will you be there in 10 years?
Show HN: I built a free, simple login service. Would you use this?
51–60 of 110 posts
Re: Show HN: I built a free, simple login service. Would you use this?
#52I agree with kenji's (dead) comment. I'd rather set up login functionality on my own server. If you use a third party service, their downtime becomes your downtime. Worse, you're injecting another company into your relationship with your users. If that were necessary, I'd choose one the customer was already familiar with, like Google, Facebook or Twitter. Setting up login isn't very difficult and libraries exist for…
Login management should be built into the browsers instead. Imagine a UI where you go to log in and instead of a text/email field for login and a password field you get a drop down with a list of your personas that you’ve created with the option of adding a new one. Under the hood it would use a public/private key pair to authenticate you with the site. Browsers could implement a service that backs up your personas a…
That sounds very much like the goals of Mozilla's Persona service. While it required a separate service and some JavaScript, the idea was that it could be supported natively by browsers in the long run.
Unfortunately, it was shut down in 2016 due to lack of interest. (Coincidentally, I just spent this past week hacking on its source code.)
Re: Show HN: I built a free, simple login service. Would you use this?
#53As a software developer, I wouldn't use this service. But if I was someone without my skillset trying to build a no-code / low-code MVP, I definitely would try this out! I think that may be your sweet spot. I don't think HN is your ideal audience.
Yeah, I’ve been thinking that too. Low-code definitely feels like the space for this, and I just need to go find that community :)
Re: Show HN: I built a free, simple login service. Would you use this?
#54I agree with kenji's (dead) comment. I'd rather set up login functionality on my own server. If you use a third party service, their downtime becomes your downtime. Worse, you're injecting another company into your relationship with your users. If that were necessary, I'd choose one the customer was already familiar with, like Google, Facebook or Twitter. Setting up login isn't very difficult and libraries exist for…
While there often are built in modules for lots of platforms, it often becomes not so easy out of the box when a platform scales. Adding login to RoR is easy, but what if there suddenly is a wordpress site serving the articles, some java backend services handling other aspects etc. Or just generally lots of services that are separate. Then one suddenly needs a central authority not built in to any one service.
Then I've seen lots of people offload that to Auth0 or other managed services.
Re: Show HN: I built a free, simple login service. Would you use this?
#55I would just run Keycloak.
Re: Show HN: I built a free, simple login service. Would you use this?
#56No: - for trivial projects, I don’t want them to stop working one day - for more serious services, moving login to a third party is a huge risk. The upside isn’t worth the risk. Even if it did your pricing is way too expensive, but that could be fixed.
That makes sense – I’ve had the same feeling, but was curious if there was a niche, hence this post! Is there a price point at which you would consider using something like this?
No, not me personally, however if someone lacked the skill to build a login system and lacked the risk aversion to outsourcing it (which I’m guessing is not uncommon because that risk aversion comes with experience) then perhaps there is a market at the right price.
Re: Show HN: I built a free, simple login service. Would you use this?
#57I agree with kenji's (dead) comment. I'd rather set up login functionality on my own server. If you use a third party service, their downtime becomes your downtime. Worse, you're injecting another company into your relationship with your users. If that were necessary, I'd choose one the customer was already familiar with, like Google, Facebook or Twitter. Setting up login isn't very difficult and libraries exist for…
While there often are built in modules for lots of platforms, it often becomes not so easy out of the box when a platform scales. Adding login to RoR is easy, but what if there suddenly is a wordpress site serving the articles, some java backend services handling other aspects etc. Or just generally lots of services that are separate. Then one suddenly needs a central authority not built in to any one service. Then I…
That would be an ideal scenario for a SSO system. There are open source solutions like Keycloak, IdentityServer etc. While they are nice thanks to the functionality they offer, I recently tried Keycloak and found it extremely annoying to maintain thanks to the not great documentation.
Managed services like Auth0 are a great alternative, although Auth0 is one of the more expensive ones. For small apps I found Firebase Auth to be great, for larger projects things like Amazon Cognito or Azure AD B2C are probably the better choice (although Azure AD B2C still doesn't support custom domains). They are worth a try imho, since Amazon as well as Microsoft offer a generous free teir (50k MAUs for free)
Re: Show HN: I built a free, simple login service. Would you use this?
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Login management should be built into the browsers instead. Imagine a UI where you go to log in and instead of a text/email field for login and a password field you get a drop down with a list of your personas that you’ve created with the option of adding a new one. Under the hood it would use a public/private key pair to authenticate you with the site. Browsers could implement a service that backs up your personas a…
That sounds very much like the goals of Mozilla's Persona service. While it required a separate service and some JavaScript, the idea was that it could be supported natively by browsers in the long run. Unfortunately, it was shut down in 2016 due to lack of interest. (Coincidentally, I just spent this past week hacking on its source code.)
I wonder if it just wasnt the right time and if the project could be revived in a couple years. It seems like a great direction.
Re: Show HN: I built a free, simple login service. Would you use this?
#59This is really cool, and its an interesting way to try to monetize what would otherwise be a relatively small service.
The big issues here are trust and security. Before using a third-party login, especially if it isn't one of the big ones, I would need to understand more of how it is handling the data. A breach in your service translates directly to a breach in mine, and the intro page does not describe many of the details.
Does using your service offer the end users any benefit compared to a third party login or built-in login service? As it stands, it seems like they will be giving their email address to yet another company, which may erode their trust in my own service.
Re: Show HN: I built a free, simple login service. Would you use this?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Login management should be built into the browsers instead. Imagine a UI where you go to log in and instead of a text/email field for login and a password field you get a drop down with a list of your personas that you’ve created with the option of adding a new one. Under the hood it would use a public/private key pair to authenticate you with the site. Browsers could implement a service that backs up your personas a…
That sounds very much like the goals of Mozilla's Persona service. While it required a separate service and some JavaScript, the idea was that it could be supported natively by browsers in the long run. Unfortunately, it was shut down in 2016 due to lack of interest. (Coincidentally, I just spent this past week hacking on its source code.)
Yes that’s pretty much what I was thinking of. It’s unfortunate Mozilla couldn’t keep it going. I wonder if a browser extension could make this work as a way to pave the way forward. Or if like LastPass could add such functionality.