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Cloud-based User Management for Web Apps

userapp.io

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Re: Cloud-based User Management for Web Apps

#71

Post by adrinavarro »

aytekin wrote: post #29
WA wrote: post #14

Why? Honestly, how can you "outsource" such a vital part of your web app to a third party? Not only is this a privacy disaster but also, if this user service goes down or has a temporary downtime, your own business is effectively unusable. I understand that it makes sense to not write these types of user functions and management things over and over again. The solution however, is not a SaaS, but a library or a littl…

One possible use case: Let's say you are building a new app and you don't know if it will be successful. At this point you are supposed to be working on the core. You are supposed to be talking with the users as soon as possible. You are not supposed to spend your time on things that don't matter such as registration, email delivery, forgot password. If the app becomes successful you can always implement these things…

Right. So instead of working in creating a user system, you integrate your core to another system.

Or you could, well, let's say, use a library or framework and spare you the work of integration too!

Re: Cloud-based User Management for Web Apps

#72

Post by jitix »

Looks great! Will surely use it for my next project.

Few suggestions:

1. Implement multiple ways to login (and charge accordingly) e.g Keyfile based, Color combination based, Biometric based, etc.

2. Do cross-platform API. I know you might think that BB is a sinking ship but to be ubiquitous you service needs to have an API on EVERY platform.

3. (This is more technical) Shard your db based on the location of your customers and accordingly replicate your data. e.g. If I launch a webapp hosted in India, I obviously don't want my customers to hit sweden or US every time they login (with the undersea cable breaking every now and then). If the India mirror of your service goes down then there will be graceful degradation (users will login slowly by hitting the other replicas) but not a full downtime. Basically for a customer X running webapp W, the primary replica should reside in the vicinity of where W is hosted but backed up by replicas in other locations.

4. Introduce a free development tier for upto 4-10 users.

Re: Cloud-based User Management for Web Apps

#73

Post by stephenr »

UK-AL wrote: post #22
WA wrote: post #14

Why? Honestly, how can you "outsource" such a vital part of your web app to a third party? Not only is this a privacy disaster but also, if this user service goes down or has a temporary downtime, your own business is effectively unusable. I understand that it makes sense to not write these types of user functions and management things over and over again. The solution however, is not a SaaS, but a library or a littl…

You could say that about ANY cloud product though.

Exactly. His point applies to those other cloud services too.

Re: Cloud-based User Management for Web Apps

#74

Post by 7952 »

WA wrote: post #14

Why? Honestly, how can you "outsource" such a vital part of your web app to a third party? Not only is this a privacy disaster but also, if this user service goes down or has a temporary downtime, your own business is effectively unusable. I understand that it makes sense to not write these types of user functions and management things over and over again. The solution however, is not a SaaS, but a library or a littl…

I do see the appeal of this kind of service. I understand enough about security to know that it is diffiult to get right.

The library approach that I have tried with things like django etc. tend to need plugins for a lot of use cases, and I do not understand what pieces of code are intereactig with each other which is a big red flag. More complex SSO systems seem massively overcomplicated and difficult to configure.

I want something with the simplicity and definitiveness of an apache htpasswd file with a freindly user interface and assurances about security/hashing etc.

Re: Cloud-based User Management for Web Apps

#76

Post by mehdim »

WA wrote: post #14

Why? Honestly, how can you "outsource" such a vital part of your web app to a third party? Not only is this a privacy disaster but also, if this user service goes down or has a temporary downtime, your own business is effectively unusable. I understand that it makes sense to not write these types of user functions and management things over and over again. The solution however, is not a SaaS, but a library or a littl…

This is why OAuth.io is open source, and you can choose to have a commercial license if you want to avoid GPL.

Re: Cloud-based User Management for Web Apps

#77

Post by read »

read wrote: post #45
typerandom wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you don't live in Sweden. Beer here is expensive :) :(

How are privacy laws in Sweden?

Why was I downvoted? I am genuinely interested to know where to host data.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6182989

Re: Cloud-based User Management for Web Apps

#78

Post by bjelkeman-again »

philjackson wrote: post #19
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I need to integrate something like this in an open source platform. Is there anything even close as an open source project? Or do we need to develop the same thing as FOSS ourselves?

OpenAM edit: I seem to have been voted down. It was a serious suggestion though - did I misunderstand the question?

It wasn't me. Someone down voted me too. Sometimes the HN crowd is a bit negative against open source as they are focused on making money and there is some who think there is a conflict in that.

Re: Cloud-based User Management for Web Apps

#80

Post by jaakl »

typerandom wrote: post #16
badclient wrote: post #3

Looks intriguing and I can tell you guys have spent a lot of time on the feature-set. But the biggest thing that will hold me back(and may be others) is a lack of clarity about security and my data(what happens in the event that you are down? in the event that you close shop?)

OP here. This is something that we are very aware of. We only have good intentions and want our users to feel 100% secure with us. If you don't, please let us know how we can change that! :) We don't have it now, but we will make it possible to export all of the data in UserApp at any time. Regarding security and privacy we have written a section about it here: https://help.userapp.io/customer/portal/topics/550128-se…

Could you do nightly SCP backup of my entire user database to my own server?
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