[wongarsu]

I'd rather consider it "SME pricing" vs "Enterprise pricing". Typically only companies above a certain size use SSO systems, and even larger ones require it for everything. Coincidentally bigger companies are also willing to pay more, so putting a high price on SSO enables SaaS to profit from those deep pockets without pricing themselves out of the market for smaller companies.

[ehPReth]

Things like Google Workspace et al. make it super easy to use SSO (ok a bit difficult but usable) even for smaller companies and honestly it should be used by basically everyone as a core security practice. It's annoying that companies charge out the rear end for a basic security feature. It'd be like charging to let people use 2FA/security keys.. just super stupid/arrogant.

[mathiasn]

> Typically only companies above a certain size use SSO systems, and even larger ones require it for everything.

I believe it's historically grown but it's not true anymore. More companies would use it if they could as this makes your processes way more automated, easier and more secure. Also more companies take security seriously (i.e. more and more companies get ISO27001/SOC2 compliant) but just can't afford the Enterprise prices.

[Too]

That may have made sense 5-10 years ago. Todays expectations on security and convenience are very different.

Everybody deserves sso, regardless of size of company.

With the rise of micro services and DevOps, the number of applications used in an org has also exploded, adding even more reason to use SSO. Paying such big markup for every one of them is not sustainable for an SME.

[westurner]

Schools, colleges, and universities typically have SSO but no budget or purchase authority.

[wongarsu]

Just slap an education discount on it and call it a day. There are plenty of reasons to do that anyway, you want students to get trained on your software and use it in their formative years as much as possible.

Many go even further and just give the product away for free for educational institutions and individual students (Github, Jetbrains and Tableau come to mind as examples)

[westurner]

For a small-scale implementation in a university, open core without SSO is no-go: nobody has any money or purchase authority.

[detaro]

And of course part of why SMEs don't use it or don't use it everywhere is that suppliers make it much more expensive to do that because they insist security is only for Enterprise customers.

[esafak]

That means they can live without it. Enterprises can't so they pay for it. Making customers pay for what they need is reasonable. Sure, everybody would like to have every feature for free...

[andersa]

Of course small companies don't use it, because it is outrageously expensive.