If you’re looking to perform any kind of registration on your site, don’t reinvent the wheel. There are many secure user login APIs, typically with support for social networks, as well. You can use one of these APIs to authenticate, maintain user profile, handle forgot password flows, and in some cases, build in authorization roles.
Among all of the utilities to “outsource” to an API, this one might be the touchiest. You’re bound to want control over your user base, so research carefully when building your user login. On the other hand, rolling your own could lead to a lesser user experience, a security vulnerability, or worse.
Top User Login APIs Comparison
| Auth0 | Janrain | LoginRadius | OAuth.io | Stormpath | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DX Index | 9 | 5 | 5 | 7 | 9 |
| Gorilla Index | 6 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 4 |
| Networks | 30 | 16 | 35 | 100+ | 2 |
| Free usage | 7,000 active users | No | No | 2,000 API calls / mo | 100K API calls / mo |
| Pricing | $12+ / mo | Enterprise | $495+ / mo | $19+ / mo | $49+ / mo |
| Year founded | 2013 | 2005 | 2011 | 2013 | 2012 |
| Employees | 76 | 120 | 30 | < 10 | 33 |
Quick Takes
- Use Auth0 for… its developer experience and many networks
- Use JanRain for… its longevity and enterprise focus
- Use LoginRadius for… its enterprise focus and language options
- Use OAuth.io for… its many social login options
- Use StormPath for… its developer experience and profile focus
Use Cases
- Social login: streamline your login process by using your user’s social identity. As soon as you want to support multiple networks (ie, Twitter and Facebook), you’ll wish someone else had done the work for you.
- Registration flow: there’s a lot to getting a new user signed up for your application. You need to verify email addresses, create confirmation flows, and more. You can get help without outsourcing everything about your users to another service.
- User segmentation: For the User Login APIs that support profiles, you have the ability to search for the subset of users that have chosen specific criteria.
Market
User Login provided as a service is a relatively new market. Historically, the control and importance of one’s user list was kept close. Still, developers are skeptical of offloading something so central to another provider. More than most markets, you should look at the longevity of the companies whose products you consider.
Again, the immaturity of the market is an issue here. Even the one company that is more than a decade old is fairly new to User Login. Janrain was founded to focus on OpenID, a decentralized authentication protocol.
Janrain is also the most-funded of the companies, with nearly $80M raised to date, most recently a $27M Series D in December 2015. The company also claims nearly $15M in annual revenue. StormPath is next on the list with $24.7M raised, most recently a $15M Series B in September 2015. Auth0 has raised $11.67M, including a $9.27M Series A in July 2015. Neither LoginRadius nor OAuth.io have raised recently or in as large amounts.
Developer Experience
User Login is one of those things most developers have built several times. You may be comparing services to frameworks or building your registration, social login, and user profiles in-house. Since you’re more likely to roll your own User Login than, say, maps, developer experience becomes an important factor.
StormPath and Auth0 lead the way amongst their competitors, especially excelling at resources to get started. They each have SDKs or client libraries across many popular languages, with tutorials and guides oriented to those languages.
Remember that developer experience shouldn’t be the only factor you consider. An API could have a DX Index of 10, but if it doesn’t have the features you need, then it isn’t going to be a good solution.
It’s also important to consider the context of each company’s typical customer. Janrain and LoginRadius are aimed toward a more enterprise audience. That means where they lose points on self service, they may make up for it with full service or more customizable features.
Programming Language Support
| Front-end | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Auth0 | Janrain | LoginRadius | OAuth.io | Stormpath | |
| Angular | |||||
| Ember | |||||
| JavaScript | |||||
| jQuery | |||||
| React | |||||
| Mobile | |||||
| Auth0 | Janrain | LoginRadius | OAuth.io | Stormpath | |
| Android | |||||
| iOS | |||||
| Phonegap | |||||
| Windows | |||||
| Traditional SDKs / Client Libraries | |||||
| Auth0 | Janrain | LoginRadius | OAuth.io | Stormpath | |
| Go | |||||
| Java | |||||
| .NET | |||||
| Node | |||||
| PHP | |||||
| Python | |||||
| Rails | |||||
| Ruby | |||||
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