The low-maintenance alternative to DIY CIAM
Homegrown CIAM is free. Just ignore the late nights and PagerDuty alerts.
At the earliest stages, building your own identity system can feel like the faster, cheaper path. You create a user database, add a login box, build some authentication flows, and youâre done. But are you? Once you scale, things get complex â really fast. Youâll start needing to do things like onboard users from multiple IdPs, support multiple applications, and federate with a partnerâs SSO system. And thatâs when you find yourself maintaining identity instead of building your core product.
âWe thought we were saving time. We were actually creating a second product we had to maintain forever.â
Your CIAM layer is your front door â and attackers know it. From brute-force and DDoS protections to safe patching practices and zero-day response, a secure identity system demands specialized knowledge. And itâs not just about threats. Standards like SAML, OIDC, OAuth2, and enterprise IdP integrations evolve constantly, and each one has its own quirks. Without a dedicated solution, you risk agitating both your security and engineering team. With Fronteggâs powerful AI Security Suite, that expertise comes built in.
âAt this point I just want the identity part to work so I can get back to shipping literally anything else.â
As your company scales, so do the demands on your identity system. Youâll need performance tuning, analytics, audit trails, and contextual policies like step-up auth or passwordless. Youâll need to support multiple customers, each with their unique requirements. With homegrown identity, your engineers will spend a lot of time on time-consuming code for something thatâs not their core competency. With Fronteggâs low-code features, product managers, customer success, infosec, and other non-developers can manage the aspects of CIAM that relate to their roles.
âBeing the in-house auth expert is the worst promotion I ever got.â
When you build your own CIAM, guess who builds the UI for managing users, orgs, roles, SSO, and team invites? (Spoiler: still you.) On the other hand, Frontegg includes a self-service Admin Portal your customers can use out of the box â with full org management, user roles, SSO config, and audit trails. It’s their dashboard now.
âTurns out our customers donât want to email us every time someoneâs role changes. Who knew?â
Frontegg: 5 lines of code. Homegrown: 500 lines, 5 engineers, and still no passwordless.
Standard login
No-code customization
API customization
Hosted IDP
M2M authentication
Frontegg: Click to assign roles. Homegrown: Write your own RBAC engine⌠again⌠from scratch.
RBAC
ABAC
Subscription-based
Feature flags
Trial management
FGA
Frontegg: Tenants, roles, delegation, account hierarchiesâdone. â¨Homegrown: âLetâs just hardcode a second org for now.â
Organization management
Hierarchies
Role level organization
Login per organization
User groups
Frontegg: Compliant by default.â¨Homegrown: âWait, do we need to encrypt refresh tokens?â
Risk and fraud engines
Security dashboards
Organizational level policies
Adaptive MFA
Step up
Logs streaming
Frontegg: One config, works. Homegrown: 6 months and one intern later⌠still debugging SAML.
SSO
SCIM
Audit logs
Frontegg: Built-in dashboards. Homegrown: grep logs, cry, repeat.
User management
Usage dashboard
Organizational signals
Admin portal
Frontegg: Full self-service Admin Portal out of the box. â¨Homegrown: âWeâll build the admin UI⌠in Phase 4.â
User login and signup
Profile management
User invitation
SSO & SCIM configuration
Security configuration
