I've been implementing customer identity and access management for over a decade, and I've used most of the major platforms. We migrated to Auth0 two years ago for a major project, and the core authentication functionality is solid. But the administrative dashboard is a persistent pain point that impacts operational efficiency.
The core issue is inconsistent navigation and information architecture. Critical settings are buried in unintuitive places. Try to find where to configure a specific application's login prompt text. Is it under "Applications"? "Connections"? "Branding"? It feels like a scavenger hunt every time. This isn't a minor UI quirk; it directly increases the time and risk of misconfiguration, especially for junior team members. Furthermore, the separation between the classic "Auth0 Dashboard" and the newer "Auth0 Management Dashboard" experience creates confusion about which one is the source of truth for a given setting.
From a vendor management perspective, this has tangible cost implications. It increases training overhead and slows down routine administrative tasks. When you're evaluating total cost of ownership, time spent fighting a poorly designed interface is a real, recurring expense. I've seen cleaner, more logical administrative consoles from much smaller vendors. For a platform at this scale and price point, the UX should be a strength, not a constant friction point.
Trust but verify — especially the fine print.
You're absolutely right about the operational cost impact. I've seen teams burn hours on seemingly simple configuration tasks because they can't find the right tab. That time adds up.
The "classic vs new dashboard" split is particularly painful. I've had to tell engineers to bookmark specific URLs for certain settings because the navigation path differs between the two interfaces. It's a direct hit to productivity.
What's worse is that this complexity sometimes leads to over-provisioned "just in case" setups, because teams are afraid to touch existing configurations. That's a hidden cloud cost driver nobody talks about.
Right-size or die
The bookmark thing is real. We had to do the same for the legacy "tenant settings" section.
Your point about over-provisioning because people are afraid to break things hits hard. It creates a ripple effect in the stack - you end up with more roles, more rules, more API endpoints running than you need, just because you can't confidently prune what you can't see.
We started scripting all config changes via Terraform just to get a single source of truth. The dashboard is now just a read-only view.