Modern applications are demanding more from customer identity and access management (CIAM). What started as simple user authentication has evolved into a complex ecosystem requiring seamless user experiences, robust security, regulatory compliance, and the ability to scale to millions of users without breaking your system.
If you're an engineer, architect, or product leader relying on Auth0, you may be hitting walls that weren't visible when your application was smaller and simpler. The question isn't if you'll need to evolve your CIAM strategy, but whether you'll make the move proactively or reactively when legacy limitations finally force your hand.
The hidden costs of today’s CIAM challenges
Today's identity requirements go far beyond basic login flows. You're likely dealing with complex multi-tenant architectures, stringent data sovereignty requirements like GDPR and CCPA, and the need for a unified user experience across multiple touchpoints. Your users expect frictionless authentication, social logins, and passkeys.
Meanwhile, your business stakeholders demand cost predictability and the ability to customize every pixel of the user journey to match your brand. Your security team needs full visibility into the codebase and events, the ability to run their own vulnerability scans, a provably compliant implementation of standards like OAuth 2.0, and session management that follows OWASP Top 10 guidelines.
The challenge is that many established IAM solutions struggle to meet these modern requirements, exhibiting performance bottlenecks under high load and offer limited customization and control.
Where Auth0 falls short
Performance degradation under load
Auth0's architecture shows its age when you push beyond moderate scale. Performance degrades predictably as load increases, creating the exact opposite of what you need for a critical system like authentication. There's no meaningful horizontal distribution, leaving you vulnerable to bottlenecks when you need resilience most.
Proprietary "Black Box" security
When your security team asks to audit the authentication codebase or run their own vulnerability scans, Auth0's proprietary nature becomes a liability. You're trusting a black box with your most critical security function, and "trust us, it's secure" doesn't pass compliance audits in regulated industries.
Session management vulnerabilities
While Auth0 can use cookies, many common implementation patterns encouraged for Single Page Applications (SPAs) rely on storing JWTs in browser local storage. This approach is vulnerable to Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks, which can lead to token theft and account takeover. This contrasts with OWASP recommendations which favor secure, server-set, $HttpOnly cookies to mitigate these risks for web applications.
Rigid multi-tenancy
Complex B2B SaaS use cases can quickly outgrow Auth0's multi-tenancy capabilities. Onboarding enterprise customers with complex organizational structures, custom identity providers, and unique data mapping requirements often involves architectural workarounds and custom logic that adds fragility and technical debt.
Limited control over user experience
Auth0's Universal Login page lives on their domain, not yours. This limits your ability to create a truly seamless, branded experience. Every authentication flow takes the user away from your application, creating friction and a potential loss of trust at the most critical moments of the user journey.
Why enterprises choose Ory
Ory was built from the ground up for the challenges you're facing today, providing a clear path to modernization that integrates with, rather than rejects, existing systems.
Flexible deployment models
Ory offers unparalleled flexibility. You can deploy the open-source Ory stack on your own infrastructure for maximum control and data sovereignty (self-hosted), use the managed Ory Network for cloud-native convenience and scale, or use a hybrid approach. This allows you to place identity services at the edge, in a specific region for data residency, or managed in the cloud, fitting your exact architectural needs.
Transparent, auditable security
With Ory's open-source core, your security team can audit every line of code, run their own vulnerability scans, and understand exactly how your authentication system works. This is not security through obscurity — it's security through provable transparency and community vetting.
Performance that scales
Ory's cloud-native architecture, written in Go and designed for Kubernetes, is built for horizontal scaling. You control the infrastructure, allowing you to add resources precisely to meet demand and ensure high availability and low latency, even during massive traffic spikes.
Session Management best practices
Ory is built with security best practices at its core. It implements secure, cookie-based session management ($HttpOnly, $SameSite, $Secure) aligned with OWASP Top 10 guidelines, protecting against stolen session tokens and Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks. This avoids the security pitfalls that can plague token-in-local-storage implementations. See Ory’s documentation on session management to learn more.
True data sovereignty
With Ory's self-hosting capabilities, you can keep your user data exactly where you need it, ensuring full compliance with data privacy regulations like GDPR. Dedicated instances simplify regulatory audits, and you maintain complete control over data hosting, backup, and recovery decisions.
Seamless user experiences
Ory gives you complete control over the user experience. You can build and host your own UI components on your domain, providing full branding control and eliminating the jarring redirect to a third-party domain. For teams that prioritize speed, Ory Network also offers pre-built, customizable pages that can be deployed instantly. This flexibility, combined with built-in account linking and federated credential management, allows you to handle complex user journeys without custom development or compromising your brand.
Enterprise-grade multi-tenancy
Ory is designed for the complexity of modern multi-tenant applications, from B2B SaaS to sophisticated B2B2C platforms. It provides streamlined organization management, allowing you to model your business customers as distinct tenants. For B2B use cases, this enables your enterprise customers to seamlessly integrate their own identity systems, offering single sign-on (SSO) through protocols like SAML and OIDC right out of the box.
Migration made simple
The biggest perceived barrier to moving away from a legacy provider isn't technical — it's the fear of a complex migration. Ory eliminates this with comprehensive tooling and clear documentation.
The process typically starts with exporting your user data from Auth0 and importing it into Ory. Ory's identity schema is flexible and can accommodate custom data. Crucially, Ory can migrate and validate existing password hashes (including bcrypt, scrypt, PBKDF2, and Argon2), meaning your end-users do not need to reset their passwords during the cutover.
The process is straightforward: customize Ory's migration scripts with your JSON-formatted user data, and the platform handles the rest. Even without hashed passwords, users can seamlessly use account recovery flows to set a new password or passkey.
For teams wanting to minimize risk, Ory's architecture allows you to migrate incrementally. You can start by deploying the self-hosted open-source components to modernize one piece at a time. No "rip-and-replace" is required. This allows you to gradually shift traffic and functionality from Auth0 to Ory, de-risking the project and delivering value faster.
The competitive advantage of modern IAM
Every day you delay migration is another day your authentication system holds back your product capabilities. Competitors who have moved to modern, scalable IAM solutions can iterate faster, serve enterprise customers more effectively, and scale without identity becoming a cost center.
The choice isn't whether to modernize your IAM stack, it's whether to do it on your terms or wait until legacy limitations force an emergency migration.
Take action now
The teams already migrating to Ory aren't just solving today's problems — they're positioning themselves for tomorrow's opportunities. They're building authentication systems that scale with their ambitions, not against them.
Your users deserve authentication that works seamlessly across all touchpoints. Your security team deserves full visibility into critical systems. Your business deserves predictable costs and unlimited customization capabilities.
Stop letting legacy IAM solutions limit your application's potential. The migration tools are ready, the documentation is comprehensive, and the competitive advantage is clear.
Migrate now to regain a competitive edge for your apps and services.
Ready to start your migration from Auth0? Check out Ory's migration documentation and join the thousands of engineering teams who've already made the move to modern CIAM. Or, contact our team to learn more.
