Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Where Does Frontegg Work Best?
- Prioritizing Speed Vs. Flexibility
- 5 Frontegg Alternatives For More Control Over User Access Management
- Feature & Pricing Comparison: Frontegg vs. SuperTokens
- Feature & Pricing Comparison: Frontegg vs. Clerk
- Feature & Pricing Comparison: Frontegg vs. Auth0
- Feature & Pricing Comparison: Frontegg vs. Stytch
- Feature & Pricing Comparison: Frontegg vs. Cognito
- Understanding Managed vs. Self-Hosted Access Management
- Conclusion
Inroduction
In the time of quick iteration and rapid deployment, every bottleneck in an app’s development cycle must be mitigated. Developing custom authentication and authorization solutions is a time-intensive process, which brings tons of other headaches like security and regulatory compliance.
Authentication, as a Service (AaaS) providers come in the clutch, offering battle-tested, pre-made services that handle user authentication and authorization, flows.
Frontegg, a complete suite of user management tools, APIs and libraries, that doesn’t have anything to do with eggs, or chickens (pun intended) is a popular and well-trusted choice for a user access management (UAM) suite.
Where Does Frontegg Work Best?
Frontegg has an end-to-end covering suite, from bare authentication features to RBAC, enterprise-grade features like multi-tenancy, SSO, SCIM, MFA (read its benefits!), audit logs, and even analytics. We’d lie if we said Frontegg is missing something crucial - it isn’t. Developer experience (DevEx) also shines, with really deep-dive-styled documentation with clear code examples.
Many competitors feature pre-built UI, but unlike many competitors, Frontegg has a UI builder called Portal Builder allowing you to customize user flows with no code at all. You can choose theming, add social login, and such with a few clicks.
With the above being said, there is obviously a catch - Frontegg is heavily enterprise-oriented. There is a generous “free tier” plan offering 7,500 monthly active users (MAUs), with optional add-ons, but for anything besides that, you must go to the inevitable enterprise sales call.
Prioritizing Speed Vs. Flexibility
Speed
When evaluating user access management (UAM) solutions, it’s important to balance the priorities of speed and flexibility.
This can be influenced by the time-to-market (TTM) constraints, development costs and overall feature-set needs.
By speed, we can view it from two standpoints: from the business perspective and the developer perspective. The business perspective ensures that the user’s needs are met, and each unsatisfied user can be a potentially lost customer.
On the other hand, the speed from the developer’s perspective ensures that they can complete other aspects of the development that aren’t auth-focused, allowing them to work on features that would directly influence the business outcome.
Flexibility
Conversely, UAM solutions that emphasize flexibility provide detailed customization options, self-hosting, and feature opt-ins (or opt-outs). The level of granular customization highly depends on the app’s needs, as well as the business-oriented KPIs.
The Art of Balance
The prioritization of speed vs. flexibility should prevail by evaluating both short-term and long-term aspects of each project; you’d likely want to develop a minimum viable product (MVP) quickly, thus opting for speed, but later down the road you might need fine-tuned customization, which outweighs the speed.
5 Frontegg Alternatives For More Control Over User Access Management
After we’ve covered where Frontegg shines, as well as the art of balancing between the speed and flexibility of a UAM solution, we’re going to cover 5 alternatives to Frontegg, helping you decide what’s best for your individual use case.
These alternatives should give you a clearer picture of what’s in the current landscape of UAM tools, and what factors differentiate them, as feature set isn’t the only prevailing factor, but a range of pros should give you the ability to make a decision for your UAM solution.
Feature & Pricing Comparison: Frontegg vs. SuperTokens
SuperTokens differs from the vast majority of authentication providers by being completely open-source and modular, meaning you take what you need, and leave unnecessary features behind, making it easier to implement just the things you need.
Pricing
- Self-hosted version is completely free with no user limitations whatsoever.
- The cloud version includes 5,000 MAU for free and is priced at $0.02 per MAU after 5,000 users.
- SuperTokens offers paid add-ons like:
- Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- Account linking
- Multi-tenancy and such.
- See detailed SuperTokens pricing.
Setup time & Complexity
- SuperTokens can be set up in a few minutes, with automatic setup using CLI.
- The self-hosted version can be deployed within 10 minutes.
- There are plenty of setup guides for different use cases with SuperTokens that you might find useful.
Open-source & Licensing
- As mentioned above, SuperTokens is completely open-source with over 12k stars on GitHub and 25+ contributors at the time of writing.
- It’s licensed under Apache License 2.0. In short, Apache License 2.0 is a permissive open-source license that allows users to freely use, modify, and distribute software for any purpose, with the requirement that any modifications to the original code are documented. It also includes a patent grant, providing users with assurance against patent claims from contributors to the project.
