Examples of SAML Providers
What are saml providers and why do they matter for your enterprise
Ever wonder how you can log into a dozen different work apps like Slack or Salesforce without typing your password every single time?
Examples of SAML Providers
What are saml providers and why do they matter for your enterprise
Ever wonder how you can log into a dozen different work apps like Slack or Salesforce without typing your password every single time? That is the magic of saml providers doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes.
Basically, a saml provider is a service that follows the SAML 2.0 specification to handle identity exchange. In the enterprise world, we usually talk about two main roles: the Identity Provider (idp) and the Service Provider (sp). The idp is the source of truth where your users actually live—think Microsoft Entra ID or Okta—while the sp is the app they’re trying to use. The link above goes to Microsoft Power Pages documentation, which is a platform for building business websites; they provide a great technical breakdown of how to exchange the metadata files needed to make this connection work.
Enterprise clients are obsessed with saml because it centralizes control. If a dev at a big retail chain leaves the company, the admin disables them in the idp, and boom—they lose access to the inventory api, the payroll portal, and everything else instantly.
Security through Assertions: Instead of passing passwords, the idp sends an xml-based “assertion” to the sp. It’s like a digital passport that says, “Hey, I’ve checked this person, they are who they say they are.”
Standardization: Because it’s an open standard, you can connect a java-based legacy finance tool to a modern node.js app without writing custom auth logic for each.
User Experience: One login to rule them all. It reduces “password fatigue” which, honestly, is a huge win for any helpdesk.
The following diagram shows the basic handshake where the user is redirected from the app to the provider to prove who they are.
As Stytch explains in their SAML guide, this flow lets users sign in once and gain access to everything from GitHub to on-prem tools. Stytch themselves are actually a provider you can use to bake this into your own app. It’s way more robust for b2b than simple social logins.
Next, we’ll dig into the specific big-name players you’ll actually run into.
Top examples of SAML providers in the market
So, you’ve got the basics down, but now you’re probably wondering who are the actual players you’ll run into when setting this stuff up. It isn’t just a bunch of random startups; some of these giants basically run the internet’s identity layer.
If you’re working in a company that uses Windows or Office 365, you’re already using Entra ID whether you realize it or not. It is the absolute 800-pound gorilla in the room for enterprise saml. (800-pound gorilla)
Windows ecosystem dominance: It syncs perfectly with on-prem Active Directory. This makes it the go-to for legacy enterprises moving to the cloud.
Federation metadata: As mentioned earlier in the Power Pages documentation, setting this up usually involves grabbing a “Federation metadata document” url. This xml file contains all the certificates and endpoints the sp needs to trust the idp.
Integration: It has pre-built connectors for thousands of apps, so you don’t always have to manually mess with xml attributes.
Okta is basically the “cool kid” of the identity world, mostly because they focus on being cloud-first and developer-friendly. I’ve seen teams pick Okta just because their api documentation doesn’t make you want to pull your hair out.
The Okta Integration Network: They have a massive catalog of apps where saml is basically “click and play.”
Developer focus: Their sdks for node.js and python are top-tier. As discussed in the Stytch guide, you can use libraries like passport-saml to connect to Okta without writing the raw xml parsing logic yourself.
Customization: You can map custom user attributes (like “Department” or “Clearance Level”) into the saml assertion easily, which is great for fine-grained access control.
Ping Identity and ForgeRock
These two are like the specialized tools you bring in for the really complex, messy jobs. They often deal with “hybrid” environments where you have some stuff in the cloud and some ancient server sitting in a basement in Ohio.
Complex environments: They’re big on ciam (Customer Identity and Access Management) and can handle millions of users across weird, fragmented systems.
Legacy support: If you need to connect a modern react app to a 20-year-old mainframe via saml, Ping is often the one doing it.
Security focus: They have heavy-duty features for preventing breaches in high-stakes industries like finance or healthcare.
This diagram illustrates how different providers sit between your users and the various apps they need to access.
Honestly, picking a provider usually comes down to what your IT team already pays for. But regardless of the choice, the underlying saml flow stays pretty much the same.
Next up, we’re gonna look at how you actually get these providers to talk to your code without breaking everything.
Technical breakdown of a saml request and response
If you’ve ever tried to read a raw saml message, you know it looks like someone sneezed xml all over your screen. But once you peel back the layers of tags, it’s actually a pretty logical conversation between two servers.
When a user hits your app (the sp), you need to ask the idp to verify them. This happens via the <samlp:AuthnRequest>. It’s basically a formal “Hey, can you vouch for this person?” note.
The Issuer: This is just your app’s unique ID. As noted earlier, this tells the idp exactly which service is asking for the login.
AssertionConsumerServiceURL: This is the “callback” address. You’re telling the idp, “Once you’re done, send the proof back to this specific endpoint.”
