sso.tax

What is The SSO Wall of Shame?

The SSO Wall of Shame is a website that tracks software vendors who charge extra for single sign-on (SSO), treating it as a premium add-on rather than a baseline security feature. The site's argument is straightforward: SSO lets a team log in once through a central identity provider (Okta, Google Workspace, Microsoft Entra, and similar) to reach every app, giving IT one place to onboard, offboard, and enforce strong authentication. Gating it behind an "Enterprise" tier bundled with unrelated features or high seat minimums, the site contends, pushes smaller companies toward weaker security because the secure option is unaffordable.

The site presents this mainly as a price-increase table. Each row names a vendor, a base plan price, the price once SSO is included, the resulting percentage increase, and a link to the vendor's own pricing page. According to the page, listed gaps range from modest (Adobe Acrobat Pro at 17%, BitWarden at 50%) to extreme (Appsmith at over 16,000%, Coursera at 2,400%). The site also has sections on "Price Increases" and "Quotes Required," the latter covering vendors who won't publish SSO pricing at all and require a sales conversation.

Who uses it

• IT and security teams evaluating a vendor can check whether SSO is included before shortlisting, rather than discovering the gap during procurement.
• Founders and finance leads at small companies can estimate the real cost of a "cheap" starter plan once SSO is added.
• Procurement and compliance staff can use the table as a starting point for questions to send vendors.
• Vendors themselves sometimes respond to being listed, which is part of the site's pressure tactic.

How to use it well

Treat the table as a lead, not a verdict. Prices and packaging change, and the listed dates show many entries are years old, so confirm current terms on the vendor's own pricing page before making a decision. A large percentage increase can still mean a small absolute cost if the base price is low, and vice versa. Ask two questions of any vendor: is SSO available on every plan, and does enabling it force a seat minimum or a bundle of features you don't need? For a concrete example, a 20-person startup comparing two $10-per-user tools should compare the SSO-inclusive totals, not the headline starter prices — a jump to $60 per user changes the annual bill by roughly $12,000, which may decide the choice on its own.

For identity-provider context, see Okta and Google Workspace.

Which vendors are listed on the SSO Wall of Shame and what are their SSO pricing increases?

The SSO Wall of Shame lists software vendors that gate single sign-on behind higher-priced "Enterprise" tiers, then shows the resulting price jump. The page's Price Increases table gives a base price, an SSO price and a percentage increase for each vendor, with a source link and an update date.

Vendors and increases shown on the page

The page also has sections headed "Quotes Required" and "FAQs," and the list continues beyond the excerpt shown here, so treat the table above as the visible portion rather than a complete inventory.

How to use this as a buyer

The percentage column is the useful part, but check the unit before comparing vendors: some figures are per user per month, some are flat monthly fees, and some are annual totals. A 16,567% jump and a 17% jump are not the same kind of problem, and a flat-fee increase can be small or large depending on team size.

For a practical next step, take your own seat count and calculate the annual cost of the base plan versus the cheapest plan that includes SSO. If the gap is more than you would pay for a dedicated identity provider, that is a signal to negotiate, or to look at alternatives. For general background on why SSO is treated as a baseline control rather than a premium add-on, see The SSO Wall of Shame.

How does The SSO Wall of Shame determine if a vendor is shaming?

The site’s test is practical rather than moral: a vendor lands on the list when single sign-on is treated as an add-on tied to a much more expensive plan, rather than as part of the core product. The page frames SSO as a baseline security requirement for any company with more than five employees, then tracks vendors whose SSO pricing forces a large jump from the standard plan.

Its method appears to be:

• Identify the vendor’s base plan and SSO plan. The table compares ordinary per-user or per-month pricing with the plan that includes SSO.
• Calculate the increase. The “Increase” column shows the percentage difference, such as 140%, 500% or several thousand percent.
• Flag the pattern, not just the price. The objection is to SSO being bundled with unrelated “Enterprise” features or minimum seat counts, which makes smaller teams pay far more for security.
• Record the source and date. Each entry links to the vendor’s pricing page and notes when it was updated, so the list reflects a specific pricing snapshot rather than a permanent claim.
• Separate price increases from other tactics. The page also has “Quotes Required,” covering vendors that hide SSO pricing behind a sales conversation rather than publishing it.

A useful way to apply the same test to a vendor you are considering is to compare the cheapest plan you would otherwise buy with the cheapest plan that includes SSO. If the only difference is SSO plus features you do not need, and the price multiplies, the vendor is following the pattern the site criticises. If SSO is included at every tier, or sold as a modest add-on, it would not qualify.

For a concrete example from the page’s table, Airtable is listed at $10 per user per month for its base pricing and $60 per user per month with SSO, a 500% increase. That does not automatically mean Airtable is a bad choice; it means a small team should decide whether the higher tier’s other features justify the jump, or whether an alternative with SSO in the standard plan fits better. For broader context on identity and security expectations, Okta and Google are relevant references, since the page itself uses Okta and Google logins as everyday examples of SSO.

What are the alternatives for companies that cannot afford SSO on their current plans?

