SSO Tax: Why Scalr Is Not Charging Extra For Security

Software vendors can be a real pain in the ass sometimes.

Most of the time the frustration comes from opaque “talk to sales” pricing that forces you to schedule some time for a phone call during which you’ll be asked for your life story in exchange for some forced laughter and a vague promise for a quote and the beginning of a protracted conversation about budgets.

But I’m not here today to complain about that.

I’m here to complain about the SSO tax.

The SSO tax – because yes, it is a tax – is the 5-10x increase in pricing vendors charge you for the privilege, the nerve even, to want to increase your organization’s security. How dare you.

You’d think this could be justified by some quality integrations that, beyond simple authentication, include user provisioning, user deactivation, maybe group push or attribute sourcing in the case of Okta.

No dice.

You often pay 10x, only to get authentication alone.

How does this all relate to Scalr, I hear you asking? Well, as a matter of principle, we don’t charge extra for security, and we don’t charge extra for SSO. All new and existing accounts can now be configured using LDAP/SAML SSO at no extra cost. Maybe you’re a small organization laying down good foundations to grow. Maybe you’re a large organization still getting started with Terraform.

It doesn’t matter to us.

What matters is that you have the right security mindset, and we’re not going to charge you for being right.