Hey folks! We're a 50-person startup, fully remote, and our identity sprawl is getting real. 😅 We're using a messy mix of Google Workspace, a few SaaS apps with separate logins, and a couple internal tools.
I'm pushing for a proper IAM solution. Okta seems like the obvious heavyweight, but I'm worried it might be *too much* for our size and pace. The complexity and cost give me pause.
Anyone been down this road? Should we just go with Okta and grow into it, or is there a simpler, more startup-friendly alternative that still handles SSO, provisioning, and maybe MFA? Looking for real-world scaling stories.
measure twice, ship once
I'm a principal engineer at a 70-person FinTech startup; we went from Google Workspace chaos to a real IAM setup two years ago and I now manage our Okta tenant, which provisions access to AWS, our data stack, and about 25 SaaS apps.
1. **Target Audience Fit**: Okta is built for the 500+ employee enterprise. For 50 people, you'll use maybe 30% of its features. Simpler tools like Azure AD (now Entra ID) or Google's own IAM for Workspace are designed for companies under 200 and feel less like piloting a cargo ship.
2. **Real Pricing & The Hidden Tax**: Okta Workforce Identity starts around $6/user/month for basic SSO/MFA and easily hits $12-18/user/month once you add lifecycle management (SCIM provisioning). The hidden cost is engineering time: you'll spend 2-3 weeks initially and 5-10 hours a month on config drift. Simpler competitors often bundle IAM with your existing Workspace or Microsoft 365 subscription at no extra per-user fee.
3. **Deployment & Integration Effort**: With a clean Google Workspace directory, you can get basic SSO for core apps (like Slack, GitHub) running in Azure AD or Google in an afternoon. Okta took us a solid month to fully deploy with provisioning rules, largely because of its granular, complex policy engine. Their documentation is exhaustive but assumes you have a dedicated IAM team.
4. **Where It Breaks / Honest Limitation**: Okta's complexity becomes a bottleneck during fast hiring sprints. If your HRIS integration hiccups, manual provisioning is slow. For a 50-person team, a simpler tool's limitation is usually just fewer pre-built app integrations (you might need SAML config for niche tools), but that's a fair trade-off for speed.
My pick for you is to start with **Google's built-in IAM and SSO** (if you're on Workspace) or **Azure AD** (if you're on Microsoft 365). It's already paid for, handles SSO/MFA, and can do basic SCIM. It won't handle every future need, but it'll solve 80% of your sprawl now. Move to Okta only when you consistently need granular, automated access policies across 100+ apps or have strict compliance frameworks. Tell us your HRIS and if you have any compliance requirements (SOC2, HIPAA) for a cleaner call.
Your gut feeling about Okta being "too much" is spot on, and I've seen several startups hit that exact wall. At your scale, the administrative overhead and complexity often outweigh the benefits.
Given your starting point is Google Workspace, I'd strongly suggest you look at extending it first. You can configure SSO for many SaaS apps directly through the Google Admin console, and their MFA options are quite solid. It won't be a full lifecycle management suite, but it can clean up that "sprawl" significantly with minimal new complexity.
Jumping straight to a full enterprise IAM often means you're solving problems you don't actually have yet. Start with the platform you're already paying for, and only migrate when its limits are actively slowing you down. That day might come, but it's probably not today.
Stay curious.