Looks nice, and solves a problem. But you're entering a really difficult niche against strong competition from auth0 and Okta.
Personally, I'm a "roll your own auth" kinda guy. I have trouble justifying offloading a core part of my infrastructure to a third party, especially if it has a per-user cost and I have a free tier or am not charging users.
If I were to choose "buy" in the "build vs. buy" of an auth system, it would be for internal apps only. My number one criterion would be finding a reliable provider that will still exist in five years. Based on that, if I'm choosing between Roleup, Okta and auth0... I'm not going to go with Roleup. And even if there are some awesome features you have that they don't, you don't have a free tier to try them out.
Here are my suggestions:
- Eliminate the free trial and replace it with a free tier (something like free for your first 1000 users). Let me sign up immediately, and funnel me to the dev docs. Do not make me confirm my email before I can even see anything.
- Find a way to differentiate from Okta/auth0 beyond "we're simpler than them because we're missing so many of their features." You can't compete on features right now; their products are just far too developed. But you can differentiate on price. Their biggest weakness is per-user pricing. Would-be entrepreneurs see that, imagine their successful product, and extrapolate how much it'll cost them 2 years down the line. Play into those hopes; show them that your service will never cost more than a few hundred a month.
- Consider offering a self-hosted version. There are many approaches to pricing/licensing for this.
- Consider open sourcing core parts of the implementation (maybe everything except the dashboard), or making a commitment that you'll open source the code if you ever shut down the company.
- Focus on authentication for internal apps where 100% uptime 24/7/365 is not as critical a feature as it is for user-facing apps.
- Target the marginally tech-savvy founders of fast growing, small startups who have a bunch of internal tools made by contractors, and want to make some kind of admin dashboard for them
- Build out integrations in as many languages as possible (things like passport.js strategy for logging in via Roleup)
- Make it clear what "integration" means in the context of Roleup on your landing pages. For SEO, you probably want a landing page per integration. For each one, show screen shots of the integration and using it. This page [0] is great, but it's still unclear to me what "integration" means in this context. Does an integration with Zoom mean I can use my Zoom account to log into an internal app via Roleup? Or does it mean I can use my Roleup account to authenticate with Zoom? What does the process look like for devs, and for users? (EDIT: Just saw you have this for slack. I could barely see the "Details" link FWIW. Bring this info forward!)
- Setup at least one demo administration node (maybe more if you want to automate setting up for users) pre-filled with data. Make "try demo" your landing page call-to-action. Give the user a functioning admin dashboard with a bunch of accounts that resets its data every hour. Make sure the demo shows how it works for both admins and users.
- Give people reason to trust you with their most sensitive credential data. You're a brand new company run by one person -- why should I let you handle my users' credentials? Where is the security documentation? About page? Who are you? Why should I trust you?
Good luck! You've picked a challenging product.
[0] https://app.roleup.io/integrations
Personally, I'm a "roll your own auth" kinda guy. I have trouble justifying offloading a core part of my infrastructure to a third party, especially if it has a per-user cost and I have a free tier or am not charging users.
If I were to choose "buy" in the "build vs. buy" of an auth system, it would be for internal apps only. My number one criterion would be finding a reliable provider that will still exist in five years. Based on that, if I'm choosing between Roleup, Okta and auth0... I'm not going to go with Roleup. And even if there are some awesome features you have that they don't, you don't have a free tier to try them out.
Here are my suggestions:
- Eliminate the free trial and replace it with a free tier (something like free for your first 1000 users). Let me sign up immediately, and funnel me to the dev docs. Do not make me confirm my email before I can even see anything.
- Find a way to differentiate from Okta/auth0 beyond "we're simpler than them because we're missing so many of their features." You can't compete on features right now; their products are just far too developed. But you can differentiate on price. Their biggest weakness is per-user pricing. Would-be entrepreneurs see that, imagine their successful product, and extrapolate how much it'll cost them 2 years down the line. Play into those hopes; show them that your service will never cost more than a few hundred a month.
- Consider offering a self-hosted version. There are many approaches to pricing/licensing for this.
- Consider open sourcing core parts of the implementation (maybe everything except the dashboard), or making a commitment that you'll open source the code if you ever shut down the company.
- Focus on authentication for internal apps where 100% uptime 24/7/365 is not as critical a feature as it is for user-facing apps.
- Target the marginally tech-savvy founders of fast growing, small startups who have a bunch of internal tools made by contractors, and want to make some kind of admin dashboard for them
- Build out integrations in as many languages as possible (things like passport.js strategy for logging in via Roleup)
- Make it clear what "integration" means in the context of Roleup on your landing pages. For SEO, you probably want a landing page per integration. For each one, show screen shots of the integration and using it. This page [0] is great, but it's still unclear to me what "integration" means in this context. Does an integration with Zoom mean I can use my Zoom account to log into an internal app via Roleup? Or does it mean I can use my Roleup account to authenticate with Zoom? What does the process look like for devs, and for users? (EDIT: Just saw you have this for slack. I could barely see the "Details" link FWIW. Bring this info forward!)
- Setup at least one demo administration node (maybe more if you want to automate setting up for users) pre-filled with data. Make "try demo" your landing page call-to-action. Give the user a functioning admin dashboard with a bunch of accounts that resets its data every hour. Make sure the demo shows how it works for both admins and users.
- Give people reason to trust you with their most sensitive credential data. You're a brand new company run by one person -- why should I let you handle my users' credentials? Where is the security documentation? About page? Who are you? Why should I trust you?
Good luck! You've picked a challenging product.
[0] https://app.roleup.io/integrations