The 5 best user management software tools in 2024

User management is more than just a way to track user data—it's about managing every touchpoint of your users' journey within your SaaS, from initial sign-up and daily access to managing their profiles. 

That’s why investing in the right user management software is crucial. With it, you can ensure seamless and secure user access, boost user satisfaction, increase retention, and ultimately drive greater success for your business.

In this article, we will break down what user management software really does, highlight the features you should look for in your user management software, and share our top five picks that you should consider.

What is user management software?

User management software is a tool for managing users’ lifecycles. It handles tasks like authenticating users, setting permissions, provisioning accounts, and deprovisioning accounts when users leave. The software also provides a centralized place to store user data and configure access.

What can user management software do?

1. User authentication: It handles the processes of verifying user identities (authentication) and granting them access to specific resources. It can support various authentication methods, including password-based authentication, multi-factor authentication, social logins, and Single Sign-On.
2.  Role-based access control: User management software lets you create roles and permission groups to assign the appropriate access levels to your users. For example, you may have Admin, Power User, and Basic User roles with different permission sets for each.
3. Reporting and analytics: They typically include tools for logging and auditing what users do. They track login times, access attempts, executed operations, and other user behaviors.
4. User onboarding and account management: Has processes for adding new users to the system, setting up their profiles, and managing account details. This may involve guiding users through initial setup steps, providing tools for users to manage their account settings, and allowing existing users to invite new users to the app.
5. Email verification: This process ensures that the email address provided by a user during registration is valid and accessible by sending a verification link or code to the user.
6. Identity linking: Allows users to link multiple identities (such as different social media accounts) to a single user profile within your system.
7. User provisioning Automates the process of creating, updating, and managing user access in applications. This can include provisioning user accounts as soon as they are onboarded and deactivating them when they are no longer needed.

Build vs. buy user management software: Factors to consider

When it comes to implementing user management solutions, you (the SaaS developer) can either build a custom solution in-house or buy pre-existing software from a vendor

Each approach has its advantages and drawbacks, and the decision hinges on several key factors:

Cost

One of the biggest factors to weigh is cost. 

Building your user management software from scratch requires significant investment in development resources and time. 

On the other hand, buying an off-the-shelf solution may have lower upfront costs, but typically charges monthly or annual licensing fees. 

Consider both short-term and long-term costs to determine what makes the most financial sense for your needs.

Customization

Do you need a highly customized solution? If so, developing in-house software may be better as it can be tailored to your specifications. 

However, commercial software often offers some degree of customization, so consider whether that’s enough for your needs before building a user management system from scratch.

Timeline

How quickly do you need a user management solution? Building software internally can take months to over a year to develop, test, and launch. 

Commercial software is generally ready to deploy once purchased, with some time required for setting up and configuring the system to fit your app. You can deploy your app much faster, sometimes in days or weeks.

Support and maintenance

Custom software requires you to handle all support and maintenance internally or hire external contractors. This can be resource-intensive and requires having or developing expertise in-house.

Commercial software usually includes professional support and maintenance, including regular updates and security patches, which can reduce the burden on your engineering team.

Expertise

Do you have the technical resources and expertise to build secure, scalable user management software? Developing software in-house requires experienced developers, security experts, UI/UX designers, and more. 

Buying software from a vendor is less risky unless you have a highly skilled product team. They have already invested in building a solution that meets security, privacy, and compliance standards.

What to look for in user management software

Core functionalities

At the bare minimum, your user management software should support:

• Authentication and authorization: Look for robust authentication mechanisms, including multi-factor authentication (MFA), single sign-on (SSO), and social logins.
• User provisioning and de-provisioning: The software should allow for automatically adding, updating, and removing user accounts.
• Access control: The ability to assign user roles and manage permissions based on these roles and attributes.

Cost-effectiveness

Evaluate the software's pricing model to ensure it aligns with your usage patterns and budget. Does it use MAU-based pricing or per-company pricing? 

