I once spent three solid days chasing a bug in Azure B2C’s custom policy engine — a mismatch in claim type — before I realized the problem was in a config I copy-pasted from Microsoft’s template.
If you’re reading this, maybe you’ve been there too — wondering, is there a lighter, friendlier way?

I remember staring at the Azure portal one night — four browser tabs open, ten policy files scattered across folders — wondering how something as basic as login could feel this broken.
It wasn’t even a bug, really. It was a configuration mismatch. One line in a sea of XML.
Still, that single line stole three evenings of my life.

I think that’s when it hit me — most of us don’t need enterprise identity plumbing.
We just need users to sign in, stay secure, and not hate the process.

You know that early-stage chaos?
A five-person team, Slack buzzing, someone pushing builds at midnight, and then — boom — “sign-in failed.”

You dig through docs that look like they were written for Fortune 500 engineers, not you.
You don’t have an IAM architect. You barely have an SRE.
But there you are, deep in Azure B2C custom policies, trying to make a login page work.

Azure B2C isn’t bad.
It’s just too much for where most startups live.

It’s heavy, it’s rigid, and every time you think you’ve got it, you discover another invisible dependency.
Want a magic link? Prepare to write a policy file that looks like a PhD thesis.
Need passwordless login? You’ll spend more time debugging claims than building your actual product.

I’ve tried the others too.
Keycloak, AWS Cognito, even a little DIY auth when I was dumber and braver.
Keycloak is powerful — if you like managing upgrades and patches on weekends.
Cognito works fine, as long as you don’t mind token bugs that show up in one browser and vanish in another.

At some point, you realize: every hour you spend wrestling identity is an hour not spent building the thing that actually makes you money.

And it’s weirdly lonely, right?
Because nobody talks about it.
Everyone posts about “growth hacks” and “product-market fit,” but not about the developer crying over misconfigured redirect URIs.

When I finally switched to a lighter identity API — MojoAuth in my case — it felt like oxygen.
Not perfect, but human.

I could integrate OpenID Connect in an afternoon instead of a sprint.
Users could log in with an email OTP or a passkey without me reinventing half of Microsoft’s identity stack.
And yeah, it cost money — but predictable money.
Not the kind of “free-until-you-hit-10k-users-then-oops” model we’ve all fallen for.

Here’s what I wish someone had told me before I spent those nights buried in XML:

1. If you’re under 20 people, self-hosting identity is a trap.
   You’ll think you’re saving cost. You’re actually buying maintenance debt.

2. Most B2C systems aren’t designed for small, messy startups.
   They’re built for enterprise compliance, not iteration speed.

3. Passwordless is not a luxury.
   Every extra login field kills conversion. A magic link or OTP flow can literally move your retention needle.

4. The hidden cost isn’t the license — it’s your time.
   You can recover from a pricing mistake. You can’t recover from burnout.

And I know — “but we want control.”
Same. I wanted to customize every screen, every claim, every little token.
But the truth? Most users don’t care.
They just want to sign in once and forget it exists.

Control is overrated if it delays launch.

Some founders ask me: So what’s the right Azure B2C alternative?
There isn’t one right answer. But here’s the rule of thumb I use now — I call it the “4-F gut test.”

• Fast: Can I get it live before my coffee gets cold?
• Flexible: Can I change stuff later without breaking everything?
• Fair-priced: Will I still afford it when we hit 100k users?
• Frictionless: Can my team sleep without Slack pings about broken auth?

If it fails two of those, I skip it.
And if it passes three, I stop overthinking.

Let’s be real.
Azure B2C will keep existing. Microsoft’s pushing Entra External ID now — which, honestly, might fix a few things but will probably add a few more.
Keycloak’s community will keep thriving.
Auth0 will keep getting pricier.

But what matters isn’t which brand wins.
It’s whether your team gets to ship without drowning in identity chaos.

If you’re reading this because you’re already stuck, breathe.
You can migrate out of B2C — just map your users, export claims, test flows in a sandbox.
It’s not painless, but it’s doable.

Startups like yours don’t need enterprise IAM.
You need something secure enough to pass an audit and simple enough that an intern can read the docs.

That’s it.

Tiny framework you can steal:
(scribbled in my notes somewhere during a product sprint)

It’s not perfect, but it keeps me from losing weeks again.

If you’re considering MojoAuth or another identity API, don’t expect magic.
Expect less pain.
That’s enough of a win.

It’ll handle the passwordless flows — magic links, passkeys, OTPs — and let you brand your login your way.
It’s not enterprise-y; that’s the point.
No custom policy engines. No crying over expired tokens.

You integrate, test, and move on.

Sometimes people ask, “Would you ever go back to Azure B2C?”
No.
Not because it’s bad — it’s just not for me.

I build small, move fast, and hate asking permission to change a login screen.
That’s why I picked a lighter path.
That’s why I still sleep.

Honestly, this whole thing taught me something that has nothing to do with identity.
Every startup has that one system they over-engineer early.
For me, it was auth.
For you, it might be analytics, or billing, or marketing automation.

But there’s a pattern — we overbuild the infrastructure before we even have customers.
And sometimes, the most startup-friendly tech decision is the one that buys you a few quiet nights.

If you skimmed this far:

• Don’t use Azure B2C if you’re still under 50 employees.
• Don’t self-host identity unless you love patching servers.
• Try something that gives you speed first, control later.
• Passwordless is worth it. Users don’t care how clever your JWT claims are.
• And MojoAuth? It’s one of the few that feels like it was built by people who’ve been burned before.

I’ll end it here.
Not with a sales pitch, just this:

Your login flow should never cost you sleep.
It should be invisible — the kind of thing users never mention in feedback.
When that happens, you’ve won.

Because that’s what a good identity solution is: quiet.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from MojoAuth - Advanced Authentication & Identity Solutions authored by MojoAuth - Advanced Authentication & Identity Solutions. Read the original post at: https://mojoauth.com/blog/azure-b2c-alternative-for-startups