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Amazon Cognito vs Stormpath: What are the differences?
## Introduction
Amazon Cognito and Stormpath are both identity management services that help developers securely manage user authentication and authorization in their applications.
1. **User Pools**: Amazon Cognito provides user pools, which are user directories that allow you to create and manage users and support sign-up and sign-in functionality. Stormpath, on the other hand, does not have native support for user pools, instead focusing on providing identity and access management services.
2. **Integration with AWS Services**: Amazon Cognito seamlessly integrates with other AWS services, making it easy to extend its functionality and leverage additional features such as AWS Lambda functions and Amazon S3 storage. Stormpath, while capable of integrating with various platforms, may require additional configuration to work with AWS services.
3. **Serverless Authentication**: Amazon Cognito offers serverless authentication, allowing developers to authenticate users without managing servers or infrastructure. Stormpath employs a more traditional server-based approach for authentication, which may require more maintenance and scaling considerations.
4. **Customization and Extensibility**: Amazon Cognito allows for extensive customization and extensibility through triggers and AWS Lambda functions, enabling developers to tailor the authentication process to their specific needs. Stormpath provides a rich set of features, but customization options may be limited compared to Amazon Cognito.
5. **Pricing Model**: Amazon Cognito follows a pay-as-you-go pricing model based on the number of monthly active users, providing flexibility for applications of various sizes. Stormpath offers fixed pricing plans based on the number of users, which may be more predictable for some users but potentially less cost-effective for large-scale applications.
In Summary, Amazon Cognito and Stormpath differ in their support for user pools, integration with AWS services, authentication methods, customization options, and pricing models.
I started our team on Amazon Cognito because I was a Solutions Architect at AWS and found it really easy to follow the tutorials and get a basic app up and running with it.
When our team started working with it, they very quickly became frustrated because of the poor documentation. After 4 days of trying to get all the basic passwordless auth working, our lead engineer made the decision to abandon it and try Auth0... and managed to get everything implemented in 4 hours.
The consensus was that Cognito just isn't mature enough or well-documented, and that the implementation does not cater for real world use cases the way that it should. I believe Amplify has made some of this simpler, but I would still recommend Auth0 as it's been bulletproof for us, and is a sensible price.
Pros of Amazon Cognito
- Backed by Amazon14
- Manage Unique Identities7
- Work Offline4
- MFA3
- Store and Sync2
- Free for first 50000 users1
- It works1
- Integrate with Google, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, SAML1
- SDKs and code samples1
Pros of Stormpath
- Authentication29
- User Management22
- API Authentication19
- Token Authentication17
- Security Workflows17
- Secure16
- Easy setup and great support7
- Great customer support7
- they manage the required, so I can focus on innovation6
- Private Deployment3
- Will sign BAA for HIPAA-compliance2
- Rapid Development1
- SAML Support0
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Cons of Amazon Cognito
- Massive Pain to get working4
- Documentation often out of date3
- Login-UI sparsely customizable (e.g. no translation)2
- Docs are vast but mostly useless1
- MFA: there is no "forget device" function1
- Difficult to customize (basic-pack is more than humble)1
- Lacks many basic features1
- There is no "Logout" method in the API1
- Different Language SDKs not compatible1
- No recovery codes for MFA1
- Hard to find expiration times for tokens/codes1
- Only paid support1
Cons of Stormpath
- Discontinued4