Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sick of spending time on Auth, we built an open source 'Stripe for Auth'

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 347 posts

Re: Sick of spending time on Auth, we built an open source 'Stripe for Auth'

#131

Post by owlbynight »

It's like you're speaking directly to me. The only thing I ever use Firebase for is auth and it's cumbersome and annoying. I'm excited to try this. Thank you for having a sensible free tier.

I'm a devops/support engineer and I build out small tools all of the time for our teams and I use Firebase for auth as an end-around our IT admin to avoid having to request oauth2 apps via Google every time I need to make something, since all of our people share the same e-mail domain.

That's what I'd be looking to do with your product. I've got a project in mind to give it a shot.

Re: Sick of spending time on Auth, we built an open source 'Stripe for Auth'

#132

Post by arcturus17 »

pbronez wrote: post #128

I really appreciate that you offer your SaaS version for free up to 5K monthly active users! That's high enough that I can actually use this for a side project... $30/mo for the next 5k seems fine. I also appreciate that it's active users.

For comparison, Auth0 also charges for active users, but 10k MAUs would put you at $228.

I know some established companies and well-funded startups can pay that without batting an eye, but it seems non-viable for a lot of projects.

Re: Sick of spending time on Auth, we built an open source 'Stripe for Auth'

#133

Post by mbullington »

SuperTokens looks really cool and I'm glad it's open source, however, I think the big "blue ocean" here for self-hosted auth systems vs. AWS Cognito and Auth0 are security compliance.

Many large orgs with data requirements need things like ISO 27001, FedRAMP, etc. If you build with a product like SuperTokens and then need to meet these requirements later in your development lifecycle, you'll have to:

a. switch to Cognito/Auth0 for ISO, and for FedRAMP you can only use Cognito.

b. modify SuperTokens by learning NIST requirements (costs engineer time, developers might not know Java)

c. you can make your own, but that defeats the purpose for these systems (costs more time than b)

I feel an "Enterprise" (paid) option by SuperTokens where security compliance is handled, with still the option for self-hosting, would be a massive win.

Re: Sick of spending time on Auth, we built an open source 'Stripe for Auth'

#134

Post by desireco42 »

This is really cool. Thanks for making it.

Thinking on how I would use it, I appreciate free tier, but I think once things get more involved, I might actually do self hosting, which leaves you without income.

I would see about that, otherwise it is cool. If you can't make money, then just when we start using it, you might decide this is not worth pursuing and it wouldn't be good for everyone.

Wish you the best.

Re: Sick of spending time on Auth, we built an open source 'Stripe for Auth'

#135

Post by rishabhpoddar »

owlbynight wrote: post #131

It's like you're speaking directly to me. The only thing I ever use Firebase for is auth and it's cumbersome and annoying. I'm excited to try this. Thank you for having a sensible free tier. I'm a devops/support engineer and I build out small tools all of the time for our teams and I use Firebase for auth as an end-around our IT admin to avoid having to request oauth2 apps via Google every time I need to make somethi…

Thanks for the encouragement :) We will be happy to help when you get started.

Re: Sick of spending time on Auth, we built an open source 'Stripe for Auth'

#136

Post by advaitruia »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #65

I'm impressed and glad you chose a real Open Source license. I really hope you can make money off of this so it can remain free to use (and I think you can, judging by Auth0's customers) Also, I assume you can add captchas as a custom theme. Could you add some sample code for that (and other user stories) in your docs/repos? In cases where somebody's got to implement something super quick, and there's a competitor wh…

Thank you for your encouragement!

Yes, themes are customizable and anyone can contribute one. Adding captchas is a good idea and I've added it to the list of themes we have in mind. We'll build out a theme with captchas! Regarding sample code on how to do it, please let me revert, will have a look at how captchas work and if easily doable, will add it shortly.

Your current use case for Cognito is beyond what we currently offer or plan to in the near future. However, we'd appreciate it if you follow along and consider SuperTokens for projects where we would be relevant.

Re: Sick of spending time on Auth, we built an open source 'Stripe for Auth'

#137

Post by advaitruia »

mbullington wrote: post #133

SuperTokens looks really cool and I'm glad it's open source, however, I think the big "blue ocean" here for self-hosted auth systems vs. AWS Cognito and Auth0 are security compliance. Many large orgs with data requirements need things like ISO 27001, FedRAMP, etc. If you build with a product like SuperTokens and then need to meet these requirements later in your development lifecycle, you'll have to: a. switch to Cog…

Thats incredibly insightful because that is exactly our plan :)

We will follow the Buyer based model where features for developers / startups are free and those required by enterprises are paid. We have a section on pricing philosophy on our pricing page that explains this in a little more detail

Re: Sick of spending time on Auth, we built an open source 'Stripe for Auth'

#139

Post by advaitruia »

pbronez wrote: post #128

I really appreciate that you offer your SaaS version for free up to 5K monthly active users! That's high enough that I can actually use this for a side project... $30/mo for the next 5k seems fine. I also appreciate that it's active users.

Thats great to hear. We'd love to help you get started with your side project. Feel free to ping us on Discord or on my email ID advait at supertokens [dot] io for any help you need!

Re: Sick of spending time on Auth, we built an open source 'Stripe for Auth'

#140

Post by ignoramous »

I hear you. The need for something simple is real.

I don't have a complex SSO/Auth need, and so, something as simple as single-factor FIDO based passwordless login (such as sawo [0] / portier [1]) or hands-off user management (like userbase [2] / human-id [3]) cuts it for me.

That said, the only question I have is the GitHub page says SuperTokens is "open core"

> SuperTokens is an open core alternative to proprietary login providers like Auth0 or AWS Cognito. We are different because we offer:

> - Open source:...

...So, which parts of supertokens is open core vs open source (supertokens-core, I can see, is vanilla Apache v2 without any strings attached like the horrible Commons Clause)?

[0] https://sawolabs.com/

[1] https://portier.github.io/

[2] https://userbase.com/

[3] https://human-id.org/

Post reply on HN