Searchmetrics makes it easy for businesses to increase their visibility in the market. Its comprehensive suite of software and services offers customers like eBay, Zendesk, and Lenovo the data and insights to reach all of their search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing goals.  

The company’s ethos of efficiency has been the driving force behind its diverse set of business intelligence tools. As Searchmetrics has continued to grow and earn more high-profile customers, the need to preserve their development’s time for product enhancements has become critical. 

“Time is money,” says Carsten Neuendorf, vice president of engineering at Searchmetrics. “We see opportunity in evaluating platform solutions instead of building our own.” 

Searchmetrics’ engineering team set out to simplify its architecture by evaluating solutions for areas they don’t specialize in. And as more customers demanded advanced login functionality like Single Sign On (SSO), authentication moved to the top of the list. 

Documentation and Support Make Development Simple

Searchmetrics used to employ basic username and password authentication, but as more clients requested SSO integrations, the need for a modern identity solution became apparent.

“Providing SSO was the first reason we sought out a platform,” says Neuendorf. “Another reason was that we want to concentrate more on our strengths of our business, not deal with things like authentication.”

Searchmetrics evaluated several companies, but the decision to go with Auth0 boiled down to one word: simplicity. Says Neuendorf, “Auth0 made it simple for our engineers to integrate the platform in our existing software.” He cites Auth0’s documentation as a key component for allowing the development team to move with speed. And for questions the team has had, Neuendorf has relied on Auth0 for “really responsive” support, where “we try to solve the issue together.”

Today, customers can log in to the Searchmetrics portal via SSO, using identity providers like Microsoft Active Directory. Based on demand they’ve seen, Neuendorf believes the functionality will help Searchmetrics acquire new, larger enterprise customers.

Big ROI Prepares Searchmetrics for Future Growth

An analysis by Searchmetrics concluded that it would have been at least 1,500% more expensive to hire a dedicated team to build and maintain their own solution than to outsource identity management to Auth0. 

“In our evaluation, we needed three to four developers to build it, and that’s not including the infrastructure to maintain it,” says Neuendorf. “The investment would have been much higher to build an identity solution on our own versus using Auth0.”

Searchmetrics has also expanded its use case to secure access to its public API through Auth0. And according to Neuendorf, offering its product as an API is a key part of Searchmetrics’ roadmap. 

“For some customers, it's not necessary to use our frontend so they will go over our API,” he says. “Our business will focus more on selling our API, and Auth0 will be securing that.”