Data Migration Options
- SuperTokens supports user data migration, session migration, and MFA migration out of the box. See a detailed overview of SuperTokens migration support.
Hosting Options
- Cloud & self-hosted.
Size of the Company
- In the batch of summer 2020, SuperTokens got funding from Y Combinator and since then has managed to raise over $300M in investments.
- It is also one of the fastest growing open-source startups as covered by ROSS Annual 2022 Index.
Security Features
- SuperTokens is AICPA SOC 2 Type-II compliant, with extensive policy controls, with a 99.99% uptime covered by Instatus.
SuperTokens steps over Frontegg as a completely open-source solution, while having most of the enterprise-grade solutions as Frontegg. It is substantially cheaper on a per-MAU basis, pretty much basing your choice purely on the feature set required.
Feature & Pricing Comparison: Frontegg vs. Clerk
As compared to Frontegg, Clerk dominates in its focus on SaaS products, primarily B2B and B2C-oriented ones. Clerk also draws attention to its pre-built UI components (Clerk Elements) and hosted UI portals.
Clerk’s selling point is condensed in a one-liner - “First day free - means no charges for users who sign up but never return. Users are only counted as active when they come back after 24 hours.”
Pricing
- Clerk’s free plan includes 10,000 MAU and a custom domain.
- The Pro plan starts at $25 per month, with $0.02 per MAU after the included 10,000. It allows you to remove Clerk branding, create allowlists/blocklists, customize session duration, etc.
Setup time & Complexity
- Clerk can be set up within a few minutes using pre-built components, or within a few hours with custom components.
Open-source & Licensing
- The core is not open source (closed-source & proprietary), but its libraries are open-source. There is also no control over user data hosting, residency or regions.
Data Migration Options
- Doesn’t support session migration; supports trickle integration; needs to provide
password_hashervalue - the hashing algorithm used to generate the password digest) and in some instances, Clerk will transparently upgrade your users’ password hashes to the more secure Bcrypt hashing algorithm.
Hosting Options
- Cloud only.
Size of the Company
- Startup, with over $55.5M in funding, notably backed by Stripe and Madrona.
Security Features
- Clerk is AICPA SOC 2 Type-II certified & HIPAA, and CCPA compliant.
As stated by multiple customer reviews, Clerk is well suited for improving conversions and user funnels. Clerk’s clear docs and pre-made components are keen on the DevEx side, making it a fast-to-integrate tool within your existing stack.
Feature & Pricing Comparison: Frontegg vs. Auth0
Auth0 was previously known and loved as a preferred CIAM platform with a wide range of specific features that cater to different use cases and industries.
Nonetheless, following its acquisition by Okta in 2021, developers have noticed the usual pattern when startups get acquired when a surge for profit overweight the customer needs and since started exploring alternative solutions, citing concerns regarding pricing (a 300% increase), and a need for enhanced customization, and perceived support shortcomings.
Pricing
- The free plan includes 7,500 MAU. Auth0 differentiates its plans as B2B and B2C.
- B2C:
- $35 - $240 per month for 500 MAU
- $70 - $240 per month for 1,000 MAU
- $175 - $545 per month for 2,500 MAU
- and so on…
- B2B:
- $150 - $800 per month for 500 MAU
- $300 - $800 per month for 1,000 MAU
- $700 - $1,200 per month for 2,500 MAU
- and so on…
Setup time & Complexity
- Auth0 can be set up within a few minutes. It also features pretty comprehensive documentation.
Open-source & Licensing
- The core is closed-source with the ability to connect to an external database.
Data Migration Options
- Extensive methods of user migration (provide links); automatic migrations; trickle migration support; user import/export extension.
Hosting Options
- Cloud & on isolated private deployment.
Size of the Company
- Enterprise, with the latest $120M funding, valuing the company at $1.92B.
Security Features
- Auth0’s security, privacy & compliance:
- Can provide HIPAA BAA & PCI compliance
- SOC 2 Type-II compliant
- ISO27001 certified
- ISO27018 certified
- Gold Star CSA Level 2 Audit certified
- PCI DSS compliance
- GDPR compliance
Auth0 is a great tool for specific or complex use cases that require multiple layers of abstraction. If you’re just starting out with, let’s say a simple SaaS, Auth0 might have unnecessary overhead for you.
Feature & Pricing Comparison: Frontegg vs. Stytch
Stych comes as a feature-packed Swiss army knife covering both user management and fraud & risk prevention. Stytch focuses on B2B authentication, with superior documentation and support both from the company and the community.