MAU-based pricing charges are based on the number of unique users actively engaging with the software within a given month. This model is beneficial if your user activity fluctuates significantly from month to month, as you only pay for users who are actually using the software.

The downside is that costs can vary each month, making budgeting more complex. And if you close clients with thousands of employees, the cost can increase substantially.

Per-company pricing is a flat fee charged on a per-organization basis, regardless of the number of users or usage volume. It’s easier to budget for as costs are fixed and don’t fluctuate with the number of users. 

Scalability

The software should be able to scale with your business. It should handle an increasing number of users, roles, and permissions without performance degradation.

Integration capabilities

The software should seamlessly integrate with your existing infrastructure. For SSO and user provisioning, it should also be able to integrate with the identity providers your customers use.

User experience

The interface should be intuitive for both administrators and end-users.

Technical support

Look for providers who offer comprehensive support through multiple channels (phone, email, Slack).

Community and resources

A vibrant user community and a wealth of resources such as documentation, forums, and training materials can be invaluable during setup or when something goes wrong and you need to troubleshoot.

The 5 best user management software tools in 2024

Below are the 5 best user management software tools:

1. WorkOS user management
2. Frontegg
3. Keycloak
4. Auth0
5. Stytch

1. WorkOS user management

WorkOS offers a fully-fledged user management platform that effortlessly grows with you—from your very first user to your largest enterprise clients. It’s built to make every part of the user experience smoother, from sign-up and sign-in to user provisioning and management.

What it can do:

• Single Sign-On: This feature enables seamless sign-on experiences for dozens of identity providers, such as Microsoft Entra, Okta, and OneLogin.
• User authentication: Choose from email/password setups, social logins, magic auth, and multi-factor authentication (MFA), all backed by security features like leaked password recovery and email verification.
• Automatic user provisioning: Set up user accounts on the fly with Just-in-Time provisioning at their first login, or manage and sync accounts directly from your customer's directories using SCIM.
• Identity linking: Deduplicate user credentials from multiple identity providers.
• Impersonation: Allow admins to assume users' accounts for troubleshooting purposes.
• Dynamic policy configuration: Tailor authentication policies for different organizations, including domain restrictions, authentication strategies, and MFA requirements.
• Customizable authentication UI: It comes with a fully customizable hosted UI that adapts to any scale. If you prefer to use your own front end, use the user management APIs.
• Audit logs: Easily track and manage user activity with comprehensive logging that lets you ingest and export event data.
• Self-serve onboarding: Admins can configure identity providers on their own through the admin portal, improving the onboarding experience.

WorkOS is particularly suited for developers looking to quickly scale their applications for enterprise use. 

WorkOS uses per-company pricing:

• User management and authentication: Get started for free with your first million users. The service supports everything from email and password setups to social logins and MFA.
• Single Sign-On: Enterprise-level SAML & OIDC support starts at just $125 per connection per month, with discounts as you scale.
• Automatic SCIM provisioning: It also costs $125 per connection per month.
• Audit logs: Starting at $5 per organization per month.

2. Frontegg

Frontegg offers plug-and-play user management focusing on the complete user lifecycle from signup to subscription.   

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What it can do:

• Authentication: This provides a single API for adding authentication to your app. It supports email/password authentication, enterprise SSO, and social logins.
• Admin portal: The embeddable admin portal allows customers to set and manage detailed security policies at a granular level.
• Self-service account management: Your customers' admins can easily create accounts, invite team members, adjust their permissions, and revoke access as needed.
• Activity monitoring: Provides deep insights into user behavior and usage patterns, ensuring full visibility into customer and user activities.

Frontegg is best suited for B2B SaaS apps looking for a turnkey user management solution.

Frontegg uses MAU-based pricing:

• Starter plan: Priced at $99 per month, this plan supports up to 10 multi-user accounts and 1,000 users, making it a great starting point for small—to medium-sized projects.
• Growth plan: $799/month for up to 100 multi-user accounts and 5,000 users. Suitable for growing businesses needing advanced features such as SSO, an admin portal, and custom security policies.
• Scale plan: Custom pricing for businesses exceeding 100 multi-user accounts or 5,000 users. 

