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  5. Auth0 vs Discourse

Auth0 vs Discourse

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Discourse
Discourse
Stacks278
Followers246
Votes115
GitHub Stars45.5K
Forks8.7K
Auth0
Auth0
Stacks1.4K
Followers2.1K
Votes215

Auth0 vs Discourse: What are the differences?

Developers describe Auth0 as "Token-based Single Sign On for your Apps and APIs with social, databases and enterprise identities". A set of unified APIs and tools that instantly enables Single Sign On and user management to all your applications. On the other hand, Discourse is detailed as "The 100% open source, next-generation discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet". Discourse is a simple, flat forum, where replies flow down the page in a line. Replies are attached to the bottom and top of each post, so you can optionally expand the context of the conversation – without breaking your flow.

Auth0 belongs to "User Management and Authentication" category of the tech stack, while Discourse can be primarily classified under "Forums".

Some of the features offered by Auth0 are:

  • User and Password support with verification and forgot password email workflow
  • Painless SAML Auth with Enterprises
  • Integration with 20+ Social Providers

On the other hand, Discourse provides the following key features:

  • Remembers your place
  • Log in with … anything
  • Paste to share images

"JSON web token" is the top reason why over 47 developers like Auth0, while over 20 developers mention "Open source" as the leading cause for choosing Discourse.

Discourse is an open source tool with 28.6K GitHub stars and 6.47K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Discourse's open source repository on GitHub.

Binary.com, Chattermill, and White Rabbit Express are some of the popular companies that use Auth0, whereas Discourse is used by Twitter, Heroku, and CodeCombat. Auth0 has a broader approval, being mentioned in 121 company stacks & 55 developers stacks; compared to Discourse, which is listed in 42 company stacks and 7 developer stacks.

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Advice on Discourse, Auth0

Vaibhav
Vaibhav

Jul 17, 2020

Needs advice

Currently, Passport.js repo has 324 open issues, and Jared (the original author) seems to be the one doing most of the work. Also, given that the documentation is not proper. Is it worth using Passport.js?

As of now, StackShare shows it has 29 companies using it. How do you implement auth in your project or your company? Are there any good alternatives to Passport.js? Should I implement auth from scratch?

220k views220k
Comments
Brent
Brent

CEO at DEFY Labs

Mar 7, 2020

Decided

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.

297k views297k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Discourse
Discourse
Auth0
Auth0

Discourse is a simple, flat forum, where replies flow down the page in a line. Replies are attached to the bottom and top of each post, so you can optionally expand the context of the conversation – without breaking your flow.

A set of unified APIs and tools that instantly enables Single Sign On and user management to all your applications.

Remembers your place;Log in with … anything;Paste to share images;Search that actually works;Scalable moderation;Bring your friends;Your stuff belongs to you;Comprehensive API
User and Password support with verification and forgot password email workflow; Painless SAML Auth with Enterprises; Integration with 20+ Social Providers; SDKs for all platforms mobile and web; Token-based authentication for APIs
Statistics
GitHub Stars
45.5K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
8.7K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
278
Stacks
1.4K
Followers
246
Followers
2.1K
Votes
115
Votes
215
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 28
    Open source
  • 19
    Fast
  • 13
    Email digests
  • 9
    Better than a stereotypical forum
  • 8
    Perfect for communities of any size
Cons
  • 3
    Heavy on server
  • 2
    Notifications aren't great on mobile due to being a PWA
  • 2
    Difficult to extend
Pros
  • 70
    JSON web token
  • 31
    Integration with 20+ Social Providers
  • 20
    SDKs
  • 20
    It's a universal solution
  • 15
    Amazing Documentation
Cons
  • 15
    Pricing too high (Developer Pro)
  • 7
    Poor support
  • 4
    Rapidly changing API
  • 4
    Status page not reflect actual status
Integrations
WordPress
WordPress
Zapier
Zapier
Zendesk
Zendesk
Amazon S3
Amazon S3
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Parse
Parse
Firebase
Firebase
Ruby
Ruby
PHP
PHP
Laravel
Laravel
Python
Python
Java
Java
Spring
Spring

What are some alternatives to Discourse, Auth0?

Stormpath

Stormpath

Stormpath is an authentication and user management service that helps development teams quickly and securely build web and mobile applications and services.

Keycloak

Keycloak

It is an Open Source Identity and Access Management For Modern Applications and Services. It adds authentication to applications and secure services with minimum fuss. No need to deal with storing users or authenticating users. It's all available out of the box.

Devise

Devise

Devise is a flexible authentication solution for Rails based on Warden

Firebase Authentication

Firebase Authentication

It provides backend services, easy-to-use SDKs, and ready-made UI libraries to authenticate users to your app. It supports authentication using passwords, phone numbers, popular federated identity providers like Google,

Flarum

Flarum

Flarum is the next-generation forum software that makes online discussion fun. It's simple, fast, and free.

Amazon Cognito

Amazon Cognito

You can create unique identities for your users through a number of public login providers (Amazon, Facebook, and Google) and also support unauthenticated guests. You can save app data locally on users’ devices allowing your applications to work even when the devices are offline.

WorkOS

WorkOS

Start selling to enterprise customers with just a few lines of code.

OAuth.io

OAuth.io

OAuth is a protocol that aimed to provide a single secure recipe to manage authorizations. It is now used by almost every web application. However, 30+ different implementations coexist. OAuth.io fixes this massive problem by acting as a universal adapter, thanks to a robust API. With OAuth.io integrating OAuth takes minutes instead of hours or days.

OmniAuth

OmniAuth

OmniAuth is a Ruby authentication framework aimed to abstract away the difficulties of working with various types of authentication providers. It is meant to be hooked up to just about any system, from social networks to enterprise systems to simple username and password authentication.

ORY Hydra

ORY Hydra

It is a self-managed server that secures access to your applications and APIs with OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect. It is OpenID Connect Certified and optimized for latency, high throughput, and low resource consumption.

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