Pricing
- The free plan includes:
- 25 organizations
- 1,000 MAU
- 1,000 machine-to-machine (M2M) tokens
- Pricing ranges from $249 - $799 per month for the following:
- 25 - 100 organizations
- 1,000 - 7,500 MAU
- 5,000 machine-to-machine (M2M) tokens
- Additional pricing:
- $0.50 per organization
- $0.05 per MAU
- $0.005 per M2M token
Setup time & Complexity
- Stytch can be set up in less than an hour.
Open-source & Licensing
- Closed-source; no control over data hosting.
Data Migration Options
- Stytch has support for: static data migration strategy, dynamic data migration strategy, migrating authentication related logic.
Hosting Options
- Cloud-only.
Size of the Company
- Startup, valued at over $1B.
Security Features
- Stytch’s security, privacy & compliance:
- ISO27001 certified
- ISO27018 certified
- SOC 2 Type-II compliant
- GDPR & CCPA compliance
Similar to Clerk, with a focus on passwordless authentication, Stytch is also favoured for increased customer conversions and simpler UI. It has a good balance between complexity and feature-rich set, so it may apply to a greater range of use cases.
Feature & Pricing Comparison: Frontegg vs. Cognito
Cognito is a well-known and well-trusted identity and access management (CIAM) platform provided by Amazon Web Services. Cognito provides both authentication and authorization features for web and mobile apps.
Pricing
- 50,000 MAU free
- There is no free tier for app clients or token requests when Cognito is used for the machine-to-machine use case.
- Additional MAU at $0.0055 per MAU after the first 50,000 (up to 100,000)
- Additional SAML/OIDC users at $0.015 per MAU after the first 50
- SMS charges for Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA):
- Inbound: $0.01 per message
- Outbound: $0.01 per message
Setup time & Complexity
- Can be set up in hours, but still has the traditional AWS’ confusion.
Open-source & Licensing
- Closed-source, no control over data.
Data Migration Options
- Supports bulk migration with all users at one time. Caveats include requiring all users to reset their passwords.
Hosting Options
- Cloud-only. SLA available.
Size of the Company
- Provided by Amazon Web Services, an Amazon (an almost $2 trillion company) subsidiary. Heavy-corporate.
Security Features
- Cognito’s security, privacy & compliance:
- GDPR compliant
- HIPAA compliant
- SOC, PCI and FedRAMP compliant
- Other extensive general AWS compliances can be found here
You might enjoy Cognito’s generous 50,000 free MAU plan or the integration within the AWS’ existing ecosystem. We also have a good write on Cognito’s alternatives and its specific details.
Understanding Managed vs. Self-Hosted Access Management
Understanding the difference between managed and self-hosted access management is a differentiating factor for deciding on a key security infrastructure solution.
Managed Access Management Solutions
Managed access management solutions, also known as cloud-based or Software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, are provided by third-party vendors. These solutions are hosted on the vendor’s servers, meaning the vendor is responsible for maintaining the infrastructure, handling updates, ensuring security, and providing support.
This can significantly reduce the burden on resources, allowing you to focus on other crucial aspects of app development. On the other hand, they lack deep customization, changes to the backend are not possible, and they are usually a black box. To add a cherry on top, you usually don’t have much control over your data.
Self-Hosted Access Management
In contrast to managed access management solutions, self-hosted solutions are hosted on your own servers. This approach provides greater control over the infrastructure and the data, which can be a critical consideration for projects with stringent security or compliance requirements.
However, self-hosting requires an investment in hardware, software and a skilled DevOps engineer (or two) to manage and maintain the system, depending on the scale you’re looking for. It also involves ongoing responsibility for applying security patches, performing regular updates, and ensuring system availability.
While self-hosted solutions can offer a higher degree of customization and integration within existing systems, they can be more resource-intensive and may not offer the same level of convenience and scalability as a managed solution.
How to Decide Between Managed vs. Self-Hosted Solution?
Deciding between managed and self-hosted access management solutions depends on your resources, expertise, security, and compliance needs, as well as cost considerations.
Managed solutions are (usually) easier to integrate and maintain, and ideal for projects with limited staff, while self-hosted solutions offer more control and customization but require significant investment in infrastructure and skilled engineers.
Conclusion
In this article, we covered 5 alternatives to Frontegg. Depending if your project will grow into enterprise-grade solutions, or something on a smaller scale, by reading this article you’ve gained an insight into how these alternatives compare to Frontegg.
A sweet spot between enterprise-readiness, customizability, and self-hostable solutions is SuperTokens - a complete suite for modern authentication.