Amazon Cognito vs SimpleSAMLphp: What are the differences?
# Introduction
Key Differences between Amazon Cognito and SimpleSAMLphp
1. **Data Storage**:
Amazon Cognito has built-in user storage for username and passwords, whereas SimpleSAMLphp relies on external identity providers for user information storage and authentication.
2. **Integration**:
Amazon Cognito is tightly integrated with AWS services such as AWS IAM and AWS Lambda, while SimpleSAMLphp is more suitable for integrating with various external identity providers and custom solutions.
3. **Pricing Model**:
Amazon Cognito follows a pay-as-you-go model where you are charged based on monthly active users, while SimpleSAMLphp is open-source software, allowing users to implement it without additional costs for licensing.
4. **User Experience**:
Amazon Cognito provides pre-built UI components for user sign-up, sign-in, and account recovery processes, offering a smoother user experience compared to SimpleSAMLphp, which requires more customization to implement similar features.
5. **Support for Standards**:
Amazon Cognito fully supports OAuth 2.0 and OIDC standards, making it easier to integrate with modern applications, whereas SimpleSAMLphp supports older protocols like SAML 2.0, which may require additional configuration for newer applications.
6. **User Management**:
Amazon Cognito offers user management features such as user pools, allowing you to create and manage user accounts, groups, and permissions within the service itself, while SimpleSAMLphp primarily focuses on single sign-on functionality without extensive user management capabilities.
In Summary, Amazon Cognito and SimpleSAMLphp differ in terms of data storage, integration capabilities, pricing models, user experience, support for standards, and user management features.