For a company priced out of SSO on a given vendor's top tier, the workable alternatives fall into three buckets: switch to a vendor that includes SSO at a lower tier, keep the tool but centralize identity around it, or broker SSO yourself with an identity provider that supports per-app provisioning.

Switch to a vendor with SSO in cheaper plans. The most direct fix is treating SSO as a purchasing criterion rather than an upgrade. When you compare tools, ask whether SSO is on every paid plan or only on a quote-only "Enterprise" tier, and whether the SSO tier also forces a minimum seat count. The SSO Wall of Shame exists precisely to make that comparison quick: it lists vendors whose SSO sits behind a large price jump, with the base price, SSO price and the percentage increase. A 50–100% jump may be tolerable for a small team; a 500%+ jump usually means the tool is not the right fit at your size.

Keep the tool, but move identity to the perimeter. If you cannot buy SSO inside an app, you can still get much of the security benefit by:

• Requiring long, unique passwords stored in a team password manager, so offboarding is one action rather than many.
• Enforcing multi-factor authentication at the identity provider and at the app where the app supports it natively.
• Using your identity provider's browser extension or app catalog to launch and pre-fill credentials, which gives IT a single place to revoke access.
• Auditing seats quarterly so you are not paying for dormant accounts that widen the attack surface.

Broker SSO yourself. Some identity providers can act as the SSO front door for apps that lack native SAML or OIDC support, using password vaulting or a gateway. This is a real trade-off: you gain centralized login and logging, but you take on the operational burden of maintaining the integration, and the app vendor may not support the resulting setup. It suits teams with an existing identity provider and someone to own it, not a five-person company with no IT staff.

A concrete decision path. Suppose a 20-person team is quoted an enterprise tier for a project tool. First, check the size of the jump on the wall of shame. If it is modest and the enterprise tier includes features you would use anyway, the upgrade may be cheaper than migrating. If the jump is large, shortlist two alternatives that include SSO on their standard paid plan, run a one-month pilot with your identity provider, and only then decide. The criterion is total cost of secure access, not the sticker price of SSO alone.

For a broader market view of how identity is handled across vendors, Okta and Auth0 publish integration catalogs worth checking before you commit.

How can I submit a vendor to The SSO Wall of Shame?

The site doesn't publish a submission form or a listed contact address in the material provided, so the most reliable route is to reach the maintainer through the site itself. Visit The SSO Wall of Shame and look for a contact link, repository link, or contributor note in the page footer or header; projects like this are commonly maintained in the open, where issues and pull requests are the intended channel.

If you find a repository or issue tracker, a useful submission includes:

• Vendor name and product, exactly as it appears on the pricing page.
• Base plan price and the cheapest plan that includes SSO, with the billing unit (per user per month, per month, per year).
• A link to the vendor's own pricing page showing both, plus the date you checked it.
• Any minimum seat count, annual commitment, or bundled "Enterprise" tier that effectively raises the real cost.
• A short note on why it matters — for example, a 10-person team forced onto a 25-seat minimum.

Two practical cautions. First, vendors change pricing often, so a submission with an undated screenshot or a stale link is likely to be rejected or corrected; re-check the live page on the day you send it. Second, if the vendor has since added SSO to lower tiers, say so — the list is more credible when it reflects current terms rather than a grievance.

As a decision criterion: submit when you can point to a public pricing page that shows SSO gated behind a higher tier or a seat minimum. If SSO is merely expensive but available on a self-serve plan, that's a weaker case, and the maintainer may treat it differently.

What are the common pricing models for SSO across different vendors?

The dominant pattern is SSO as an upgrade trigger: vendors include it only in a higher tier, then price that tier around a bundle of enterprise features rather than around SSO itself. The site's evidence shows this in several recurring shapes.

Common SSO pricing models

The site's own table illustrates the spread: increases range from roughly 17% (Adobe Acrobat Pro) to several hundred percent (Airtable, Canva, Bitrise, Box) and into the thousands for low-cost base plans (Appsmith, Coursera). Breezy HR and Cypress.io show the flat-fee variant, where a jump from a low monthly base to a much higher tier dwarfs any per-user logic.

Why vendors do this

For the vendor, SSO is cheap to run but expensive to support, because every customer's identity provider behaves differently. Gating it behind Enterprise pricing pushes that support cost onto the customers who need it most, and the bundle hides the real SSO price inside features a small team may not want.

What to check before you buy

• Your actual seat count. A per-user SSO add-on at 10 seats can cost less than an enterprise tier with a 25-seat minimum; at 200 seats the reverse is often true.
• What else is in the tier. If you would buy the audit logs and admin controls anyway, the SSO premium is smaller than it looks.
• Whether SSO is needed at all. The site argues it is a core requirement above roughly five employees, since it centralises onboarding, offboarding, logging and strong authentication.
• Contract flexibility. Annual-only SSO pricing changes the maths versus monthly billing.

A practical next step: list your current tools, note each one's base price and SSO tier price, and calculate the annual delta at your real headcount. That number, not the headline percentage, is your decision input. If a vendor's SSO premium exceeds what you would pay for a standalone identity provider, that is a signal to negotiate or switch.