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With Pro accounts limited to 100 users, I believe this is a good opportunity to recall [0], that lists businesses that overprice SSO [0] https://sso.tax/ https

With Pro accounts limited to 100 users, I believe this is a good opportunity to recall [0], that lists businesses that overprice SSO [0] https://sso.tax/ https://sso.tax/

merb 4y ago
The list misses adobe…
WhatsName 4y ago
SSO as a requirement is a reliable way to differenciate small business/ hobbist from commercial usage of your product. I really don't get at whom this SSO-tax hate is directed at?
- xiwenc 4y ago
  SSO is becoming a necessity for small businesses also. If you are involved in audits, you will understand how valuable it is.
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    Unrelated to SSO, I’m involved in audits that regularly seek changes which don’t improve safety or security but which often help the bottom line of big providers. If you want a product to succeed without natural growth, get an an auditor to require it. It’s selling your soul and those being audited will hate you, but it’s very lucrative.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    > you will understand how valuable it is. Sounds like it’s worth the cost then.
    - vetinari 4y ago
      No. If you gatekeep SSO, your product is not even considered. There are enough alternatives, so it is not a problem.
      - Spivak 4y ago
        I find it funny that people say things like this, because not only is it demonstrably not true looking at different product segments, but even if it was you're basically admitting to self-selecting as a customer who would never have paid in the first place and so companies are overjoyed that you're not using them. "I would have paid you if you gave me X for free" is the biggest lie.
        vetinari 4y ago
        It is more nuanced like that. If you do not have any other value proposition for paid tiers, you might keep telling yourself that, it is your sales model after all.
        Spivak 4y ago
        sl;kfjasdf;lkasjdefk Okay, look. There's two universes here. Universe A is where split up the features of our product into tiers based on "value" -- some arbitrary groups based on how useful we think each feature is, how expensive they are, how long they took to develop, estimated person-hours saved, whatever. Sweet, it feels right. Now the free/low cost tiers are genuinely less useful than the higher tiers. Pay more for more. SSO probably still lives at the mid or enterprise tier for no other reason that it's a PITA, is the cause of like 20% of support requests, and our SSO vendor charges us per month per SSO connection. Universe B is where the free/low cost tiers have every feature except for specifically the features and increased usage limits that get SMBs and Enterprise to pay us. Both on the sales side and the user side I want to live in Universe B. There is no magic universe where "just increase your value proposition to Enterprise customers" -- it's the same product just carved up differently and non-enterprise customers lose in Universe A.
        Nullabillity 4y ago
        Imagine you go to a supermarket and see the same brand carry two tiers of eggs: "Eggs" and "Salmonella-free Eggs". Even if you could easily afford the salmonella-free eggs, the mere fact that they are willing to sell salmonella eggs at all says a lot about how many shits they give about food safety. SSO isn't a premium or differentiator feature, it's table stakes.
  - _ea1k 4y ago
    This is less true in places where auditors don't understand sso.
- ivan_gammel 4y ago
  SSO is not contributing to the core product USP and is pure money extraction mechanism. If company can add enough value on enterprise plan, they could easily drop SSO on less expensive tier. If company cannot add enough value to the core product, they use SSO and reachable customer support to justify more expensive subscription. This may deincentivize customers to buy more or reduce overall security if customer fails to implement processes for standalone login and manual provisioning of accounts.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    > and is pure money extraction mechanism Yes, you act like this is a bad thing. You hold back and charge for the features customers want enough to pay for. You’ve never noticed that whenever there’s a Free/Pro of an app the one feature you need is always on the Pro version? > add enough value on enterprise plan, they could easily drop SSO That really isn’t how it works. You find some small set of features that enterprises must have like SSO, auditing, and compliance and charge them out the ass for it. This is where the real money for every B2B SaaS comes from and subsidizes the low cost tiers which they hope will translate to an enterprise sale when you ask for it at work.
    - eurasiantiger 4y ago
      The problem is that often the pro features are very nearly essential, like having more than one door in a car.
  - nrb 4y ago
    It makes more sense to them to add that other value to the non-enterprise plans or licensing to attract more users, then charge the businesses that MUST have the SSO or audit functionality, because they know enterprise will pay it without blinking an eye.
    - ivan_gammel 4y ago
      It is a common misconception that SSO is useful only on enterprise scale and that companies where SSO and provisioning is crucial for security have huge IT budgets. Any scale-up still on the way to profitability needs it at few hundreds of employees and it’s really hard to justify 100k budget for it. Couple junior admins for provisioning and accepted and misunderstood risk of credentials explosion look more attractive than tripling the bills for every subscription. Who suffers? Customer who is exposed to cybersecurity risks.
- danielheath 4y ago
  The feature is implemented. I'd prefer to use it. It would cost them nothing to let me do so. Yet, I can't, because then big corporates wouldn't be milked for as much cash. I accept this as just another one of those inefficiencies of market capitalism, but it's still a little irksome.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    > The feature is implemented. I'd prefer to use it. It would cost them nothing to let me do so. The other way to view it is, by withholding a nonessential feature, Docker gets big customers to subsidize all the little guys, and their product is more accessible overall.
  - Anon1096 4y ago
    You can say that about any paid feature of literally any b2b software ever.
metadat 4y ago
Discussed 5 months ago: The SSO Wall of Shame https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31175300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31175300 (106 points, 41 comments)

