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Comment by nohuck13 | Hacker News Reader

Wrong as in unethical or wrong as in untrue?

Wrong as in there are non-enterprise customers that need SSO

Counterpoint - SaaS software pricing is hilariously underpriced at the current levels for the value it typically brings, that even SMBs should be paying the "enterprise rate" or at least some bump in price.

I do think hiding SSO behind "call us" is a pain however.

I think what people despise most about it is that SSO is sold as an enterprise feature. That would be ok if it was sold separately. But often SSO comes bundled with a lot of overpriced garbage in some enterprise agreement. Github is a prime example of this.

> But often SSO comes bundled with a lot of overpriced garbage in some enterprise agreement.

Fair. But wouldn't the opposite also hold true? The purchasers who say "what..I got pay $10/user/month extra for JUST SSO?"

An SSO provider costs a couple of dollars. To integrate one is less than 100 lines of code. That is not 10$.

You're looking at that from a cost perspective. Pricing should be based on value.

> To integrate one is less than 100 lines of code.

Ugh not this again...

This pretty much only works in the US. In the rest of the world companies expect to get a fair price. Hence the term, American prizes.

Explain to me exactly what a "fair price" is? Value is simple.

Let's use a simple example:

AcmeCo makes a widget and sells it for $50

WorldCo buys widget for $50 and uses it create $75 worth of services, thereby profiting $25.

AcmeCo has an opportunity to make up to charge up to $74.99 if they want, because WorldCo still profits. That, in its simplest terms, is what pricing on. value means.

Europe, Asia, or otherwise don't magically say "well that's not fair, you don't deserve higher profits". That's silly, so stop pretending thats the case outside of the US.

More like. AcmeCo makes a widget nobody wants. WorldCo wants to buy a single needed core feature. WorldCo then must pay for the widget too.

Personally, I think even the cheaper plans are overpriced some of the time, considering real resource usage and comparing against software licenses in the past.

I do wonder how much of that money goes into subsidising the free tiers and paying (comparatively) enormous wages of developers to add features I don't really want.

> how much of that money goes into subsidising the free tiers

I've seen probably ~10 companies financials that do this. It's ALL OVER THE PLACE. The reality is that the free doesn't two things: tests those new features on guinea pigs and lets you upsell to someone who has given you permission to do so.

There's no free lunch.

The fact that a few people without deep pockets need SSO doesn't invalidate the whole enterprise.

If we accept that service providers are going to price discriminate, then we accept that they are going to price discriminate on _some_ imperfect heuristic.

It seems to me that you have to argue

(A) Businesses should not price discriminate

(B) price discrimination based on marginal features is okay but this particular feature (needing SSO) isn't very predictive

(C) This particular feature might be predictive, but security is too important to be part of a willingness-to-pay heuristic, so it's unethical to use this particular feature in this way.

C seems like the argument a lot of people here are obliquely making.

My SO is the owner-operator of an SCorp currently adjusting the business to hire W-2 #1. As the consulting CIO I'm doing everything I can to keep it on 1 SSO.

Agreed. In the company I work for, I'll often set up SSO even if there will only be 3 people who ever use the service.

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