With SuperTokens, Qloo were able to improve their authentication experience substantially
Qloo is an AI-based cultural platform that predicts consumer taste data and recommendations for companies in various sectors. Founded 12 years ago, Qloo has raised over 57 million dollars and is used by corporations like Netflix, Pepsico, and Universal Music Group.
In this case study we sit down with Eric Hosick, director of backend development at Qloo to discuss the issues with their previous authentication provider and their experience of migrating to SuperTokens.
Overview
Qloo had been working on an internal product called “insights” and needed an authentication and user management solution. They initially settled on using Frontegg as the auth solution but encountered some issues. When logging in, the user would get redirected multiple times, the screen would flash. Overall the authentication experience felt slow.
SuperTokens came up early in the conversation to look for other auth alternatives. They wanted to lean towards smaller companies that offered a more hands-on approach with support. After ensuring SuperTokens met their feature requirements and speaking to support they decided to move forward with the migration.
The migration took over a month since they performed a lazy migration of their users. Configuring and retrofitting SuperTokens into their codebase took a couple of days. The extensibility and level of support offered were integral to the smooth transition. Their next steps will involve setting up SSO and multi-tenancy.
The Premise
Qloo had been working on an internal product called "insights". They initially settled on using Frontegg as the authentication provider but encountered some issues. Whether it was a configuration issue or something else, navigating to the authentication screen on Frontegg was slow and would also do a number of redirects resulting in the screen flashing due to the rerouting. This made logging into the insights product impossible and they had to start exploring other auth solutions and came across SuperTokens.
“Frontegg was really hokey and slow, once I got SuperTokens in there it was super quick and snappy”
Eric HosickDirector of backend development @ Qloo
The Process
Although Qloo did not have strict criteria when evaluating SuperTokens, they were looking for a smaller company that could provide great support. The communication and support from the SuperTokens team were some of the deciding factors for Qloo during the evaluation process.
It took about a week for the Qloo team to finish integrating SuperTokens into their project with the majority of the time spent figuring out a CORS issue with their API Gateway. They approached the migration in a staggered manner, fully migrating over from Frontegg to SuperTokens, over a month.
“SuperTokens has everything we need… there is nothing that has left us wanting”
“So far you have not told me you can't do that. Because it’s just like grab this function and override it and do your own thing on the spot”
Eric HosickDirector of backend development @ QlooResults
Although the migration went well for Qloo, they pointed out some issues with some of the documentation being outdated. These problems are currently being fixed. In the meantime, as Qloo expands on insights they need SSO and multi-tenancy and both features are supported in the latest versions of SuperTokens. Qloo is now in the process of upgrading its SuperTokens core to support the latest features.
“If you could charge us, that would be awesome”
Eric HosickDirector of backend development @ QlooTo watch entire case study discussion video please click here.