Tailscale is the best. It's infinitely better than Hamachi, ZeroTier, etc. My only gripe is that they have some really weird SSO requirements like GitHub, etc. and then that provider becomes a permanent part of your identity.
On Windows and Mac, VPN config is usually just installing a client, signing in, and then it all basically works. Sometimes you don't even need the client and can set it up in settings.
Meanwhile tailscale or wireguard, by being actually opinionated, avoids needing much configuration at both ends.
I have now mostly switched to Wireguard for this, which is much more sane [2].
[1] https://github.com/jawj/IKEv2-setup [2] https://github.com/jawj/wireguard-setup
Don't be the identity provider, have the email host be the identity provider (which it is anyway if you have a forgot password prompt).
Agreed 100% that nobody should still be using passwords in 2026 though.
The only time I like magic links is for services where I am "not really a user". For example, an appointment reminder for my doctor where I need to validate my insurance. Great, send me an email 24-hours before with the reminder and a magic link, as I don't want to think about an account there.
This is an extreme case, yes, but I have similar issues with several services that only support magic links and GitHub login, and it's hard to configure services to use a new catch-all address when they harvest my address from GitHub login and won't let me change it. Magic links are a great tool, but they should _never_ be the only option. They should supplement existing login methods. Password managers exist for a reason. Several services that I have since stopped using for this reason have in the past decided that they should start sending emails to the addresses they harvested from login with other service. Two services have gotten my magic link address stuck in their system because it's not associated with an account (the account has been deleted) and thus I can't manage subscriptions.
A username/password would be perfectly fine for my use-case as an individual user using Tailscale for my homelab and personal devices. But I suspect the majority of real paying customers don't want a separate authentication flow just for Tailscale and would rather use the SSO they already have. I have confidence Tailscale wouldn't half-ass usernames and passwords is they offered it even if it was mostly just for non-paying hobbyist users, but I'm also sort of glad I get to bucket my account security risk with the people paying their bills.