ROUNDTABLES ★ 5 upvotes 2021

Ask HN: Auth0 changed their pricing and requires us to upgrade

The Founder's Submission

Direct narrative and submission text authored by @methyl on Hacker News:

Hello, fellow HNers.

We've been happy Auth0 customers since 2016. When we created the account and started to pay, it was clear on the pricing page that we can stay on the Developer plan for up to 50 000 active users.

They recently got acquired by Okta and changed their pricing, so that you need to buy the Enterprise plan, which is around $8000 / month / 50k MAU. It adds a lot of features we don't need. We could stay on the Developer plan, which suits our needs. If we could keep previous pricing it would be $1138 / mo / 50k MAU (it can be seen in Web Archive [0]).

For still an early-stage startup like ourselves, it makes no business sense to start paying almost $100k per year for authentication solution alone.

Our options include: 1. Migrating away from Auth0 2. Rolling out an in-house solution 3. Somehow force Auth0 to respect the previous deal

I'd love to get your opinion if there is anything we can do regarding option 3. Unfortunately, for now, Auth0 is not willing to move and only offers us the Enterprise plan.

[0] http://web.archive.org/web/20201031042348if_/https://auth0.com/pricing/

Retrospective Overview & Key Insights

Distilled analysis of the business dynamics, operational challenges, and strategic takeaways:

An open Ask HN community consultation from 2021 where @methyl convened hundreds of developers and bootstrappers to share real experiences, hard numbers, and tactics.

Core Principles for Independent Builders:
1
Participants share raw revenue figures, churn rates, and stack decisions that corporate PR never publishes.
2
Recurring answers reveal that distribution, not coding skill, is almost universally the rate-limiting step in developer businesses.
3
Practical recommendations on bookkeeping, payment gateways (Stripe vs Paddle), and freelance-to-product transitions.
Community Debate Themes:

Hundreds of active indie hackers contributed case studies, pricing heuristics, and pitfalls to avoid when moonlighting on side projects.

Community Discussions & Critical Reviews

High-signal perspectives, counter-arguments, and peer founder insights debated on Hacker News (3 total discussions):

EV @ev1 Peer Contributor

what does your b2b contract state? annual terms?

HISTORICAL ERA Pandemic Bubble (2020–2022)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 5 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 3 comments
TOPICS & TECH STACK: