Vendors that treat single sign-on as a luxury feature
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
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HN comment orderThis pops up on HN about once a year, and it's worth calling out that the SSO tax has mostly nothing to do with technology or with support costs and mostly everything to do with market segmentation. One of the clearest segmentation signals you get is that bigger, less price-sensitive customers all require SSO (because their SOC2 attestations require it). You can get irritated about pricing systems that soak price-insensitive customers, but remember that the big price-insensitive customers pay for…
I wish there was a hall of fame of vendors who allow SSO for free or a low price. And I don’t mean “Sign-in with Google” - not everyone has company managed Google accounts. Of the top of my head I can think of Mapbox and AWS where it’s free. Atlassian charges $4/month covering all their products (cheap if you use two or more). Any more good examples?
> In short: SSO is a core security requirement for any company with more than five employees. Which kinda gives the game away, right? It’s not that SSO is a luxury feature but that it’s an IMMEDIATE signal that you’re dealing with an org that can afford to pay. It’s absolutely a security feature but that doesn’t mean it should be free for any reason other than I don’t want to pay for it. So I wish them the best…
nonsense. author is complaining that the business model of others doesn't align with his need to have the tiniest possible budget and spend the bare minimum on security. boo hoo hoo. if you need sso, suck up the cost and yes, you'll have to pass it on to your customers. if you don't like the pricing model of the saas vendor you're using, how about try to build the service in-house. suddenly you'll realize how cheap even the enterprise offering…
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 3
- Total points
- 518
- Total comments
- 308
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-10-20 | SSO Wall of Shame: vendors that treat SSO as luxury feature, not core security | bdcravens | 39 | 7 |
| 2020-02-12 | Vendors who charge extra for single sign-onFirst breakout | Taurenking | 65 | 64 |
| 2021-06-29 | SSO Wall of Shame – A list of vendors that treat single sign-on as a luxury | nomoreplease | 2 | 0 |
| 2021-10-02 | SSO Wall of Shame – Vendors treating SSO as a luxury and not a requirement | Starz0r | 3 | 0 |
| 2022-01-26 | The SSO Wall of Shame | ushakov | 1 | 0 |
| 2022-04-27 | The SSO Wall of Shame | redninja83 | 106 | 41 |
| 2023-12-18 | SSO Tax- SaaS companies basis of upgrading from standard to enterprise | dedalus | 1 | 0 |
| 2024-06-19 | SSO Tax Wall of Shame | resalisbury | 2 | 0 |
| 2024-07-31 | The SSO Wall of Shame | markuta | 4 | 1 |
| 2024-11-26 | Charging for SSO when it is a basic security feature | rexfuzzle | 1 | 1 |
| 2025-01-03 | The SSO Wall of Shame | 1970-01-01 | 4 | 2 |
| 2025-06-17 | The SSO Wall of Shame | 9woc | 2 | 1 |
| 2025-08-19 | Vendors that treat single sign-on as a luxury featureHall induction · Best thread · Latest 20+ point return | vinnyglennon | 288 | 191 |