Is SSO an ‘Enterprise’ Tier feature?

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Let’s start with what SSO is. SSO, or single sign-on, can be considered a master key for your work apps. Usually, you would have a separate key (each key needs a separate password for your email) for each service, one for project management, and another for your cloud storage, etc. SSO lets you use just one key, one set of login details, username, and password, to unlock all the applications you need access to.

SSO is a win-win for users and security

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SSO centralizes how your identity is managed online, so it’s less annoying than juggling dozens of passwords. That convenience is a big win for users, and it’s more than just convenience; it’s crucial from the organization’s security perspective. If one weak password gets compromised, SSO helps prevent that from automatically giving an attacker the keys to the entire kingdom, so to speak. Plus, you’re just logging in less often overall, which means fewer chances for those credentials to be phished or intercepted.

SSO is not just convenient but also more secure

How does identity management look without SSO? TLDR — It is a headache. Think about onboarding a new hire. Without SSO, someone, maybe the owner or office manager, must manually create an account for every tool that person needs- Email, CRM, internal chat, everything—assigning permissions for each one. More crucially, admins must remember to revoke all that access immediately when someone leaves. The ground reality is that lots of SMBs manage this with spreadsheets, and that’s time-consuming, obviously, but it’s also prone to errors. And it just doesn’t scale well as you add more people or apps. SSO is the answer.

But before you consider this problem solved, you should check out the SSO Wall of Shame, which lists popular SaaS companies where the price difference feels excessive. The website’s authors strongly object to Single Sign-On (SSO) being locked behind expensive enterprise pricing by most enterprise companies. The tag line states — A list of vendors that treat single sign-on as a luxury feature, not a core security requirement. Despite this, Single Sign-On (SSO) is often locked behind expensive enterprise pricing, leaving smaller teams and individual users without a secure and scalable way to manage identities. SSO shouldn’t be considered a ‘‘nice to have’’ feature for any company — it’s a baseline security requirement. IT and Security teams rely on SSO to centrally manage user accounts, enforce strong authentication, and instantly revoke access when employees leave. Without it, businesses are stuck managing logins across dozens (or even hundreds) of vendors, many of which don’t support essential security features like TOTP 2FA or U2F.

However, authentication and authorization are inherently complex and critical security features for any business. So why not just pay for SSO? It boils down to two things: cost and technical hurdles.

Costs

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Often, vendors impose minimum user numbers you might have to pay for, say, 50 seats, even if you only have 15 employees, ouch. So, many smaller businesses are priced out immediately, so they go for the cheaper plan that doesn’t include SSO precisely. But it’s not just the sticker price of the SSO service itself. Remember that administrative overhead without SSO, spreadsheets, and manual work? Yeah, that has a cost too. It’s hidden, maybe, but the time spent on manual account creation, password resets, fixing errors, and potentially cleaning up after a breach caused by a weak password can add up significantly. It might even cost more than the SSO in the long run.

Technical hurdles

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However, implementing SSO is technically challenging because it involves authentication (identity verification) and authorization (access control). Vendors must support multiple identity protocols, such as SAML and OpenID Connect, while integrating with various identity providers (IdPs), like Okta, Azure AD, and Google Workspace. Each IdP has unique setup requirements, token handling, and security policies, making it difficult for SaaS and commercial open-source (COSS) companies to offer a one-size-fits-all solution. Because of these complexities, SaaS vendors often restrict SSO to enterprise tiers where customers have the resources to configure and maintain their authentication infrastructure. Many vendors also bundle advanced authentication and role-based access control (RBAC) with their enterprise offerings, creating an artificial barrier that prevents smaller teams from accessing these essential security features. Multi-tenancy adds even more complexity, making it challenging for SaaS vendors to offer SSO at lower pricing. The key challenges include:

1. Each tenant may use a different IdP and authentication protocol.
2. The login process must dynamically route authentication requests to the correct IdP.
3. Access control (RBAC, ABAC) must be enforced per tenant to prevent security risks.
4. Cross-tenant collaboration requires additional safeguards.
5. Regulatory and compliance requirements vary across tenants.

What should SaaS companies do?

Because of these challenges, many SaaS companies limit SSO to enterprise customers with dedicated IT teams to handle setup and maintenance. However, if a provider can simplify multi-tenant SSO management, they can offer it to smaller teams at a reasonable price, improving security across the board.

If SaaS providers truly “take security seriously,” there needs to be a shift in pricing models to make SSO more accessible:
✅ Including basic SSO support in individual and team plans.
✅ Offering SSO as a reasonably priced add-on rather than an enterprise-only feature.
✅ Providing more self-service-friendly SSO configurations for smaller teams.

Towards that end, others have created an SSO wall of fame, including companies that price their SSO tier reasonably. How much responsibility do vendors have to price essential security features ethically to make them genuinely accessible? Commercial open-source (COSS) companies can make authentication and authorization accessible without forcing security-conscious teams into expensive enterprise contracts. Security shouldn’t be a premium feature — it should be the default, regardless of team size.

My 2 cents

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At the end of the day, if you’re involved in developing a SaaS product, please don’t make SSO an enterprise-tier, disproportionally priced feature. It makes the internet worse and makes your biggest customers dislike you.

My advice for SMBs is to analyze needs, explore affordable options, compare solutions, conduct pilot projects, train staff, and continuously monitor.

I advise Saas vendors to offer tailored solutions, flexible seat thresholds, and improved support materials. Critically, basic and essential services such as SSO should be decoupled from bundles with premium services. Please avoid using SSO as an upselling technique — Your customers will reward you in the long term.