by-step video guide for testing Defguard 2.0 Alpha →

Your thoughts and input at this stage is invaluable. Thanks again for being with us on this journey,

- The Defguard team