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Comment by beachy | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that Google, FB, Microsoft and all the other "auth providers" are able to deliver a good and free auth service because it's subsidised by their other products.

Whereas Okta, Auth0, etc. cannot, since that is their product. So they have to charge.

Given network effects, a free auth system will always beat a paid one, except where the user is compelled to use it. (e.g. you want to use my SaaS product? You'll have to create an identity in my private auth system).

So I don't think these products (and I'll include KeyCloak which is fricking awesome) really compete as such with the FAANG offerings.

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I am not sure about that. Thee same strengths that FAANG brings means that they don't have the intense focus that companies like Auth0/Okta/others bring. See how many people are complaining about Firebase and Cognito in other threads.

Having the auth system be your primary revenue stream means you pay very close attention to it, whether that be marketing or engineering. If it is just a freebie/side offereing you add to make your core better, well, it might lack resources or focus.

Disclosure, I work for FusionAuth.

Fair comment.

However I don't see many web sites with a "sign in with FusionAuth" button, and I don't see any way to get such a button for my site.

Not without paying anyway - which is really my whole point. Free will always win.

I'm just starting a new side project, and have looked at Keycloak and fusionauth. Fusionauth has a free offering (ie, self hosted), and takes a minute to install and run. I like it a lot and am going forward with it for testing.

You won't see a login with fusionauth button, you'll just see a login button on my website, which might give you Google, github,LinkedIn logins etc depending on what I choose.

Depending on what set of features you need, it may make sense to also have a look at SuperTokens.io. Probably not as mature but we're open source and stronger with customization of the end user experience (frontend stuff), support and ease of implemenetation.

> stronger with customization of the end user experience

I might say "a different approach" :) I appreciate SuperToken's SPA first stance, but FusionAuth is pretty darn customizable too: https://fusionauth.io/docs/v1/tech/themes/

FusionAuth also has advanced registration forms and we are working on a lot of really awesome improvements around sign-in and sign-up workflows.

Stay tuned for some major updates in the coming weeks! ;)

Sure, just like you won't see sites with a 'sign in with Auth0' button. Both are service providers.

As a sibling comment mentioned, FusionAuth has a free offering if you self host. https://fusionauth.io/download/

I’ve complained extensively about Firebase in other posts, but not about their Auth module which I think is by far the best offering in the portfolio of services. I’ve integrated it for a large enterprise customer through SAML and have had an extremely positive experience where everything just worked with about a morning of work, and I’ve not had to maintain it ever since. The client SDK is great in how it syncs auth states with the server.

My main complaint is that there is no ‘onLogin’ serverless functions hook, and how keeping additional user context through custom claims is not that straightforward.

And of course I’m pretty apprehensive about Google having the data, so best of luck to you all building OSS solutions.

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