Stop Building Custom Auth for Your SaaS

Short summary

The author argues against building custom authentication for SaaS products, sharing how a self-built auth system became a maintenance burden within six months. Edge cases like session invalidation, token rotation, MFA, GDPR compliance, and account recovery make auth far more complex than the happy path suggests. The recommendation is to use managed providers or battle-tested libraries, separate auth accounts from user profiles, and focus engineering effort on core product features instead.

• •Custom auth becomes a maintenance burden due to edge cases like MFA, token rotation, and GDPR compliance
• •Use managed providers or proven libraries; store only a UUID mapping in your app database
• •Separate auth accounts from user profiles to keep identity data clean and portable

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