Why PunchThru

What the traditional setup really costs

Letting staff reach the office from home has traditionally meant a shopping list: a static IP from your internet provider, a firewall that can run a VPN, a yearly subscription to keep that firewall safe, and someone's time to set it all up and keep it patched. Here's what those pieces cost, from real price lists.

Prices are US list or reseller prices checked in November 2026. They change often, so treat them as a guide and check your own bills.

1. A static IP address

Port forwarding and most office VPNs need the office to have a fixed internet address that never changes. Internet providers sell this as an add-on, usually only on business plans, and most don't publish the price. AT&T's own help page lists the address blocks it offers and says: "Please contact us for pricing" [1]. Verizon's business fiber page doesn't list one either [2]. One Comcast Business customer reported paying $44.95 a month for a block of 13 addresses in 2023 [3].

Check your own internet bill. If there's a line for "static IP", that's a cost you pay every month, forever, just so the office can be found from outside.

2. A VPN firewall, and its subscription

A business-grade firewall that runs a VPN costs several hundred dollars to buy. The bigger cost is the subscription that keeps it supplied with security updates and threat protection, which has to be renewed every year:

And the box has to be kept patched. As our look at the security side shows, VPN appliances have become a favorite target. In Verizon's 2025 report only about half of the flaws in these devices were fully fixed within the year, and fixing them took a median of 32 days [6]. Each of those fixes is someone's evening or weekend.

3. Someone's time

This is the cost nobody writes down: configuring the firewall and VPN, setting up each person's laptop, helping when the VPN won't connect from a hotel, and applying emergency updates. There's no reliable industry figure for how many hours that takes, so rather than make one up, here's a calculator. Put in your own numbers.

4. The cost of getting it wrong

The biggest cost isn't on the shopping list. When a remote access setup is broken into, the bill is counted in downtime, recovery and sometimes a ransom. The median ransom payment in Verizon's 2025 report was $115,000 [6], and Coveware put it at $140,000 in the third quarter of 2025 [7]. That's before the days of lost work, which hit a small business harder than anyone.

5. The PunchThru way

• No static IP. Your office stays on an ordinary internet connection. PunchThru finds your computers wherever they are.
• No VPN firewall to buy or patch. Nothing in the office faces the internet, so there's no box whose subscription and updates you depend on.
• Minutes per person, not hours. Install the agent on the office computer, give the person access, and they sign in to the app at home.