7 ms·

I think I read somewhere that many companies use "needs SSO" as a proxy for "is Enterprise customer and can pay Enterprise rates."

by lmkg 4y ago

speedgoose 4y ago
Which is wrong and a waste of time for both sides.
- Spivak 4y ago
  I mean the alternative is the fat wallet tax. Is your company more than 20 employees or do you have more than 1M revenue, here’s a 500% price increase. If you’re at the point where employees x services is too big to do manually and then congrats you graduated to the “actually paying for the service tier.” There’s no real way to skin, “the only real money is by charging many dollars to large enterprises and if we can’t easily price discriminate the thing we’re dropping is the subsidized free/startup tier.
  - speedgoose 4y ago
    Having more than 20 employees or 1M revenues isn’t going to make an expensive product more attractive. I have been quoted twice this year at prices where hiring competent people would be a lot cheaper than purchasing the SSO option. But I understand the need to milk the badly managed companies.
    - Spivak 4y ago
      On the buying side we always used to joke that we could hire someone who’s entire job would be updating peoples passwords for less than they were charging and still have 30hrs/wk of an engineer. Sadly no one volunteers to be the password bitch.
      - speedgoose 4y ago
        You could always pick one randomly and you will soon get a script to automate everything.
  - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    No, it's not. SSO is basically a feature that should be used with all companies size > 1 (and even with size = 1, but not as critical there). It simply should not be considered an "enterprise" feature anymore - it should be considered a basic, lowest-level product requirement. There are plenty of other features that can be worth paying more for. Just look at GitHub Enterprise. The fact that the only way there is to get SSO is to pay 4.5x more is insane. But, as a GH Enterprise customer myself, there are plenty of other features (separate environments, more Action minutes, advanced code scanning options, etc.) that make GH Enterprise worth it.
    - Spivak 4y ago
      You know we’re not disagreeing right? Is it simultaneously true SSO should be used by everyone at all company sides and that small companies will absolutely take an 80% discount to not have it while large orgs will pay full price. The features of GH enterprise you listed are nice-to-haves, above a certain org size SSO is required.
      - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
        > that small companies will absolutely take an 80% discount to not have it while large orgs will pay full price I think we are disagreeing, because the point is that small orgs absolutely should not have to compromise on this basic security feature, and the end result is a less secure internet that is a detriment to everyone.
- nohuck13 4y ago
  Wrong as in unethical or wrong as in untrue?
  - sdflhasjd 4y ago
    Wrong as in there are non-enterprise customers that need SSO
    - killjoywashere 4y ago
      My SO is the owner-operator of an SCorp currently adjusting the business to hire W-2 #1. As the consulting CIO I'm doing everything I can to keep it on 1 SSO.
    - mbesto 4y ago
      Counterpoint - SaaS software pricing is hilariously underpriced at the current levels for the value it typically brings, that even SMBs should be paying the "enterprise rate" or at least some bump in price. I do think hiding SSO behind "call us" is a pain however.
      - sdflhasjd 4y ago
        Personally, I think even the cheaper plans are overpriced some of the time, considering real resource usage and comparing against software licenses in the past. I do wonder how much of that money goes into subsidising the free tiers and paying (comparatively) enormous wages of developers to add features I don't really want.
        mbesto 4y ago
        > how much of that money goes into subsidising the free tiers I've seen probably ~10 companies financials that do this. It's ALL OVER THE PLACE. The reality is that the free doesn't two things: tests those new features on guinea pigs and lets you upsell to someone who has given you permission to do so. There's no free lunch.
      - AtNightWeCode 4y ago

I think I read somewhere that many companies use "needs SSO" as a proxy for "is Enterprise customer and can pay Enterprise rates."

by lmkg 4y ago

I think I read somewhere that many companies use "needs SSO" as a proxy for "is Enterprise customer and can pay Enterprise rates."

speedgoose 4y ago

Which is wrong and a waste of time for both sides.

Spivak 4y ago
I mean the alternative is the fat wallet tax. Is your company more than 20 employees or do you have more than 1M revenue, here’s a 500% price increase. If you’re at the point where employees x services is too big to do manually and then congrats you graduated to the “actually paying for the service tier.” There’s no real way to skin, “the only real money is by charging many dollars to large enterprises and if we can’t easily price discriminate the thing we’re dropping is the subsidized free/startup tier.
- speedgoose 4y ago
  Having more than 20 employees or 1M revenues isn’t going to make an expensive product more attractive. I have been quoted twice this year at prices where hiring competent people would be a lot cheaper than purchasing the SSO option. But I understand the need to milk the badly managed companies.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    On the buying side we always used to joke that we could hire someone who’s entire job would be updating peoples passwords for less than they were charging and still have 30hrs/wk of an engineer. Sadly no one volunteers to be the password bitch.
    - speedgoose 4y ago
      You could always pick one randomly and you will soon get a script to automate everything.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  No, it's not. SSO is basically a feature that should be used with all companies size > 1 (and even with size = 1, but not as critical there). It simply should not be considered an "enterprise" feature anymore - it should be considered a basic, lowest-level product requirement. There are plenty of other features that can be worth paying more for. Just look at GitHub Enterprise. The fact that the only way there is to get SSO is to pay 4.5x more is insane. But, as a GH Enterprise customer myself, there are plenty of other features (separate environments, more Action minutes, advanced code scanning options, etc.) that make GH Enterprise worth it.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    You know we’re not disagreeing right? Is it simultaneously true SSO should be used by everyone at all company sides and that small companies will absolutely take an 80% discount to not have it while large orgs will pay full price. The features of GH enterprise you listed are nice-to-haves, above a certain org size SSO is required.
    - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
      > that small companies will absolutely take an 80% discount to not have it while large orgs will pay full price I think we are disagreeing, because the point is that small orgs absolutely should not have to compromise on this basic security feature, and the end result is a less secure internet that is a detriment to everyone.
nohuck13 4y ago
Wrong as in unethical or wrong as in untrue?
- sdflhasjd 4y ago
  Wrong as in there are non-enterprise customers that need SSO
  - killjoywashere 4y ago
    My SO is the owner-operator of an SCorp currently adjusting the business to hire W-2 #1. As the consulting CIO I'm doing everything I can to keep it on 1 SSO.
  - mbesto 4y ago
    Counterpoint - SaaS software pricing is hilariously underpriced at the current levels for the value it typically brings, that even SMBs should be paying the "enterprise rate" or at least some bump in price. I do think hiding SSO behind "call us" is a pain however.
    - sdflhasjd 4y ago
      Personally, I think even the cheaper plans are overpriced some of the time, considering real resource usage and comparing against software licenses in the past. I do wonder how much of that money goes into subsidising the free tiers and paying (comparatively) enormous wages of developers to add features I don't really want.
      - mbesto 4y ago
        > how much of that money goes into subsidising the free tiers I've seen probably ~10 companies financials that do this. It's ALL OVER THE PLACE. The reality is that the free doesn't two things: tests those new features on guinea pigs and lets you upsell to someone who has given you permission to do so. There's no free lunch.
    - AtNightWeCode 4y ago