3. Keycloak

Keycloak is an open-source identity and access management solution provided by Red Hat.

What it can do:

• User account management: Allows you to create new users, and store and view user data.
• Authentication: Provides users the option to register using their credentials (email/password) or SSO via protocols like OpenID Connect and SAML
• Role-based authorization: Define roles and manage permissions associated with these roles.
• Impersonation: Allows admin to impersonate users for troubleshooting purposes.
• Session management: This maintains sessions for logged-in users and allows admins to log users, revoke tokens, and set session timeouts.
• LDAP integration: Keycloak can integrate with existing LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) servers, allowing for synchronization and authentication against users' existing directories.
• Enriched admin console: Provides a comprehensive and user-friendly interface for admins to manage users, roles, and permissions

Keycloak is ideal if you’re looking for a flexible, cost-effective solution that you can customize extensively and integrate deeply with their existing SaaS infrastructure. Just ensure you have a capable engineering team to manage and scale an open-source solution.

Pricing:

Keycloak is open-source and free to use. Costs would typically involve deployment and maintenance costs.

4. Auth0

Auth0 by Okta provides a platform to authenticate and authorize users that can be easily integrated into any application.

What it can do:

• Universal login: The standard way of implementing Auth0. It’s an embeddable UI with various login methods like username/password, social logins, or SSO. It allows limited customizations and supports internationalization and localization.
• User profile management: allows you to import, group, and manage users and their profiles. This user data can come from different sources, such as IdPs, your own database, or enterprise directories. 
• Role-based access control: Control who can do what within your app based on their roles.
• Define your logic: Customize and extend how Auth0 works with actions (functions triggered at specific points of the Auth0 flow).

Auth0 is ideal for developers creating B2C apps who need a user management solution that's easy to implement and doesn't require much customization.

Pricing

• Free plan: For up to 7,000 free active users & unlimited logins. 
• Essential plan: $35 per month when billed annually. Best for basic projects or small apps.
• Professional plan: $240 per month. It’s best for teams and projects that need added security.
• Enterprise plans: Pricing is available upon request. It is best for production apps that need to scale.

5. Stytch

Stytch is a relatively new player in user authentication and authorization. It offers a suite of APIs for user management, with a focus on fraud prevention and passwordless authentication.

What it can do:

• Authentication: Stytch offers several login methods, for both B2B SaaS and consumer authentication including SSO, email magic links, MFA, social logins (like Google and Apple).
• SCIM provisioning (though it’s still in early access): Sync user data in your app with SCIM-enabled directories.
• Role-based access control: Control access based on roles.
• Customizable UIs: Prebuilt UI with an option to bring your frontend and connect it to the backend API.
• Fraud prevention: Support for device fingerprinting and bot protection (though it’s only for the enterprise plan).

Stytch is best suited for applications prioritizing security and fraud detection.

Pricing:

• Starter: Free. Includes 25 organizations, 1,000 members, and 1,000 machine-to-machine (M2M) tokens.
• Pro: $249/month. Supports up to 25 organizations and 1,000 members, with an increase to 5,000 M2M tokens. This plan includes support for 3 Single Sign-On (SSO) connections, email customizations, and the option to remove Stytch branding.
• Scale: $799/month. Supports up to 100 organizations and 7,500 members, maintaining 5,000 M2M tokens. This plan supports 8 SSO connections and enforces organization-level Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) policies.
• Enterprise: Tailored for large-scale needs with unlimited SSO connections, advanced bot detection, device fingerprinting, dedicated enterprise support, and a 99.99% uptime Service Level Agreement (SLA).

The bottom line

Investing in the right user management software is crucial for the success of your SaaS. If you're developing an enterprise application, User Management by WorkOS is the way to go. It's tailor-made for enterprise-level needs, offering essential features like SSO and SCIM provisioning that your enterprise clients will ask for.

‍Sign up for WorkOS today, and start selling to enterprise customers tomorrow.