Users’ preference for increasingly user-friendly authentication has led to the widespread adoption of social logins, also known as “Sign in with…”. These methods, powered by platforms like Google, Github, LinkedIn, Apple, and Microsoft, offer a streamlined account creation and sign-in process that is preferred by users and offload account security to mature platform authenticators, while giving developers robust user data for customization.
Social logins also lower friction for users and some case studies have shown they increase account conversions by as much as 40%. However, the technical complexities around managing identities, handling client-side nuances, and allocating resources to maintain the service have posed significant challenges for businesses. As the leading provider of passwordless authentication, Passage simplifies social login implementations, along with passkeys, TOTPs and magic links, to keep users secure without compromising on user experience.
Social logins facilitate a passwordless login experience by allowing users to sign into new accounts using their existing social network credentials. This method, referred to as Single Sign-On (SSO), reduces password fatigue and streamlines the account creation process.
Social logins work really well in the following scenarios:
The backend setup of integrating social logins requires navigating through complex API configurations and managing and consolidating identities, which can be daunting for many businesses. Passage lowers friction and increases security for authentication, and while social logins aren’t as secure as other passwordless authentication methods like passkeys, they offer a familiar and low friction login method many users look for. Passage has chosen to integrate with Google, Github, and Apple first, as these services offer built-in measures that make them more secure.
Passage now offers social login functionality out of the box with a single toggle in the element settings. By providing a seamless interface for businesses to connect with social login providers, Passage enables a more efficient login process, facilitating easier account creation and secure management of login information.
You are still responsible for your users’ accounts, and while security is offloaded to a third party, if a users’ account is compromised or they are locked out, they will still expect you to help them solve the issue. Take this into account and build contingency plans and flows in advance.
Evaluate how comfortable your business is with sharing and using data from social providers. For example, in order to meet certain compliance requirements, you must have a process for deleting user data retrieved from social providers if requested by a user.
Limit your social login methods to one or two options. If you implement more options, it will confuse users and they’ll forget which one they used to log in.
Some users will be concerned with privacy and data sharing between social platform accounts and your service. The best way to mitigate this is to allow for other login methods such as passkeys.
With Passage, you can now enable social logins such as “sign in with Google” alongside passkeys and other passwordless authentication methods. Give your users a familiar option that streamlines registration and login by allowing them to use their existing social accounts, while also getting access to robust user profile data that can be used for personalization and beyond.