Identity and Access Management (IAM) Software Resources

Teams often adopt WorkOS to add enterprise SSO quickly, but many later look for alternatives as identity needs expand beyond SSO and SCIM. Common reasons include limited flexibility for non-standard authentication flows, rising costs tied to per-connection pricing, lack of built-in orchestration, and the need to custom-build multi-tenant roles, permissions, and user journeys outside the platform. Over time, this can lead to fragmented identity architectures and growing operational overhead.

Teams often turn to Keycloak for its open-source flexibility, but many later seek alternatives as operational and maintenance complexity grows. Common pain points include difficult production setup, performance and scaling limits with many realms or tenants, risky upgrades that can break custom themes or extensions, and reliance on community support for advanced or real-world scenarios. Over time, managing Keycloak can become a significant DevOps burden.

Teams often adopt Ory Kratos for its open-source flexibility, but many later look for alternatives as operational complexity increases. Common challenges include risky upgrades due to breaking changes, high ongoing maintenance to support SSO and custom schemas, limited native support for multi-tenancy and enterprise requirements, and the growing engineering cost of running and scaling identity infrastructure in production.