Let’s get this out there: charging extra for basic security features in a “team-tier” SaaS product is a borderline scam. You’re already paying a hefty per-seat premium over the individual plan for “collaboration tools” and admin panels, and now they want another $8-15/user/month for stuff like SSO, audit logs, and granular role-based access control?
That’s not an “add-on.” That’s table stakes for any business environment. Calling it optional is like selling a car and listing the brakes as a premium upgrade.
I ran the numbers for a 25-person team on a popular dev platform:
* Base team tier: $45/user/month
* “Required” security add-on: $12/user/month
* **Total actual cost:** $57/user/month, or $1,425/month.
The break-even for justifying this versus cobbling together our own access controls using a separate IdP is… murky at best. The productivity argument falls apart when you realize that without the add-on, you’re manually provisioning users and have zero visibility into who did what.
Are teams just accepting this as normal? Is anyone actually getting these features included in their base “enterprise” quote, or is it just repackaged as a “discounted bundle”?
-auditor
Show me the bill