9 ms·

For those wondering what the "SSO Tax" is, it refers to the excessive pricing practiced by SaaS providers to access the SSO feature on their product. A documen

For those wondering what the "SSO Tax" is, it refers to the excessive pricing practiced by SaaS providers to access the SSO feature on their product. A documented rant has made the rounds at https://sso.tax https://sso.tax , which lists all vendors and their pricing of SSO.

m463 3y ago
SSO: Single Sign On Single sign-on (SSO) is an authentication scheme that allows a user to log in with a single ID to any of several related, yet independent, software systems. SCIM: System for Cross-domain Identity Management System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) is a standard for automating the exchange of user identity information between identity domains, or IT systems. SAML: Security Assertion Markup Language Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML, pronounced SAM-el, /ˈsæməl/)[1] is an open standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between parties, in particular, between an identity provider and a service provider. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_sign-on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_sign-on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_for_Cross-domain_Identity_Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_for_Cross-domain_Identi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Assertion_Markup_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Assertion_Markup_Lang... (if you work at SpaceX, SSO might also mean Single Stage to Orbit, which is lots more exciting - but since Elon banned acronyms maybe it's not used)
AntonCTO 3y ago
Thanks, I was wondering what "SSO tax" means. I see it differently. The enterprise plan is that the company really wants to sell. But it gives a discount to small companies that don't need the enterprise features like SSO, at least not from the beginning. I think it is very similar to freemium pricing - extra features, extra cost. Of course, when I look at a product, I look at all the plans and decide if it is worth the money now and in the future. I may feel pity and not buy it. But I never blame companies just for their pricing page.
usr1106 3y ago
Thanks for the useful link. The introduction says "like Google", but the table does not list Google pricing for SSO. We use Google SSO at work, but I am just a user. Not involved either budgetwise or implementationwise.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pwarner 3y ago
I always thought this was insane, but now I wonder if "SSO Pricing"/tax is just the "real price" and the "Base pricing" is really the new free trial? Of course the SSO/real pricing is too high, and everyone negotiates it down, but the point is I suspect the "base pricing" is just a trial teaser that's probably not sustainable for many vendors in terms of margins. I'm just guessing here, maybe someone with some inside insight from one of these vendors can advise.
- bks 3y ago
  Great question, and as a vendor with multiple products that suffer from an SSO tax here is my $.02 As a small team we get constant requests to integrate with a customers SAML provider - eventually we just switched to https://workos.com/pricing https://workos.com/pricing We explain to our customers that we have a hard cost for the integration and we pass that cost to them directly. The SSO version of our product and our self signup product do the same thing the same way - it's the compliance or risk management requirement mandated by our customers that require that we sell it the way we do. In our case our SSO or Enterprise version is $125 more expensive than the self signup product. Our money is in the product itself not in the SSO.
  - PhLR 3y ago
    Great approach. Wish there would be more vendors like that. This way we wouldn't even need to talk about SSO-Tax, availability of SCIM/SAML etc.
  - mananaysiempre 3y ago
    So, uh, is that cost a “SAML is a compatibility minefield and requires constant tweaking” cost or a “we need to allocate some of our people to figure out the network setup together with yours” cost? Or something else entirely?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - loik76ju5hyg 3y ago

m463 3y ago

SSO: Single Sign On Single sign-on (SSO) is an authentication scheme that allows a user to log in with a single ID to any of several related, yet independent, software systems. SCIM: System for Cross-domain Identity Management System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) is a standard for automating the exchange of user identity information between identity domains, or IT systems. SAML: Security Assertion Markup Language Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML, pronounced SAM-el, /ˈsæməl/)[1] is an open standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between parties, in particular, between an identity provider and a service provider. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_sign-on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_sign-on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_for_Cross-domain_Identity_Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_for_Cross-domain_Identi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Assertion_Markup_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Assertion_Markup_Lang... (if you work at SpaceX, SSO might also mean Single Stage to Orbit, which is lots more exciting - but since Elon banned acronyms maybe it's not used)

AntonCTO 3y ago

Thanks, I was wondering what "SSO tax" means. I see it differently. The enterprise plan is that the company really wants to sell. But it gives a discount to small companies that don't need the enterprise features like SSO, at least not from the beginning. I think it is very similar to freemium pricing - extra features, extra cost. Of course, when I look at a product, I look at all the plans and decide if it is worth the money now and in the future. I may feel pity and not buy it. But I never blame companies just for their pricing page.

usr1106 3y ago

Thanks for the useful link. The introduction says "like Google", but the table does not list Google pricing for SSO. We use Google SSO at work, but I am just a user. Not involved either budgetwise or implementationwise.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pwarner 3y ago

I always thought this was insane, but now I wonder if "SSO Pricing"/tax is just the "real price" and the "Base pricing" is really the new free trial? Of course the SSO/real pricing is too high, and everyone negotiates it down, but the point is I suspect the "base pricing" is just a trial teaser that's probably not sustainable for many vendors in terms of margins. I'm just guessing here, maybe someone with some inside insight from one of these vendors can advise.

bks 3y ago
Great question, and as a vendor with multiple products that suffer from an SSO tax here is my $.02 As a small team we get constant requests to integrate with a customers SAML provider - eventually we just switched to https://workos.com/pricing https://workos.com/pricing We explain to our customers that we have a hard cost for the integration and we pass that cost to them directly. The SSO version of our product and our self signup product do the same thing the same way - it's the compliance or risk management requirement mandated by our customers that require that we sell it the way we do. In our case our SSO or Enterprise version is $125 more expensive than the self signup product. Our money is in the product itself not in the SSO.
- PhLR 3y ago
  Great approach. Wish there would be more vendors like that. This way we wouldn't even need to talk about SSO-Tax, availability of SCIM/SAML etc.
- mananaysiempre 3y ago
  So, uh, is that cost a “SAML is a compatibility minefield and requires constant tweaking” cost or a “we need to allocate some of our people to figure out the network setup together with yours” cost? Or something else entirely?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - loik76ju5hyg 3y ago