With Pro accounts limited to 100 users, I believe this is a good opportunity to recall [0], that lists businesses that overprice SSO [0] https://sso.tax/ https://sso.tax/

merb 4y ago

The list misses adobe…

WhatsName 4y ago

SSO as a requirement is a reliable way to differenciate small business/ hobbist from commercial usage of your product. I really don't get at whom this SSO-tax hate is directed at?

xiwenc 4y ago
SSO is becoming a necessity for small businesses also. If you are involved in audits, you will understand how valuable it is.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  Unrelated to SSO, I’m involved in audits that regularly seek changes which don’t improve safety or security but which often help the bottom line of big providers. If you want a product to succeed without natural growth, get an an auditor to require it. It’s selling your soul and those being audited will hate you, but it’s very lucrative.
- Spivak 4y ago
  > you will understand how valuable it is. Sounds like it’s worth the cost then.
  - vetinari 4y ago
    No. If you gatekeep SSO, your product is not even considered. There are enough alternatives, so it is not a problem.
    - Spivak 4y ago
      I find it funny that people say things like this, because not only is it demonstrably not true looking at different product segments, but even if it was you're basically admitting to self-selecting as a customer who would never have paid in the first place and so companies are overjoyed that you're not using them. "I would have paid you if you gave me X for free" is the biggest lie.
      - vetinari 4y ago
        It is more nuanced like that. If you do not have any other value proposition for paid tiers, you might keep telling yourself that, it is your sales model after all.
        Spivak 4y ago
        sl;kfjasdf;lkasjdefk Okay, look. There's two universes here. Universe A is where split up the features of our product into tiers based on "value" -- some arbitrary groups based on how useful we think each feature is, how expensive they are, how long they took to develop, estimated person-hours saved, whatever. Sweet, it feels right. Now the free/low cost tiers are genuinely less useful than the higher tiers. Pay more for more. SSO probably still lives at the mid or enterprise tier for no other reason that it's a PITA, is the cause of like 20% of support requests, and our SSO vendor charges us per month per SSO connection. Universe B is where the free/low cost tiers have every feature except for specifically the features and increased usage limits that get SMBs and Enterprise to pay us. Both on the sales side and the user side I want to live in Universe B. There is no magic universe where "just increase your value proposition to Enterprise customers" -- it's the same product just carved up differently and non-enterprise customers lose in Universe A.
        Nullabillity 4y ago
        Imagine you go to a supermarket and see the same brand carry two tiers of eggs: "Eggs" and "Salmonella-free Eggs". Even if you could easily afford the salmonella-free eggs, the mere fact that they are willing to sell salmonella eggs at all says a lot about how many shits they give about food safety. SSO isn't a premium or differentiator feature, it's table stakes.
- _ea1k 4y ago
  This is less true in places where auditors don't understand sso.
ivan_gammel 4y ago
SSO is not contributing to the core product USP and is pure money extraction mechanism. If company can add enough value on enterprise plan, they could easily drop SSO on less expensive tier. If company cannot add enough value to the core product, they use SSO and reachable customer support to justify more expensive subscription. This may deincentivize customers to buy more or reduce overall security if customer fails to implement processes for standalone login and manual provisioning of accounts.
- Spivak 4y ago
  > and is pure money extraction mechanism Yes, you act like this is a bad thing. You hold back and charge for the features customers want enough to pay for. You’ve never noticed that whenever there’s a Free/Pro of an app the one feature you need is always on the Pro version? > add enough value on enterprise plan, they could easily drop SSO That really isn’t how it works. You find some small set of features that enterprises must have like SSO, auditing, and compliance and charge them out the ass for it. This is where the real money for every B2B SaaS comes from and subsidizes the low cost tiers which they hope will translate to an enterprise sale when you ask for it at work.
  - eurasiantiger 4y ago
    The problem is that often the pro features are very nearly essential, like having more than one door in a car.
- nrb 4y ago
  It makes more sense to them to add that other value to the non-enterprise plans or licensing to attract more users, then charge the businesses that MUST have the SSO or audit functionality, because they know enterprise will pay it without blinking an eye.
  - ivan_gammel 4y ago
    It is a common misconception that SSO is useful only on enterprise scale and that companies where SSO and provisioning is crucial for security have huge IT budgets. Any scale-up still on the way to profitability needs it at few hundreds of employees and it’s really hard to justify 100k budget for it. Couple junior admins for provisioning and accepted and misunderstood risk of credentials explosion look more attractive than tripling the bills for every subscription. Who suffers? Customer who is exposed to cybersecurity risks.
danielheath 4y ago
The feature is implemented. I'd prefer to use it. It would cost them nothing to let me do so. Yet, I can't, because then big corporates wouldn't be milked for as much cash. I accept this as just another one of those inefficiencies of market capitalism, but it's still a little irksome.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  > The feature is implemented. I'd prefer to use it. It would cost them nothing to let me do so. The other way to view it is, by withholding a nonessential feature, Docker gets big customers to subsidize all the little guys, and their product is more accessible overall.
- Anon1096 4y ago
  You can say that about any paid feature of literally any b2b software ever.

metadat 4y ago

Discussed 5 months ago: The SSO Wall of Shame https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31175300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31175300 (106 points, 41 comments)