Protocol Binding: Usually you’ll see urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:HTTP-POST. It’s just fancy talk for saying the data should be sent via a POST request rather than a redirect.
One thing that trips up devs is the digital signature. The sp often signs the request so the idp knows it hasn’t been messed with. If the signatures don’t match, the whole flow dies right there.
The response is where the real meat is—the <saml:Assertion>. This is the digital passport we talked about. It contains the Subject, which identifies the user (usually an email), and the AttributeStatement.
Attributes: This is where you get the good stuff like Role=Admin or Dept=Engineering. It’s how you handle permissions in a healthcare app or a retail portal without asking the user for more info.
Clock Skew: Servers are notoriously bad at keeping perfect time. If your server thinks it’s 10:00 and the assertion says it was issued at 10:05, it might reject it as “not yet valid.” Most libraries let you set a few minutes of “skew” to handle this.
Here is a look at the specific back-and-forth of the xml messages between the browser and the servers.
As previously discussed, handling this xml manually is a nightmare. Using a library is basically mandatory unless you want to spend your weekend debugging namespace issues. Next, we’ll look at why manual implementation is such a headache and how to avoid the traps.
Streamlining enterprise sso with SSOJet
Look, we have all been there—staring at a mountain of xml and wondering why “simple” sso feels like a full-time job. This is exactly where SSOJet comes in to save your sanity.
Basically, SSOJet acts as a middleman that talks saml so you don’t have to. Instead of building a custom integration for every single client’s idp, you just plug into their api once.
API-first directory sync: You can sync user groups from providers like Okta or Entra ID without writing messy sync scripts. This is huge for healthcare or finance apps where permissions change daily.
No more cert nightmares: As mentioned earlier in the Stytch guide, certificate rotation is a massive headache. SSOJet handles the rotation automatically so your app doesn’t suddenly break on a Tuesday morning.
Multi-tenant by design: You can support 50 different enterprise customers, each with their own weird saml settings, through a single, clean integration flow.
This diagram shows how a managed service simplifies the architecture by sitting between your app and the various idps.
I’ve seen teams spend months on this, but using a specialized tool lets you ship in days. It’s just a better way to treat your dev team, honestly.
Next, we’ll wrap things up by looking at how to pick the right path for your specific stack.
Implementation challenges and how to avoid them
Building your own saml integration feels like a rite of passage for devs, but honestly, it’s more like a trap. Just when you think you’ve nailed the xml parsing, a customer’s idp sends a weird attribute and the whole thing falls over.
One of the biggest silent killers in sso is certificate expiration. If the idp’s public key expires and you haven’t updated it on your end, users get locked out instantly. It’s not just about the idp either; as mentioned earlier in the Stytch guide, you should really be using your own certificates to sign requests for better security.
Automation is king: Don’t track these in a spreadsheet. Use a tool that pings your team 30 days before a cert dies.
Secure Storage: Never hardcode private keys in your repo. Use something like HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager.
Rotation logic: If you’re doing this manually, you need a “grace period” where your app accepts both the old and new certs so there’s zero downtime during the switch.
Single Logout (SLO) is the feature everyone wants but nobody wants to build. The idea is simple: log out of one app, and you’re logged out of everything. In practice, it’s a mess of redirects that often fail if a single service in the chain doesn’t respond.
To avoid the SLO redirect nightmare, you should use specialized middleware that handles the redirect chain for you, or honestly, just rely on short session timeouts. If you can’t guarantee every app in the chain will play nice, a short-lived session is a much more reliable way to ensure security than a fragile chain of redirects.
This diagram shows the complex path a logout request takes across different services.
Most devs skip slo and just clear the local session, but for high-security industries like healthcare or finance, that isn’t enough. You have to handle both “sp-initiated” and “idp-initiated” flows, which adds a ton of boilerplate to your auth api.
Next, we’ll wrap things up by looking at how to pick the right path for your specific stack.
Final verdict on choosing your saml provider
So, what’s the move? Choosing a saml provider usually comes down to whether you want to wrestle with xml or actually ship features.
Cost vs Overhead: managed services like SSOJet or the ones from stytch mentioned earlier save weeks of dev time.
Audit Logs: prioritize providers with robust logging for compliance in healthcare or finance.
Vetted Libraries: never roll your own xml parser; stick to tools like passport-saml.
This final diagram summarizes the decision-making process for picking your integration strategy.
Honestly, just keep it simple. Your future self will thank you for not building a custom auth engine from scratch. Good luck!
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from SSOJet – Enterprise SSO & Identity Solutions authored by SSOJet – Enterprise SSO & Identity Solutions. Read the original post at: https://ssojet.com/blog/examples-of-saml-providers
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